In the Studio with Ceramicist @Jonathan Cross
Just up the road from us, waaaay out in Wonder Valley, Jonathan Cross wood fires his ceramic art in a giant oven bigger than a truck. He needed somewhere within driving distance of LA to run his massive wood-kiln, and Twentynine Palms fit the bill. "The desert had a profound impact on my psyche," he says of his first visit to Joshua Tree two decades ago. Being from Texas, the wide open spaces and big sky felt familiar—but the mountains were new. "They orient you in space. I had no idea how important that was to me until I moved to California."
Jonathan first dabbled in clay back in high school and college, but it wasn't until about twenty years ago that he really committed to it. His early process was mostly self-taught—studying things he admired and reverse-engineering how they were made—before grad school gave him the technical grounding to back it up. (Along the way he also spent time at the legendary Gemini G.E.L. print studio in LA and apprenticed under wood-firing icon Don Reitz, who set him on the path to his MFA in ceramics.)
Ask him what he loves about working out here and the list comes fast: "The vastness. The colors. Solitude. Freedom. Maybe a little bit of self-respect—or ego—for being able to handle the harshness for so long." The challenges are just as specific. "It's not the heat, it's the unpredictable wind," he says, and finding people to work without here isn't easy either (we can totally relate!). His work—sculptural, functional, and textured like it was pulled straight out of the ancient volcanic rock of the Morongo Basin—wasn't a direct response to the desert so much as something that grew alongside it. "Nothing is a direct inspiration. I'm constantly drawing from the new spaces I see when I visit different areas of the basin."
Right now Jonathan's working on something big: a large-scale planter installation with Eric Wareheim through Serpentine LA, plus a collaboration with The Haus Plant in the works. He's also toying with an idea to fire sculptures multiple times over several years, layering up wild wood-fired surfaces over time.
You can find Jonathan's work at galleries around LA, plus spaces in New York and Oregon—links live on jonathancrossstudio.com—and keep up with new shows on Instagram @jcrossstudio.
Photos by Brandon Harman.
