_Art Basel’s Meet the artists series presents contemporary creatives shaping today’s cultural landscape_
In his Bay Area studio, the sculptor reflects on material, ancestry, and the quiet psychology of objects
Woody De Othello transforms everyday objects into vessels of emotion and memory. Born in Miami to Haitian parents, the artist first turned to clay as an undergraduate. His anthropomorphic sculptures – telephones, mirrors, chairs, and other domestic forms in ceramic, bronze and wood – seem to breathe with human presence. By enlarging and distorting familiar items, he explores the psychology of space, and the energy objects hold.
In this episode of Meet the artists, we visit the Bay Area–based artist in his studio and go for a hike in the redwood forests in Northern California. There, he speaks about finding balance between the additive process of ceramics and the subtractive practice of carving wood – a duality that mirrors his own reflective nature. For De Othello, making art is an act of receptivity as much as creation: ‘I don’t want to make something because someone expects it. I want to make something because I want to see what happens if it is made.
Woody De Othello is represented by Jessica Silverman (San Francisco) and Karma (Los Angeles, New York).
‘Woody De Othello: coming forth by day’ will open at Pérez Art Museum Miami on November 13. There, a new series of ceramic, wood, tile wall works, as well as a large-scale bronze, will be on display.
Meet the artists | Woody De Othello was produced in collaboration with Nowness.
Director & Director of Photography Tyler McPherron
Producer Jeremy Summer
Editor Caleb Stumpfl
Production Company Little Moving Pictures
Music Local Group, Cheflee, Tony MF
1st Assistant Camera Charley Jurich-Weston
Gaffer Neil Kelly
Key Grip Siraj Fowler
Location Sound Mixer Jody Stillwater
Production Designer Keri Shewmaker
Production Assistant Erin Haven
Colorist Sean Wells / Roast N’ Post
Assistant Colorist Kent Shin / Roast N’ Post
Sound Mixer Joaby Deal / One Union
Special thanks to Dean Snodgrass, Ethan Johnson, Packard Jennings, Jessica Silverman, Owen Christoph, Ramie McDowell
Nowness
Creative Director Bunny Kinney
Managing Director Gavin Humphries
Commissioning Director Katie Metcalfe
Producer Noor Miah
Junior Video Editor Daniel Tsao
Art Basel
Executive Editor Coline Milliard
Senior Editor Alicia Reuter
Video Commissioner Jeanne-Salomé Rochat
Creative Producer Akiel Gallina
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