Chotsani Dean
Exhibition: Trading Post: Huys de Hope, January 16 - February 20, 2020
Public Lecture: January 15
Exhibition Opening Reception: January 16, 5:00 - 7:00 PM
Chotsani Elaine Dean is an artist and Assistant Professor of Art at the South Carolina School of the Arts at Anderson University in South Carolina. Born in Hartford, CT, Chotsani received her B.F.A. in Ceramics from Hartford Art School and M.F.A. from the Sam Fox School of Art at Washington University in St. Louis. In the summer of 2020, Chotsani will be an artist in residence at the John Michael Kohler Arts Industry Residency in the Pottery Factory in Sheboygan, WI. In 2012-2013, Chotsani completed a Fulbright-Nehru teaching/research grant in India. Chotsani has lectured and exhibited widely in places such as 701 Contemporary Center for Contemporary Art, Hartford Art School, Northern Clay Center, Moon Gallery at Berry College, Katherine Walsh Gallery, Appalachia State University, Kriti Gallery, Aurodhran Gallery, Hans Weiss Newman Space, Hunterdon Museum of Art, among others. In 2010, Dean was awarded a Connecticut Arts Grant from the state of Connecticut.
The many layered realities of the history and visual archives of Dean’s communal ancestry establish and impart creative purpose and structure in her studio practice and research. The visual and historical synthesis of quilts, cotton trade, and vast realm of textiles inform and shape her ideas, concepts, and approach to the spectrum of ceramic material. Cotton, the commodity at the center of Dean’s ancestry by way of its production and trade, leads her into the larger realm of global trade, commodities, and resulting cultural implications of people and time.
