Bio
Erin Paradis is a ceramic artist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She received her MFA from the University of Minnesota and her BFA from Alfred University. Paradis has worked extensively as an artist, resident, business owner, and instructor at art centers and academic institutions both nationally and internationally. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Ceramics at Macalester College from '24-'25 and has served as a lecturer and Visiting Assistant Professor of Ceramics and Sculpture at the University of Minnesota.
She has received several awards, including the MSAB Artist Initiative Grant in 2017 and 2020, the Open Studio Fellowship through Franconia Sculpture Park in 2018, the 2019 Jerome Ceramic Artist Project Grant, and the 2021 Early Career Project Grant through Forecast Public Arts. Paradis has exhibited at Hair and Nails Gallery, Northern Clay Center, and Soo Visual Arts Center, and has public sculptures installed at Hair and Nails Gallery, Franconia Sculpture Park, and Silverwood Park. Most recently she had her exhibition To Unfold at Silverwood Park Gallery in early 2025.
Statement
I habitually observe the natural and unnatural environments around me to absorb my surroundings and find the interesting shapes, objects, and compositions that seemingly ordinary spaces reveal to me. My ceramic work is a recollection of these spatial encounters, highlighting the spark of intrigue that occurs when we first become captivated by something new. I create work to acknowledge these moments I have in architectural and natural settings and question how I can create a physical space that promotes intellectual openness, a portal to curiosity, and creates pause. My way of exploring these moments is through drawing in space with ceramics; an impression of line, texture, and color.
I have created a library of forms that I investigate in my studio through an evolution of renditions and interpretations. The arch is a recurring shape that I explore in my practice by uncovering ways that it can be built and formed. An arch frames the space around it in a particular way that I gravitate towards compulsively. I have been exploring the physical compositions that doorways, entryways, and staircases create the spaces they compose visually and conceptually. Our bodies shift into certain actions and our minds into certain thoughts depending on the spaces we enter. In a sense, passageways reference the space in between moments, thoughts, or periods of time. I examine these ideas and their significance personally.
With the compilation of built ceramic forms, I am interested in the space they occupy and how layering and rearranging them can visually create new compositions. I materialize spatial encounters I have had in my installations with the hope that viewers find intrigue and perhaps ponder their significance and origin.