Helena, the capital of Montana, isn’t exactly the place you’d expect to find a young artist making a name for herself in Los Angeles and Paris, but the tucked-away city suits ceramist Kelsie Rudolph just fine. “It’s a tiny town and it’s in the middle of nowhere, but it’s also so affordable for me to do what I need to do,” she says. ”I really have a nice setup.”
After an extended residency at the Archie Bray Foundation, a prestigious local program for ceramic artists, Rudolph decided to rent a nearby home. It has a garage-turned-studio that comfortably fits her sizable top-
loading kiln, which she uses to make ceramic chairs, benches, lamps, and side tables; some have defined angles and curves, others are more fluid.
The maker’s fusion of furniture design and ceramic art came naturally. Early in Rudolph’s creative explorations as an art student at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, she was focused on making furniture out of wood. After taking a ceramics class, though, she immediately “turned into a clay person.”
After completing an MFA in 2018, Rudolph began to think more seriously about architecture and interior spaces, and ways to turn clay into larger functional objects. She traveled to South Korea and spent six months apprenticing with Hun Chung Lee, a master of the craft. Back in the States, she designed a set of rectangular clay stools that made her feel as though she’d found her groove. The legs flare out slightly at the bottom, and the center of the seat features a small square orifice, used to slide in custom vinyl cushions that look like parts of a Tetris puzzle. “The furniture has just evolved since then,” she says. “I have this very minimalistic approach to line and dimension.”
The work has caught the eye of boldface names like American designer Kelly Wearstler, who commissioned a series of benches from Rudolph for a project: oval pieces with rows of square legs, their thumb-textured surface (she pinches the clay endlessly as she’s working) glazed in beige and ivory tones. Over the past few years, Rudolph has taken different approaches to color, often reflecting her emotions, from bright pastels applied in checkered patterns to barely there neutrals.
The artist’s shapes have shifted too. Her latest collection, made exclusively for Galerie Lefebvre & Fils in Paris, consists of chairs, lamps, and stools with forms that look geometric but not strictly so. “I gave everything a swoopy leg,” she says. “I finally found the sweet spot between the hard and the soft.”
Paola Singer, a freelance writer in New York City, is a frequent contributor to American Craft.
Kelsie Rudolph in her Helena ceramics studio.
