Ceramic Surrounds

Although his tiles start out as squares or rectangles, Medansky often cuts them into different shapes while the clay is wet—part of the process of subverting their rectilinearity and abstracting the final composition. He carves, adds extruded bits, and stamps into the clay’s surface, creating patterns and embedding fossils by “smooshing” in such objects as twigs, obsolete iPhones, childhood toys (such as lizards and frogs), and two-by-fours—“my love letter to Stan Bitters,” Medansky says with a smile, referencing the venerable ceramic sculptor. Before installation, Medansky lays all the tiles out on his floor and plays with configurations—like assembling a giant jigsaw puzzle with multiple solutions. “I’m kind of a Dadaist,” says Medansky. “I thrive on the chaos of not knowing exactly how something will turn out.”

He takes the same approach when building his totemic stacked sculptures, using intuition to dictate the procession of shapes that he arranges, like giant ceramic beads, onto a tall metal rod. Some of these elements are rounded, shaped with molds made from mixing bowls used by his father, who was a chef. Others are more angular, inspired by Constantin Brancusi’s 98-foot-tall Endless Column (a cast-iron monument to Romanian soldiers in World War I).

Thanks in part to social media, Medansky is on the radar of architects, designers, galleries, and collectors, and feels he can stay more accessible without the added markup of a middleman. And although his work has scaled up considerably in size, he still has a way to go: “My ultimate goal is to clad an entire building or skyscraper in ceramic. In a way, everything I do is a step toward that.”

Tangled Rectangle Wall (2020), Kapoor Residence, Hancock Park, Los Angeles

Television producer Raj Kapoor fills his home with original work by artists and makers from Los Angeles and beyond and is always on the hunt for new discoveries. After Medansky’s Instagram popped up on his phone, Kapoor reached out to commission two teak-framed tile paintings to complement his collection of vintage Alvino Bagni pottery. Once those were hung in his sunroom, he enlisted Medansky to clad an entire 8-by-10-foot wall in his black-and-white powder room. “I asked him for something very textured and tactile—a conversation piece,” says Kapoor, whose credits include such shows as the Academy Awards and the Grammys.

The resulting mural is the antithesis of your typical smooth, grouted-tile bathroom wall. Medansky took sticks and two-by-fours to etch and press texture into the clay, appended tabs that protrude from the surface, and slipped spacers behind selected tiles to jut them out, revealing glimpses of the terracotta edges. Using black glazing to visually break up the “tangled” rectangles even more, he created the ceramic equivalent of a giant crazy quilt.

Ferns & Freeways: An Ode to Frogtown

While Medansky has his hands full with commissions, he also carves out time for passion projects. Ferns & Freeways, a 2023 show at the Bianca Chen Gallery, explored the interplay between nature and urbanity in his pocket of Los Angeles. “It was a kiss to my wonderful, quirky, tucked-in neighborhood that is surrounded by the river and all these freeways,” says Medansky.

Titles toggle between the bucolic—Nine Branches from the LA River—and the prosaic: The 110 to The 10 and The 10 to The 5 to The 101 to The 60, a set of driving directions familiar to anyone who has navigated the city’s labyrinthine freeway system. Medansky also coil-built several botanical-inspired vessels—and intentionally made them useless. “Nothing irks me more than being asked what a piece is for, what can it hold. So I added holes to counter this idea that ceramic art has to be functional. Why can’t it just look beautiful?”

Embracing everything from river flora to navigation systems, the artwork ranges from lustrous greens to gritty, tarmac-like surfaces created by mixing sand into black glaze. “I wanted to evoke the texture and hues of the foliage while acknowledging the industrial beauty of the asphalt-blanketed freeways,” he explains. “It’s a delicate equilibrium.”

Medansky has achieved equilibrium in his own life by balancing personal work with original commissions and one-off collaborations—including swim trunks (Pangea), sneakers (Koio), and coasters (Areaware) patterned on his ceramics. And he is a creative consultant for Zia Tile, for whom he’s designing a custom collection. Almost 10 years after losing his studio in a fire, Medansky has found the sweet spot where he can both make art—and make a living by making art.