Kimberly Gottschalk

I have been working with clay since late 2021. An oceanographer by training, I left academia following the loss of my husband. In a world often reduced to labels, I had many. I was a wife, PhD student, scientist—then I became caregiver, and, finally, widow. It’s how I believed the world saw me, and after the loss of all the identities that once centered me, I wasn’t sure how else to see myself, either. I started working with clay to channel my grief. Clay is a medium I could throw emotion into; I could start with nothing and create something that held magic and a piece of me.

As I continue my journey with clay, my work has shifted from objects born from raw emotion to objects that hold memory and create new ones; that try to tell my story in ways that I have trouble expressing conventionally. 

My most recent work incorporates aspects of mythology and dance. Through dance, I try to find new forms in my own body to impart onto my figurative work in clay and mixed media. Mixed media and ceramics have allowed me to reawaken and reclaim parts of my identity that I put aside long ago. My photographs, my printmaking, all of these media allow me to unlock some piece of myself to the audience. By sharing my work, and therefore myself, my work explores vulnerability, grief, and the memory we keep and create moving forward.