About the Artist
AJ Steele is a trans ceramic artist based in Denver, Colorado. Working primarily in clay, he explores transformation, duality, and the evolving relationship between self and form. His lived experience informs a practice focused on how bodies and materials shift over time.
With a background in multiple artistic disciplines and a BFA, Steele has developed a longstanding ceramic practice grounded in material engagement. He embraces the physicality and unpredictability of clay to reflect the fluid, nonlinear nature of becoming.
Artist Statement
My work in clay explores states of change—material, emotional, and embodied. Rooted in wheel-throwing, I push the medium beyond function through scale, distortion, and surface, creating forms that exist in flux. Clay’s capacity to stretch, collapse, and hold tension mirrors the slow, fluid processes through which forms are built, broken down, and reassembled over time.
At the heart of my practice, I’m drawn to the cyclical rhythm of kneading, shaping, and refining clay—the physical engagement that leaves surfaces marked by pressure and resistance. My work embraces what is mutable and still in formation, creating a space for complexity to exist without demanding resolution.