JADE KNOX
Jade of All Trades, if you will
Bio
My dad, Professor Knox, is a woodworker and a wordworker: he makes wizards’ staffs and recites poetry in the back of the local antique store in Tennessee. My mom, Dr. McQuail, is a William Blake scholar, an antiquarian, an anglophile.
Most of my earliest memories are of ballet. Practice took place every evening after school in the basement of a coffee shop. Over a decade of dance developed the discipline I carry into my studio practice. Countless hours spent counting - 5,6,7,8 - watching my feet stumble to find the beat. In the wall of mirrors, left becomes right and the body becomes a tool of tale-telling.
I’ve spent the last decade as a sculptor. Themes of sensuality and spectacle continue to crop up in my ceramic practice. Video performances of process led to playful production of ceramic props: objects which inhabit unsettling scenes of uncertain futures.
Artist Statement
Jade Knox’s ceramic sculptures occupy a speculative space—a future that may be an alien planet or an Earth altered beyond recognition. In this imagined landscape, vast salt deserts are all that remain of ancient oceans and survival depends on adaptation. The inhabitants of this extreme environment have evolved to perform specific roles: guardians, sentinels and spies.
Using ceramic to construct these entities, Knox draws on clay’s long history as one of humanity’s earliest technologies—an essential material through which vessels and symbolic objects were formed. Reanimated into unfamiliar, uncanny beings, these sculptures operate as relics of an unknown timeline between past and future.
Blending science fiction, environmental speculation, and hints of her own history, Knox invites viewers to imagine how objects might evolve alongside shifting planetary and cultural climates. As artifacts that imply systems, rituals, and ecologies without fully revealing them, the work reflects on imagination as a tool of resilience.
