Dallas Wooten was born in Louisville, Ky, where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Ceramics from Indiana University Southeast, right across the river. Upon graduating, he attended Ohio University’s graduate program. During that time, he was awarded a 2018 LEAP (Lydon Emerging Artist Award) finalist. Wooten has recently graduated with his Masters in Fine Arts from OU and moved to Sharon, PA as an Artist-in-Residence at Hope Center for Arts and Technology, Inc. Currently, Wooten teaches classes at HopeCAT as well as Youngstown State University. He plans to set up his production studio in Connecticut later this year.  

Wooten utilizes the flaws, blemishes, and marks created in the process of making, and recontextualizes them within intricate patterning inspired by traditional status-imagery, patterns, and materials. Wooten’s work explores historically utilitarian and simple forms. These pots are then adorned with process and gestural marks abstracted into status-based patterns, such as vine scroll and floral imagery. The work aims to take process and residual information left by the hand to emphasize the importance of the human mark within the context of status-informed pottery. There are aesthetic and conceptual ties to both Japanese ceramics and modernist design that are considered within the work, both visually and metaphorically. Form and silhouette are of the utmost importance, as they serve as the canvas and frame in which these explorations take place. The pots, although functional and minimal, then serve as both objects of desire and functional vessels for consumption or display.