ROBERT DIKEN
Robert is self taught American artist and owner of Basecamp Studio & Gallery, where he creates through various mediums. Early goals of becoming a landscape architect were interrupted by another career. Robert began drawing as a means of dealing with planning and building landscape design on a practical level in his own garden.
The colors, textures, light and forms are right there! Nature and landscape provides him with such an abundant opportunity to capture those elements, in my own version, at that moment. He prefer experimentation across subjects and mediums. Most of his work occurs when concentrating on the process, rather than the end result. The “problem solving” along the way is both inevitable and challenging, but still remains the most rewarding consequence of the work. At the end Robert tries to make art that is a spontaneous surprise.
His curiosity about learning new ways to express my work includes abstraction, graffiti and Wabi-Sabi influences. The main goal in creating is try to keep his mind open to new ideas but not doing so much thinking that it interferes with the inspiration.
Robert has been a long time resident of Metuchen where he resides with his wife Joann. Prior to his retirement, he was a managing Director at Marsh & McLennan Companies in NY. After retiring Robert became interested in pursuing his interests in the arts, both on a personal and at the civic level, with a desire to engage with the community on projects which would make an impact in Metuchen. He currently serves on the Not for Profit Board of Friends of Metuchen Arts as President and the Metuchen Arts Council as an Advisor.
SIMON KELLER
What am I doing here? Material matters! I sculpt untamed wild clay that is baked in the intense heat of the kiln fused with natural wood ash glaze and other materials of the earth. Or unfired, wet, dry and raw when dancing its lore or painting with it on sand. Led by a dream apriori, I am adding objects and inspirations found on my way to the mix. Open-ended empirical takes in a landscape of calculated chaos. Clay is in essence rocks changed by an everlasting geological metabolism. My interaction with clay is humbling and awe-inspiring, experiencing deep time in stolen moments of bliss.
Simon, son of the German mid-century modern period ceramic artists Dorothea Chabert (1931 - 2021) and Volker Ellwanger (1933 -) grew up with clay. He spent his formative years living in the Renaissance water castle Wolfsburg (settled 1302), which was home to a vibrant international artist community from the 1950ies to 1990ies. Artist studios, a print shop, the city’s art gallery, a design company, an experimental theater lab and performance stage, a heritage museum and concert hall were all in-house. Annual concerts and a festival for jazz, folk, avant-garde, world and classical music, an annual summer night candlelight fest with fireworks attracted many visitors. All nestled in a lush 19th century park of tall trees surrounded by a river.
In 1983 he answered an invitation to study with the ceramic artists Daiguji Michiko (1933 -?) and Tappo Narui (1925 - 2010) in Mashiko. After a year he was hooked and stayed for seven more. Taking this experience home to the studio in the castle to work alongside his mother and her apprentices making strictly functional high-end stoneware pottery. In the mid 1990ies he returned to Japan to work with master potter Hosui Fukuda (1927-1998) in Kumamoto, Kyushu for six more years. A mingei advocate, Hosui had reviewed the 400-year-old Shodai-Yaki style in the 1970s. Here, Simon discovered his love for working with genuine wild clay, natural ash glazes and the tea ritual cha-no-yu. His tenure culminated in the orchestration of three exhibition projects in Germany, Kamabiraki – Opening the Kiln, Shodai-Yaki - Beauty of the Functional and Art of Fire, shown in museums and galleries between 1996 and 2003.
Having returned to Germany, his work shifted from functional pottery to sculptural mixed-media work. He relocated to New Jersey, United States in 2004. Simon has been teaching ceramics on and off in Japan. Germany and in the USA. At New Jersey’s oldest private art institution duCret School of Art from 2007 - 2024 the curriculum takumi “the art of making” took roots, a spin-off of Japanese techniques and its earth-honest approach. In 2016 he spearheaded the Open Studio for empirical ceramics, which has been an incubator of what is now a thriving ceramic studio lead by his former student and successor Grace LaForge.
Following the last time ever of working in the castle to help finalize his mother’s ceramic legacy and studio closure in 2013, Clay Dance was born. A meditation of movements and stillness, that merges clay in motion with sand/clay/pebbles painting and imaginary calligraphy in the air. Wherever the location, in- or outdoors, over thirty-seven solo and group events in Germany, Japan, but primarily the US have created tangible, tactile art in the moment of happening. Instrumental was his friendship with artist, curator, and gallerist Frank May of Mgalleries, that provided the space and flux of an experimental performance art colab.
Inspired by the classical Japanese tea ceremony, post-pandemic Simon developed Yuzenraku, a deconstructed free form tea gathering. It is educational, thought-provoking, meditative, and delicious. Yuzenraku and Clay Dance are also cross-over into the healing arts.
His unorthodox ceramic expertise has repeatedly served the new materials review board of New York based material library Material Connexion. Simon has had solo, and group shows in Germany, Japan, the US and the UK.
He lives with his wife Christy, a teacher of theater and son Max in Flemington, New Jersey.
Contact: Simon B. Keller 炎studio honoo炎 +1 908-477-469
JOHN MARRON
John is a Zen writer, artist, publisher, Family System Life Coach and lay monk student of Robert Aitken Roshi, Manfred Steger, Perle Besserman, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Krishna Das & Dogen Zenji.
John’s art work embraces Wabi-Sabi, Dada, pure play, chance, sumi-e gestural abstraction and poured acrylic. More recently John has completed multimedia commissions to address food insecurity, LGBTQA+ rights, income inequality and climate change.
John is also a passionate community organizer and activist. His many roles include; Chair of the Highland Park Arts Commission, co-founder of the Highland Park Artist Collective, a member of the HP Main Street Board Member/Art Liaison for Window Art Walk, a Family Therapist at UMDNJ/Rutgers U Behavioral Health for 26 years, the author of Haiku/ Language / Concrete Poetry books “Oiyeau”, “Visual Syntax” & “Blips's, a Coordinator of Jizo Mind/Body Institute (Open Circle Meditation Group), an Olli-Rutgers U instructor, and a team member of the social justice public art project “Windows of Understanding”.
John currently resides in Highland Park, NJ.