Austin Ballard grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, went on to pursue art at RISD. And his BFA from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he also served as an Assistant Professor in Textiles. Currently lives and works in Ridgewood, New York. Austin Ballard Utilizing traditional techniques of textile pattern-making, natural dying and ceramic slab-building to create’seamful’works.

Austin Ballard sculptures are both meticulous and spontaneous. While Austin Ballard use pattern and repetition to reveal and camouflage, he sculptures are made from woven cane, which derives from the rattan palm. Palm becomes a reference to both material and body. Extruding epoxy clay through the natural cane webbing creates a mysterious uniformity, evocative of a digital reproduction or computer-generated object. While evoking a sensitivity for touch and reflection, the sculptures knot together intimate objects like modern talismans, augmented scholar’s rocks, and coded tapestries.

Through visceral and rigorous handmade objects and installations, Austin Ballar work explores the influence domestic space, social anxiety, memory and loss have on our lived experiences. As an object maker, Austin Ballar work often conflates innovation and tradition, man-made and natural materials, high and low art—subverting societal and cultural values of labor associated with handicrafts. Shifting between traditional sculpture and functional design, Austin Ballard graphically patterned surfaces adorn objects both familiar and surreal.