Butte
Olivia Berkey is an artist working in ceramics, performance, and choreography. Her dances, often solo in practice and presentation, are conceived of as an imagined duet with unseen and sometimes inanimate partners: the dreamt presence of other bodies, mountains, rocks, desert fields, herself in duplicate. Her ceramic work, too, investigates the relationship between body and earth, human and geologic time. Drawing from her experience working in museum and gallery archives, she is ever-exploring archiving the ephemeral. She holds a BA in Dance and Art History from Bard College (2020), where she received awards for her work in both arts scholarship and performance. Born and raised in North Carolina, she was first exposed to the region’s rich history of woodfired ceramics at age eighteen. Upon graduation from Bard, she moved to Taos, New Mexico, to apprentice with local woodfire artist Logan Wannamaker. In Taos, she has remained—digging, kiln building, walking, dancing. She can also be heard hosting a biweekly radio show on KNCE Taos. She has performed at the American Dance Festival (NC) and the National Arts Festival (South Africa) and premiered her choreography at Groundswell Series (NY) and the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts (NY). Her ceramic work has been represented at galleries and art markets around northern New Mexico, and she was a recent ceramic Artist-in-Residence with Arquetopia Foundation in Puebla, Mexico.