Doug Jeck

American, 1963–2022

BiographyDoug Jeck grew up in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He studied music as a trumpet major at Tennessee Tech University. He began working with clay at The Appalachian Center for Arts and Crafts in Smithville, Tennessee and received his BFA. He attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and completed his MFA. He taught ceramic sculpture at The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and in 1996, he began teaching at The University of Washington, where he is currently an Associate Professor and the chair of Ceramic Art.

The ceramic figures of Doug Jeck are fragmented, dismembered, defeated and highly realistic. Their poses allude to Greek and Roman statuary but Jeck cuts off arms and legs, sometimes reattaching a replacement hand, but more frequently leaving the figure without some of its limbs. With his composite figures Jeck illustrates that there is no single original and therefore there is no heroic paradigm. This suggests that any attempts to imply the heroic could merely be social intervention.

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