Emmett Jorgensen ’24 (he/him) is a ceramicist. His work can be seen in Assembly: 2025 Alumni Triennial at the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art & Design (ICA at MECA&D) on view February 7 – April 6, 2025.
We had the privilege of speaking with Emmett in the Maine College of Art & Design ceramics studio while he was in the process of making work for Assembly.
Can you talk about the process of making new work for the Alumni Triennial at the ICA?
Coming straight out of art school, it feels like everything has to be new and new. Now it's like, how do I negotiate having the same language, same visuals, and new work? But a lot of it comes from the same places. I use historical art tidbits, usually paintings that draw my attention because they're funny in some way, or strangely queer in some way. Like, one of these pieces I'm making now, which I'm calling The Fruit’s In. It's supposed to be a reference to a Paul Cadmus painting from the 1930s called The Fleet’s In.
It was supposed to commemorate and honor the Navy, and Cadmus painted these very buff Navy men in super tight clothes, and it's riddled with innuendo. Around the same time, I think maybe just a couple of years before, there was the invention of Popeye, who is like the ideal masculine sailor man.
So I'm thinking about this relationship between the Navy and masculinity and queerness and what in art history is outrageous and what is not.
Emmett Jorgensen ’24, The Fruit's In (You Got It In My Eye!), 2025. Ceramic, nylon fiber, adhesive. 22 x 14 x 14 in. Photography by Kari Herer. Courtesy of the ICA at MECA&D.
In viewing some of your work, and reading what you’ve written about your work, I’m really curious how you talk about touch and materiality.
I think I'm less interested in pots and I'm more interested in how the pots are made. With these pegging pots that I make, they're really sculptures that are made from this action of pegging that I'm considering under the umbrella of touch. I take these 4x4 beams and blast them into clay as this analogy, right? And then I carve the pot out from there. So there's this violence, which is exciting, that I try to totally deflate by making it neon blue or some primary color.
Emmett Jorgensen ’24, Spotting Pots, 2023, Ceramic. Courtesy of artist.
Thinking about this work, and your process generally, are there parts of it that you look forward to, and maybe on the flip side of that, are there parts of it that you fear?
In some of my work, I leave a healthy space for planned failure, which can be frightening, but it's also a large part of what I love about ceramics. So, when I make this pot that is pegged and then carved, I leave this foot that is maybe three inches thick, which for a ceramicist is just asking for disaster.
Unless you have months to dry this piece, which often we just don't as an artist, it's just gonna fail. It's gonna explode in the kiln and then you either need to remake it or figure it out, and I love the figuring it out. I hate remaking work, but I love figuring it out once it breaks.
Emmett Jorgensen ’24, Soft Spot (Bushes at Night), 2025. Ceramic, nylon fiber, adhesive. 17 x 11 x 11 in. Photography by Kari Herer. Courtesy of the ICA at MECA&D.
What’s your favorite place in the Porteous Building?
I love the foundations room with all the windows. That's a great room. It's very generous. They give it to the freshmen. And I love the piano down in the basement. In that tiny little room, surrounded by keyboards. It's a great room.
Do you have a favorite object in the studio?
This little clay knife that I got professionally sharpened by my friend Ben. It was way nicer than it needed to be. Now it's destroyed, but I still appreciate that it was once too nice for me to have.
When you leave the house, other than your phone, wallet, keys, what do you never leave without?
Um, headphones, lifesavers, Altoids too, chapstick, and a lighter. But I don't smoke. But I always have a lighter on me. Just in case. Yeah. Just in case a fire needs to be lit.