“CHARLES KRAFFT IS MY NAME, AMERICA IS MY NATION, SEATTLE IS MY DWELLING PLACE, AND ART IS MY SALVATION.â€For the last 15 years I have been working in ceramics, before that I was a painter. I am considered a pioneer of the "low brow" or Pop Surrealism movement. This is an alternative visual arts scene that has its roots in California custom car culture, surfing culture and in '60s era underground comix. It’s a streetwise aesthetic that has been evolving and spreading out across the globe while remaining almost entirely unnoticed by most mainstream critics, museum curators and art historians. It exists on the Internet and by word of mouth in it's own parallel universe of events, magazines, galleries, shops and studios in America, Europe, Australia and Japan. I’m also the inventor of SPONE - human bone china - or more precisely porcelain made with “cremains.†The word SPONE is a combination of “bone†plus “Spode.†Josiah Spode was the l8th century English inventor of bone china which is actually named for its cow bone ash content, not its white color. Armed with Spode’s old clay recipe I’ve set out to revolutionize the funerary arts by creating custom reliquaries out of human bone ash porcelain from crematoriums. My other work isn't as functional. I use clay to comment on violence, power, capital and catastrophes. I am self-taught. The only art credentials I have are the "astral apprenticeships" I served under the reclusive painter of startled birds, Morris Graves (l910-2001) and the crackerjack Hollywood hot rod hero, Von Dutch (l926-l992). I can get down with any militantly aesthetic easel painter, multi-media maestro or wooly potter, but when it comes to the mechanics of art making I prefer the company of criminals, undertakers and blue haired grannies. Visit my cyber- tarded website: www.antiquesatoz.com/artatoz/krafft/ .
