Curtis Cox
Curtis R. Cox is a contemporary American ceramicist and jeweler based in Springs, New York. His professional background is in engineering and computer science, and he has applied that technical expertise to a career in video design and custom video content, producing work for multiple award-winning musical artists. He has also installed and programmed video and lighting systems for several Princess Cruises fleet additions. Cox began working in ceramics in his youth and comes from a lineage of poets, painters, and engineers. After moving to the Springs, New York area in 2014, he founded his ceramic studio, Parsons Close Pottery. In 2017, following a period spent in Arizona, he expanded his artisan practice to include jewelry design, creating pieces that incorporate precious and semi-precious beads, gems, and stones, which he cuts and polishes into cabochons set in intricately designed titanium settings. His studio, the Parsons Close Project, is located in East Hampton, New York, an area historically known as a hub of the abstract expressionist movement.
Collectors
Artists in conversation
Jun Kaneko
Kaneko works at the intersection of large scale ceramic sculpture and cross disciplinary art production, blending technical mastery with bold surface design in ways that resonate with Cox's engineering informed approach to ceramics.
Ken Price
Price pushed ceramic sculpture into conceptually ambitious territory while maintaining a deep commitment to craft and material specificity, paralleling Cox's fusion of technical precision with artistic expression in ceramics.
Toshiko Takaezu
Takaezu brought a meditative and deeply personal sensibility to ceramic forms, merging functional vessel traditions with sculptural ambition in a way that echoes the lineage informed and craft rooted work of Cox.
Artists who inspired them
Peter Voulkos
Voulkos revolutionized American ceramics by breaking the boundary between fine art and craft, providing a foundational model for ceramicists like Cox who approach the medium with both technical rigor and expressive ambition.
Lucie Rie
Rie's refined integration of functional form with meticulous surface treatment influenced a generation of studio potters who, like Cox, draw on inherited ceramic lineages while developing a distinctive personal voice.
Bernard Leach
Leach established the philosophical and practical framework for studio pottery in the English speaking world, shaping the lineage based craft tradition that informs Cox's grounding in ceramics from an early age.