David Batz

David Batz became an archived artist in 2024, thirty years after his untimely death at the age of 49. Born in Connecticut, Batz attended the Rhode Island School of Design for architecture. Disappointed with the reality of field, Batz explored other media, most notably studying glass with Dale Chihuly and ceramics with Norm Schulman. He received his BFA (1968) and MFA (1970) in Ceramics from RISD. After graduating, Batz moved to Cleveland and taught at the Cleveland Institute of Art as a ceramics professor until 1974. In 1986, he started co-operating Fiori Gallery in Little Italy with his life partner and fellow artist, Robert Jursinski.

The body of work preserved at the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve primarily encapsulates the later periods of the artist’s career. Batz is perhaps best known for his functional ceramics and stoneware vessels manipulated into whimsical shapes. Pieces from the Mad Hatter series exemplify his use of colors and patterns that simultaneously shock and delight viewers. While Batz’s monochromatic pieces, such as the architectural wall sculptures, starkly contrast the Mad Hatter series, close examination of both demonstrate the artist’s use of masterful techniques to create fantastical landscapes. Batz’s tragically short career culminates with the Odyssey series. This collection of earthenware platters, sculptures, and prints celebrates his interest in humanity’s visual history across time and cultures as experienced through a life filled with adventures.

In 1985, Batz received the Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. The Cleveland Museum of Art exhibited his work in 17 May Shows, from 1971 to 1993. Batz showed his earthenware and porcelain ceramics all over the country and wherever he traveled. Select pieces are held in private collections. Since his death, there have been three notable solo exhibitions celebrating the life and work of David Batz, including: David Batz: An Impassioned Journey (Beck Center for the Arts, 2000), David Batz | Retrospective (Tregoning & Co., 2018), and Raiders of the Lost Art (Context Gallery & Patti DiBenedetto Corna’s Gallery, 2024).

Biographic information sourced from the exhibition catalog David Batz: An Impassioned Journey. (Cleveland Artists Foundation at the Beck Center for the Arts, 2000).