CONCORD, MASS.- At 73, visionary ceramic sculptor Chris Gustin is reflecting on legacy, time, and mastery. Wild Things, his monumental new exhibition at Lucy Lacoste Gallery, presents late-career masterworks from his celebrated Cloud and Spirit and new Sprite series. The show, on view through October 12, 2025, captures Gustin at the height of his power— and underscores his place in the American ceramic canon.

Gustin’s work is represented in over 35 major institutions including LACMA, the Metropolitan New York, MFA Houston and the Victoria and Albert. The urgency is clear: these are museum- quality works that both honor the past and define the future of abstract ceramics.


Chris Gustin.

Monumental Forms, Transcendent Surfaces

Working improvisationally from oval foundations, Gustin builds closed-form sculptures that tower over four feet tall. Their anthropomorphic, cloudlike, and otherworldly forms evoke humility, generosity, and sensuality. Spirit Series #2503— a tall, tender work whose curves modulate gently downward — embodies the breath-like stillness Gustin describes as “enclosing and shaping air, as if the form itself were holding its breath.”

Each surface is transformed in the kiln, as wood ash melts and drips across the clay. The results are elemental: glazes that recall rainstorms over landscapes, with golds deepening, greens glowing, and copper glinting as they ooze across curves. Spirit Series #2420 glows with bronzed peaks and a dramatic drip of dark ash — a gift from what Gustin calls “the kiln gods.”


Spirit Series, #2505, 2025 Anagama-fired Stoneware 19h x 19w x 17d in.

A Career of Influence

Born in California to parents who ran pottery factories in Los Angeles, Gustin studied with postwar ceramic pioneer John Mason at UC Irvine before completing his BFA at the Kansas City Art Institute and MFA at Alfred University — the nation’s premier ceramics program. His early recognition included support from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his teaching career at Parsons School of Design, Boston University, and UMass Dartmouth shaped generations of ceramicists.

For more than 40 years, Massachusetts has been Gustin’s chosen home. Today, his work is housed in numerous esteemed cultural institutions and corporate collections — yet Wild Things stands as one of his most personal and powerful exhibitions to date.


Spirit Series, #2510, 2025 18H x 19w x 17d in.

“At this point in my life, each piece is a reflection on the time that remains — and what I want to leave behind,” says Gustin.