Auguste Elder has been a working artist and educator for more than 26-years in and around New York City. His endeavors span the visual, performing, and literary arts, with a majority of his recent years invested in making and researching pottery. Paleontology, biology, archeology, cultural anthropology, and Eastern philosophy inform Elder’s disparate trajectories, unifying his enduring curiosity of and reverence for the transient. Fracture, strain, stain, pit, erode, vitrify, decay: words that evoke the weak and strong forces at play in our grand universe also define the set of actions that shape and define his oeuvre. Compulsively drawn to the form and function of decanters, drinking cups, and storage vessels for their social, metaphorical, and intimate qualities, Elder’s work draws upon traditions and rituals from the prehistoric to modern, and from the culinary to the funerary. Elder lives in Manhattan, and teaches art at The Calhoun School, and pottery at ClayHouse Brooklyn.