We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Annakatrin Burnham. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Annakatrin below.
Alright, Annakatrin thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been one of the most interesting investments you’ve made – and did you win or lose? (Note, these responses are only intended as entertainment and shouldn’t be construed as investment advice)
The best investment of my time, money and energy always comes back to my practice. It is a continuum, whether its collecting tools and materials or getting a babysitter so I can go into the studio and make work, keeping my practice central is always worth it.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I grew up in a bicultural family in central California. My mother, a goldsmith from Germany’s Black Forest, and my father, a general contractor from Louisiana, both worked with their hands, as did everyone in my family. Watching and learning from them as a child laid the groundwork for the kind of work I do today. My parents worked incredibly hard to send me to a Waldorf school, where art is integrated into the curriculum. Working with clay in high school left a deep impression on me.
When it came time for college, I had to find my own way. Supporting myself while taking classes at different community colleges across California gave me the chance to explore many fields. It wasn’t until I transferred to a four year college that I was finally able to admit to myself that all I wanted to do was learn about art and make art. More specifically, it was the ceramics program at Humboldt State University that was housed in an old industrial laundry facility where I witnessed incredible work being made in clay and, for the first time, saw how it might be possible to build a life centered around art. That realization changed the trajectory of my life.
After graduating with a BA in Art in 2010, I pursued another longtime dream and moved to Germany, though not before falling in love! Deeply curious about my German heritage, I began a Master’s in Fine Art at the Institute for Ceramic and Glass Art in Höhr-Grenzhausen (Institut für Künstlerisches Keramik und Glas, IKKG). I learned German and spent lots of time with my grandmother, digesting her delicious cooking and generational World War II trauma. During my MFA, I had a few wonderful opportunities: working as a studio assistant for a potter, for an artist in Texas, and teaching my first ceramic workshops. Graduate school was an incredible challenge and definitely contributed to a deeper understanding of my work, but the assistantships and mentors I collected throughout the two years at IKKG had an even greater impact on my pursuits as an artist.
Berlin was calling, and after graduation I moved to Kreuzberg, spending five years living and working as an artist in one of the world’s most incredible cities for creative people. I shared a studio with several friends and had a day job at an architectural model fabrication company. I kept my clay practice close but definitely indulged in public art events, mixed materials when the budget was tight, and traveled for art whenever possible. My ideas led me beyond the Arctic Circle to Kiruna, Sweden, where I built an art suite at the world-famous Ice Hotel, twice! I participated in ceramic symposiums in Latvia, where I made my first fire sculpture at the Mark Rothko Center for the Arts in Daugavpils. The globe was my playground, and I explored as much as I possibly could, from residencies in eastern France and southern Germany to a design residency in New Delhi, India.
Once I made the commitment to pursue a life in art, each step I took led to another step, which led to another opportunity. I could never have imagined any of this as a young community college student, but looking back, I am eternally grateful to that person who took a risk and listened to her own voice, my own voice. That’s the story of how I got into making sculptures.
Now I teach almost full-time, I am investing energy into growing a family and a home, and still carving out that essential time for my practice. My path is constantly being reflected in my expressions, and my format has changed drastically over the past 20 years. In undergrad, I worked primarily figuratively, with lots of color and narrative. My instructors, being influenced by their instructors and the strong satirical expression of the Funk Art movement, definitely shaped my articulative format. Moving to Germany opened my interests in exploring minimalism and the Bauhaus perspectives of design, and so that integrated into my work as I faced my previous aversions to abstraction. Gaining confidence in that format, I explored ideas of spatial relationships between objects, art in the public realm, and product design. In a nutshell, my work stylistically embodies both California Funk Art and German Minimal Art, two movements that were hyper-contrasting in the American 1960s.
My most recent body of work, one I’ve been composing for a year and a half is centered around abstract ceramic stacked objects. This body of work, titled Trophies, is a slow accumulation of forms. I cultivate an idea and methodically feed it, drawing from the shapes and structures that surround me. Each element carries its own glaze, firing process, or clay body, creating layered relationships that shift between compositional formats. Spontaneity is central to my practice. I create structures that invite experimentation, trial and error, and unexpected contrasts of surface and silhouette. I use form as my language of expression, just as a poet uses words or a musician uses sound.
I am drawn to clay for its geologic resonance, working with it feels like making new rocks, echoing the earth’s own cycles of transformation. Its malleability allows for immediacy, while its history ties me to centuries of makers and experiments. I see myself as part of that lineage, benefiting from discoveries that came before while adding my own to the continuum.
As these trophies come together, they shape a story and stand as dedications to the inglorious victories of daily life, the mundane, the tedious, and the darker moments that also define me. These pieces mark a new direction in my work, each composition both a record of process and a monument to persistence.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Yes! Resilience, perseverance, practice, resourcefulness, all are essential to the process of making art. It needs to be a continuum no matter what and all barriers are just opportunities, waiting to be unlocked. For example. during undergrad I had to take a semester off to work and make money for tuition. I got a job on a luxury motor yacht as a second stewardess cleaning toilets 5 times a day for 10 months. In my free time I would look for any opportunity to practice an expressive act even if it meant swimming to the beach and making 50 circles out of seaweed down the stretch of sand. Or in Berlin, when I couldn’t afford a bag of clay, I turned to paper, which was heaped around me in organized recycling piles and made paper-mache object collages. It really has become essential to my practice to see barriers as opportunity and is especially important now as a new mother.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
I’ll quote Joseph Beuys’s here: “Every person is an artist” and agree with his guiding principle of Social Sculpture, stating that everyone possesses a creative power that can be used to transform themselves and society. I collect and invest in works from my peers, colleagues and the artists I admire, especially when I can afford it. Living with objects I like to look at and can dream into whether made by me or someone else are essential to my living space. If buying power could be shrouded with this as its filter, I think everyone could be a maker and a collector.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://annakatrinburnham.com/
- Instagram: @annakatrinburnham
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/akraus/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annakatrin-kraus-a96627bb
