Casey Elizabeth Weldon

KC Weldon (she/her) is an artist and art educator living in Chicago where she is the AP Sculpture and Ceramics instructor at the Chicago High School for the Arts. Her art education started at the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, Alabama where she's from. She earned her BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she graduated with the James Nelson Raymond Fellowship Award. Weldon received her MFA at Kendall College of Art and Design with a full-ride fellowship. Since, she has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Ox-Bow School of Art and Artist Residency, and Interlochen Center for the Arts.

Exhibitions: Little by Little, 2024, Oak Park Art League, Oak Park, IL; Arrowmont Instructor Exhibition, 2024, group show, Geoffrey A. Wolpert Gallery, Gatlinburg, TN; Lies, Legends, and Lines on Land,  a duo show with Salvador Jimenez, 2023, NEIU Fine Arts Center, Chicago, IL; Roots: New Growth, 2022, Center for the Visual Arts, Wausau, WI; A Regional Exhibition, 2022, Oak Park Art League, Oak Park, IL; Interlocked: Faculty Exhibition, 2022, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Interlochen, MI; Dreams and Nightmares, 2021, Fulton Street Collective, Chicago, IL; Something Wicked, 2021, Sidestreet Studio, Elgin, IL; Arrowmont Instructor Exhibition, 2021, group show, Geoffrey A. Wolpert Gallery, Gatlinburg, TN; Art of Imagination, Quarantine Prints, 2020, Bridgeport Art Center, Chicago, IL; Arrowmont Instructor Online Exhibition, 2020, Arrowmont, online; Clay Cubed, 2019, group show, Clayspace Ceramic Arts Center, Lisle, IL; A Southern Gothic: Flora and Fauna, Assertive Charms, 2019, Color Circle Gallery, Chicago, IL; 22nd International, 2019, Women Made Gallery, Chicago, IL; A Southern Gothic: Flora and Fauna, 2018, Convergent Narratives, Rockford University, Rockford, IL; Bridgeport's Over: Local Art, 2018, Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chicago, IL; A Southern Gothic: Flora and Fauna, 2017, Graduate Thesis Exhibition, Fed Galleries, Grand Rapids, MI; May-August Rotation, 2017, The Artery, Kendall College of Art and Design, Grand Rapids, MI; Portmanteu, 2017, Van Singal Art Center, Grand Rapids, MI; Animal Behavior, 2016, solo show, Alluvium Gallery, Grand Rapids, MI; Sculpture and Functional Art Showcase, Spring Semester Rotation, 2016, Kendall College of Art and Design, Grand Rapids, MI. 

As a ceramic sculptor and figurative artist, I create art inspired by history, folklore, mysticism, and wildlife. My experience growing up in the American South influences my making, and is where my deep bonds with animals and land were first forged. Farming, hunting, and Evangelicalism are the threads of my family history, and appear as themes throughout my work. Through my art, I play with the dichotomy of the wild and the domestic as well as the spectrum between femininity and masculinity. Living in the space between dead and alive, right and wrong, animal and human, my work is empathetic and critical simultaneously. By continuing the long-held history of story-telling through clay, I create visual narratives that titillate between beautiful and unsettling. My work tells the stories of animals, plants, land, and humans alike: our struggles, histories, instincts, capacities to destroy one another, and the bonds created between us.