BIOGRAPHY
Before Anthony caught the clay bug, he worked in the business world; mostly for pretty boring businesses. In the latter half of his business tenure, he was a consultant in the management, sales, investment, and marketing fields. Little did he know, those seemingly pointless and boring years would prove be very valuable for working in galleries in the future.
Back in the late 1990s, Anthony had a revelation about ceramics while standing in front of a glass wall at the Chicago Art Institute Museum looking at ceramics from the Middle East and North Africa. The problem for him was the glass wall. He wanted to hold them, turn them over, feel their weight, and examine each of them. That moment began his exodus from business and management, and started an adventure to get his hands on those objects.
He began to curate for local and regional art centers while also managing a ceramics exhibition program at his Alma Mater, Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan. Through that exhibition program, he met David Hiltner, who was in the process of planting the Red Lodge Clay Center; soon after that, Anthony moved out to Red Lodge, Montana to help David bring his dream into reality. Anthony stayed at Red Lodge for 5 years before getting the itch to start something new.
Before moving to Red Lodge, Anthony had promised himself he’d figure out how to be self employed before he turned forty. A few months before his fortieth birthday, he achieved that: he launched Schaller Gallery, which later settled in Saint Joseph, Michigan. In early 2020, during the COVID lockdown, the gallery moved to Baroda, Michigan. Anthony owns property nearby; he's planning on breaking ground on a new ceramics complex later in 2024.
Anthony has worked as a ceramics studio manager, assistant professor, curator, gallery manager, and all-around-grunt. He continues to present workshops, lectures, critiques, and discussions at universities and art centers across North America and a few outside the good ‘ole USA.
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SOME THOUGHTS (not necessarily a statement)
I am not purposefully trying to tell new stories or reveal the never seen before. Rather, I am content to interpret the timeless forms of ceramics and be part of the ongoing conversation that mankind has been having with clay.
I'm drawn to uncommon and experimental materials, specifically one's I can go find myself. Additionally, I make work that shows my fondness for risk, change, and the unexpected. My claybodies and glazes are always part of an ongoing and ever changing mutation.
My aesthetic values come from a wide variety of places.
-I'm enthralled with the concept of aesthetic migration. The effects of the Silk Road and how it moved ideas across geography and through time, is a continuous discovery.
-Seeing how craftspeople reinterpret forms as they move from one material to another.
-Architecture, geometry, Norse culture, arts and crafts, and American Mingei-Mingeisota.
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