Thanks to his dedication to his art and a good word from a friend, ceramic artist and Kansas City-area native Shane Lutzk was recently invited to visit Savona, Italy, to create artworks for the Savona Ceramics Museum’s permanent collection.
The opportunity arose, Lutzk said, after his friend Sandro Lorenzini, a famous Italian ceramic artist who lives in Savona, contacted the museum (in Italian called Museo della Ceramica di Savona) a few months ago. Lorenzini told museum officials that he and Lutzk should work on a project together. Museum officials agreed and invited Lutzk to come. He traveled to Italy on July 1 with plans to stay for three weeks.
“He and I will be there together working on the project,” Lutzk said of Lorenzini. “We both do similar work. We’ll do one collaborative piece and the rest will be separate. I’ll make some monumental ceramic vessels that are four or five feet tall.”
Lutzk also will conduct a workshop and give a lecture while working at the museum. It has a new ceramics lab and studio.
“It’s like a big opening for them, so they invited me to come and paid for me to come,” he said. “So, it’s a really good opportunity for me to further my creative practice and make new international connections. It’s one of the most important ceramics museums in Italy.”
Lutz also recently had an exhibition of his artwork at Haw Contemporary in Kansas City, Missouri. The Nerman Museum at Johnson County Community College bought two pieces that were in the exhibition. Some of his work is also in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and in The Ken Ferguson Teaching Collection at the Kansas City Art Institute.
Lutzk is 27. He lives in Charleston, Illinois, near Champaign. He is the head of ceramics at Eastern Illinois University and a full-time artist.
He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2014 and a Master of Fine Arts in ceramics from Arizona State University in 2017. That year, he also was a resident artist at c.r.e.t.a. rome (Ceramics, Residencies, Exhibitions, Teaching & the Arts) in Rome, Italy.
He was born and raised in Overland Park and was a member of Congregation Beth Shalom. His parents are Howard and Dion Lutzk of Overland Park. They remain members of the congregation.
“My parents were huge supporters,” he said, as were his maternal grandparents, Dr. Edward and Rickie Haith of Overland Park, “and they’ve supported me throughout my creative experiences.”
Lutzk was one of five students who received the 2015-2016 Joan Frazer Memorial Award for Judaism and the Arts for a Holocaust commemorative plate he had created. It was titled “Cries were heard beneath the smoke, and no one cared.” The award is given to Jewish students in the arts at Arizona State University who create original artistic expressions that portray Judaism. It is administered by the Jewish Studies Program Joan Frazer Memorial Award for Judaism and the Arts Selection Committee with funding through the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Phoenix.
He first knew he wanted to become an artist at age 17, he said. He chose ceramics because “to be able to manipulate the clay in certain ways and create different textures and forms really intrigued me.”
“I just really enjoy feeling the material and manipulating it,” he said. “And that’s what really intrigued me specifically about clay, to able to create things that were really monumental (and similar) to the human scale, with elements that are seen in architecture.”
Lutzk has Type 1 diabetes, and he has recently been making art that reflects his experience living with the disease. The artworks have ceramic rings, which “express through various manipulations … the stress of living with the diabetes.”
“They’re like metaphors of how diabetes manipulates my body, the stress and worry about the disease every day,” he said. “I have a perfect circle to represent the human body and then manipulate it as the disease does different things to someone’s body causing stress. … The main thing is that living with this disease causes so much stress on someone’s body, so much pain, that it’s an emotional ride. But working with this clay (is) a beautiful outlet for me to not have to worry about my living with this disease. I’m able to work on artwork and just create.”
The essential thing that appeals to Lutzk about being an artist is that it enables him “to create something that’s physical for other viewers to see it and cherish the beauty of it.”
More examples of Lutzk’s artwork is available at shanelutzk.com.