Charles Krafft

Charles Krafft’s reputation and body of work has existed on the periphery of the academic dialogue on contemporary American fine art and crafts for some time. But this is changing, as ceramics is being discovered and embraced by new generations of multi-media artists who have stumbled on his work in upstart “low brow” art galleries or in lifestyle magazines that cater to the intemperately tattooed set. He has captured their attention by taking the prosaic Dutch delft tradition of blue and white low fired earthenware and turning into a vehicle for biting sarcasm about war, street violence and the egregious manipulation of news and history.

A self-taught painter in the tradition of the auto-didactic masters of the “Northwest School.“ Krafft hitched his wagon in mid-career to the pop culture legacy of the gifted American hot rod hero Von Dutch and the dense postmodern retro-avantgardism of Slovenia’s NSK collective. This odd mix propelled him beyond regional respectability into international visibility.