Opening Reception on Saturday, November 1, from 5-7pm
Municipal Bonds is pleased to present Modern Fossils, an exhibition of new anagama-fired ceramic vessels by Nick Schwartz, on view in the gallery's Annex from November 1 through December 20, 2025. Schwartz's practice examines the relationship between natural systems and time, transforming environmental processes into sculptural forms. His works exist within a continuum between human intention and the slow geological rhythms that shape the earth. There, his vessels embody permanence within change, revealing how matter carries the record of its own history.
Schwartz's work takes shape in the coastal terrain surrounding his home in Albion, Northern California, where weather from the Pacific Ocean leaves its imprint on land and trees. Foraged clay from this region carries the memory of its environment—the mineral composition of its soil, the movement of water through it, the trace of salt in the air. These materials retain their connection to place; their histories are folded into the act of making and preserved through the intensity of wood firing. Each finished vessel emerges as a fossil, standing both as artifact and as extension of the landscape that formed it, shaped by the same elemental logic that governs its surroundings.
In the anagama kiln, that connection deepens—heat and ash altering each piece in ways that feel both ancient and alive. Wood becomes an active agent in this transformation: its combustion generates the atmosphere that shapes the clay's surface, embedding mineral traces and subtly revealing glassy deposits within it. The kiln functions as a microcosm of natural systems—a contained environment where air, temperature, and material reaction mirror the unpredictability of the world outside. Schwartz approaches each firing as a vector of change. His works enter the kiln unglazed and emerge dynamically finished, marked by tonal variation, crystalline residue, and mineral sheen. Their surfaces register duration itself—time condensed into form.
Along California's North Coast, the landscape is defined by continual motion—erosion, renewal, tectonic drift. Schwartz's forms distill these forces into equilibrium, holding movement and stillness in quiet accord. Their earthy, variegated surfaces convey the pulse of their environment, capturing its ongoing transformation. Each seems to breathe with the same patience as the terrain from which it arises.
Schwartz's approach honors the interdependence between material, process, and place. His works affirm that change is not the opposite of permanence but its condition—an active state through which endurance becomes visible. Each vessel endures as matter refined by fire and shaped by time, carrying forward the memory of its making and the slow intelligence of the earth itself. In this way, Schwartz's works stand as temporal markers where the artist and the natural world converge.
Nick Schwartz (b. 1975, Manhattan, NY) lives and works in Albion, CA. He grew up in a family embedded in the music industry and was surrounded by artists for much of his childhood. After discovering clay in high school, he went on to study at a small liberal arts college in Florida, where he was encouraged to travel abroad and set up independent studies in ancient cultures and their ceramic works. After graduating, he traveled to Japan for an apprenticeship. In a fortuitous turn of events, he found himself working with an avant-garde artist who had shared a studio with John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg. Upon returning to the United States, Schwartz moved to Northern California and received a grant to build a community wood kiln. He founded a circus, made ceramics, baked bread, and later developed and operated Flynn Creek Pottery for over a decade. He has been invited to teach, lecture, and build kilns all over the world. Schwartz and his wife, artist Jessica Rae Thompson, founded and currently operate the Cider Creek Collective, an artist center for residencies, education, and community in Mendocino.
