LEE KRATZER SERIES

This series was created while Brennan was attending Indiana University in 2012 as a ceramics pre-Master’s student. Unsatisfied with the formal instruction, Brennan spent much of his time there learning from the other graduate students. On a trip to visit a friend in St. Louis, he met Lee Kratzer who according to Brennan, “who is the quintessential unknown complete bad-ass artist. He reminds me of a modern day Neil Cassady- aware of the trends and completely educated in post-modern art, yet refuses to quit his job as a manager of a pizza shop” (Brennan Interview 2014). Brennan quickly took to Kratzer’s collage work and they became inspirations for this series. “I thought of Lee's insane imagery on my dirty porcelain wares, things that have nothing to do with the narrow-minded provincial nature of modern ceramics- drug bags, beach balls, cellphones and cigarettes- in case you don't know, ceramics is like 150 years behind every other art form in terms of modernism” (Brennan 2014). The series became a collaborative work between Kratzer and Brennan. Kratzer provided a collection of images and Brennan turned them into decals and fired them on his pots. The collection had its first formal showing in 2014 in Berlin.