Mike Cerv received his Bachelor of Fine Arts with a focus in Ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2017, was an artist-in-residence at the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, NY, and received a Masters of Fine Arts from Louisiana State University in 2021. Cerv works predominantly in ceramic, wood, and metal but often includes other materials in his work.

The textures in his work are meant to express the other materials such as wood, metal, and concrete that Cerv enjoys working with outside of clay.

"The pieces in this series conjoin simplified, abstracted hawks and crows with historical pottery forms. I stretched and distorted the profile of a given reference to accompany the attitude of the bird melded to it. The round, vessel-like construction of each sculpture harks back to Haniwa figures; tomb guardian soldiers and horses made of stacked clay cylinders. These raw fired Japanese figures were crafted sometime in 250-600 C.E. but their natural surface and stylized expressions make them feel alive today. Like their historic predecessors, my bird sculptures, with their matte, dry surfaces and wide-eyed expressions, retain evidence of their construction through pinched finger marks and pulling lines half buried under a crisp white slip." – Mike Cerv

Click to view: Mike Cerv Artwork Catalog