Molly Burke / Byproduct Studios
Molly and Nathan are an artist and designer couple and parents of young children, their collaborative practice utilizes excess material from their respective processes and home life to create new artworks. A variety of coatings, such as plaster, wax, epoxy, and faux painting, also left over from other projects, are then applied to the artworks to either heighten or obscure their innate qualities. This allows the artists to play with perceptions of a material’s purpose, quality and value, as waste remnants and the byproducts of their life are transformed through the process. Incorporating reflections on their lives lived together, themes of landscape, play, and architecture flow through the art works.
Molly Jo Burke, b. 1984, is an Ohio based artist, educator, and researcher; with each practice overlapping. Her artwork focuses on the complexities and pressures of modern life and observation of our environment both natural and built, through the use of traditional and non-traditional art materials. Her academic research is focused on fine artists, arts entrepreneurship, the challenges and how policy impacts their careers. Burke received her BFA in 2006 from Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD), MFA in glass sculpture in 2009 from The Ohio State University (OSU), and a PhD in 2024 from OSU’s Arts Administration, Education, and Policy program.. She has taught at OSU, CCAD, and Corning Museum of Glass. Her artwork has been featured nationally and internationally, most recently at Toledo Museum of Art, Illinois Wesleyan University, Columbus Museum of Art, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France.
Nathan Gorgen, b. 1986, is an Ohio based artist and educator. His artwork explores the space between art and design, as well as digital and traditional fabrication and recycled materials. This manifests as objects on a continuum between furniture and sculpture with varying levels of functionality. Gorgen received his BFA (2008) in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and his MFA (2012) from the Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD). After graduation he worked in exhibition design and manufacturing before becoming the Lab Supervisor at the Studios for Art and Design Research at The Ohio State University (OSU), and most recently took on a position as a technician at University of Cincinnati’s Makerspace within the 1819 Innovation Hub. Gorgen has also taught at CCAD and OSU, and exhibited his work around the country, including at the Toledo Museum of Art, Inlight Richmond, and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art.
