Bethany Krull (b.1981) earned a BFA from the State University College at Buffalo in 2004 and an MFA from the School for American Crafts at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2007. Her work has been included in many regional, national and international exhibitions with solo shows at various arts organizations, including the Meadows Museum in Shreveport, Louisiana, the Castellani Art Museum at Niagara University, and the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY. Her work has also been included in numerous two-person and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally, such as Fahrenheit 2024 at The American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, CA, Thinking with Animals at The Canton Museum of Art in Canton, Ohio, and Hot Rookies at The Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale in Seoul, South Korea. She teaches ceramics in community spaces and maintains an active studio practice in her hometown of Buffalo, NY. Artist Statement:My work speaks to the complicated and often contradictory relationships humans maintain with other animals and the environment. We have taken great measures to keep the wild, unpredictable and problematic aspects of nature at bay, and yet, in our daily lives we are constantly curating our surroundings by adding living creatures and objects which become extensions of our need to be connected with nature. Yet, as we bring these pieces of the outside world into our interiors, they are inevitably changed. Wild becomes tame, nature’s plants are confined to pots and animals evolve into pets, their forms altered from the effects of poisonous environments or genetic tampering. This negotiation between our longing for nature and the realities of the earth’s shrinking and increasingly toxic natural spaces and our own impact on them defines our contemporary habitats. We are at once building spaces that nurture our need for connection and being confronted with the truth of our impact on the natural world and its inhabitants