March Exhibit at Edison State to Feature Brandon Lowery

The Edison State Community College Art Department will feature the ceramic sculptures of Brandon Lowery during its March exhibition. The department will display the exhibit, “Diamond in the Rough,” in the Anne Vaccaro and David Myers Gallery at the Piqua Campus during normal campus hours from March 2 to March 27, 2026.

“The sculpture occupies a space between the familiar and the ambiguous, inviting viewers to recognize emotional or bodily associations without resolving into a single narrative. ‘Diamond in the Rough’ asks how fragility, pressure, and incompleteness can shape identity, and how transformation often reveals itself most clearly through what remains unfinished,” said Lowery.

Lowery was born and raised in Dayton. In 2016, he received his Master of Fine Arts with a concentration in ceramics from Miami University. His work drifts between hyperrealism to abstract anthropomorphic forms. Lowery mainly works in clay, but his sculptures utilize many mediums. His forms instill a feeling of discomfort but draw the viewer closer with fine details and chosen color palettes. This push and pull of uneasiness and discomfort mixed with the strangely beautiful goes hand in hand with Lowery’s concept of social anxiety, finding a sense of place, and questioning societal norms.

“Working intuitively with clay, I lean into its responsiveness and resistance,” Lowery added. “Marks left by the hand, shifts in form, and surface disruptions created during firing are not corrected but emphasized. These traces become metaphors for lived experience: erosion, adaptation, and endurance. The contrast between coarse, stone-like areas and softer, more fluid elements reflects the coexistence of strength and vulnerability within the body.”

In the pieces of “Diamond in the Rough,” color and material function symbolically rather than descriptively. The interplay between muted, raw surfaces and moments of heightened sheen or color and value emerges from imperfection. Like a diamond before refinement, the form resists polish, proposing that worth and presence exist prior to completion.

Learn more about Lowery at www.brandonlowery.com. For additional information about the exhibit, email Greg Clem, Edison State Professor of Fine Arts.