KEAVY MURPHREE

Based in Nashville, Tennessee, Murphree creates ceramic sculptures resembling fantastical human faces and animal creatures. She is inspired by her childhood trips to museums with her parents and life with her children. "I like to feed my subconscious with interesting books, magazines, and travel, and then let the information get processed in my brain and out of my hands," she says. Murphree believes in a kind of divine inspiration. "The best ideas seem to come out of nowhere," she says.

Murphree, who worked as an industrial designer for many years before opening her own studio in 2018, creates work that draws on contemporary design and shows a deep reverence for folk and indigenous art discovered in the Americas. Many of those objects were imbued with the spiritual life of the cultures from which they originated. Murphree's ceramics, including vases, sculptures, and side tables, similarly seem inhabited by friendly and benevolent house gods watching over family homes. "D.H. Lawrence said, 'the human soul needs actual beauty more than bread,' and that's a quote that has run as an undercurrent throughout my life," Murphree says.