Daniel Alejandro Trejo

Fatal Frame

A Call & Response Examining Clay Culture through Personal Narrative

Familial trauma ripples through decades and over thousands of miles-- a history grieved, worried, and worked into physical form again. Heavy slabs of clay and tactile, hand-sized tears make tangible the delicate echo of a great-grandmother’s final day and the history of a family’s tragedy. In his studio, Daniel Alejandro Trejo navigates the complexities of this inherited existence, intertwining the spectral threads of generational trauma with the metaphysical, in which each form he sculpts serves as a conduit for bygone energy, emotions, and memories. The clay itself holds its own history over an ancient timescale, making it a particularly poignant medium to tell this story.

The history of clay art, however, is fraught. An entrenched gendering of contemporary clay arts vs ceramic craft casts a long shadow, strengthening the grip of the masculinity tropes of the Heavy and the Rough. Trejo orchestrates a revolt against this history, liberating himself from the rules of Arneson, Voulkos, and their era, in service to his art. The exclusionary machismo, so often a part of ceramic studio culture far and wide, simply falls short and has no place in Trejo's careful reverence.

Daniel Alejandro Trejo’s exploration of his place in the history of Northern California ceramic arts and the subsequent development of Fatal Frame is supported by a Seeding Creativity grant from The Office of Arts & Culture (OAC), who received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).