Jacob Koster

After 32 years of teaching with the public schools, I retired and began to work on my art interests full time.  For the past three years, I have been working as a ceramic artist in the ceramic studios of the Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids.  My focus is on hand built pottery using both slab and coil construction with occasional wheel thrown additions.  My background  in art is studio painting; ceramics is a recent area of exploration.  I like to use the surface of the clay as a three dimensional canvas for my imagery.  Recently I have done a number of ceramic pieces with fish themes.  I also like to work with images of flowering garden plants, crows, and the human figure.