The Goshen College Art Department welcomed Scott Dooley, chair of the Art Department at Wittenberg University, on Wednesday, Mar. 5.

He is the Eric Yake Kenagy Visiting Artist for the 2013-14 academic year. Wednesday’s lecture was made possible by the Kenagy Endowment to Goshen College.

The Eric Yake Kenagy Visiting Artists Lecture series has included printmakers, potters, sculptors, painters, jewelers and others from all over the United States and the world.

For example, during the 2001 visiting artist lecture, GC welcomed Robert Ebendorf, a jeweler who uses recycled products for his work. In 2008, Chinese painter and printmaker Hung Liu brought Goshen a taste of her passion: ancient Chinese art.

Scott Dooley’s work focuses on sheet metal objects that are part of life the rural Midwest: anything from silos to oil cans.

He draws inspiration from having grown up in this part of the country; though he has not lived here all his life, he still refers to objects that make the Midwest special. He uses objects that stick out in the landscape of the Midwest: “grain silos, livestock feed tanks, oil pumps and storage tanks,” according to his artist’s statement.

Much of his work imitates the way sheet metal is made, formed and eventually corroded by the forces of nature.

According to his artist’s statement he released through the Sherrie Gallerie, “my work in clay is concerned with incorporating elements from metal objects such as mufflers, oilcans, silos and funnels. I find these objects amazingly simple in form and construction, as well as incredibly beautiful. The essential characteristics of these objects are used as my basis for construction.”

Scott Dooley grew up in rural Kansas. In 1993, he graduated from Bethel College after studying history, philosophy and German. But in his senior year, he discovered ceramics and made it his passion.

After graduating, he spent a year working for a production potter. Still inspired, he decided to pursue art at Arizona State University. Dooley then continued his art career at Kansas State University, where he received an MFA in Art in the year 2000.

Dooley has exhibited work across the United States, in China, Spain, Australia, Taiwan, and many other places. Several art journals have extensively covered his work, and many well-known ceramics exhibits across the world have his pieces in their permanent collections.