Jesse Foley Brink is a stay-at-home dad who creates artworks in his garage. He was raised in rural Pennsylvania by two artists. Their tiny, period-correct 18th-century fieldstone house was stuffed with early American folk art; meanwhile, his second-favorite picture book was the catalog to MOMA’s 1968 exhibit “The Machine.” That juxtaposition continues to inform his work to this day.

In 2017, for his forty-fifth birthday, he bought himself a $100 kiln off Craigslist to melt aluminum to sand cast custom engine parts. Four years later – un-coincidentally also on his birthday – he did his first raku firing of small ceramic houses. Not long after, it occurred to him to mount one of these houses on a piece of driftwood. There began the flood of imaginary landscapes that will likely continue for the rest of his life.