John McCarthy : Sculpture

John McCarthy is an artist, ceramic sculptor, and art educator. His sculptural pieces are hand-built and highly manipulated to create organic shapes with an emphasis on texture and subtle, naturally glazed surfaces.  McCarthy has used stoneware firings to produce one-of-a-kind compositions that are striking and durable, whether used indoors or as exterior garden sculpture.

McCarthy is a member of Pyro Gallery and has exhibited in numerous regional exhibitions including: The Hite Art Institute at the University of Louisville, the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Speed Art Museum, Indiana University Southeast, Carnegie Center for the Arts and History, Evansville Art Museum and the Louisville Visual Art Association. McCarthy’s sculptures are owned by private collectors across the country. He was the featured Artist at the 2007 Festival of Faiths in Louisville, Kentucky, and his work was included in the Kentucky Museum of Arts and Crafts show, Best of Louisville Clay. Currently, his work can be seen at PYRO Gallery.

A very personal project, an architectural installation, was a series of inter-related ceramic relief sculptures mounted on steel, representing the Way of the Cross, installed in the contemporary-styled sanctuary he helped to design for Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church in Jeffersonville, Indiana. McCarthy later created a processional cross, holy oil stand, and shrine dedicated to Holy Women for the church. More recently, a set of ceramic Stations of the Cross were created for The Emmaus Center in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in New Albany, Indiana. Other architectural installations include Bubblescape, an aluminum and ceramic mural at the new Kosair Children’s Medical Center, and Evolving Toward Peace, installed at JADAC, the Jefferson Alcohol and Drug Abuse Center, both in Louisville, Kentucky.

McCarthy has an undergraduate degree in fine arts and art education and a master's degree in fine arts with a concentration in ceramics from the University of Louisville.  He has taught in the Louisville metropolitan area for forty years, first teaching for the Clarksville Community Schools and then serving as Chair of the Fine Arts Department of Louisville Collegiate School. He presently is an art consultant and the Education Facilitator for the JPAC Mobile Art Unit, and former Chair of the Jeffersonville, Ind. Public Art Commission (JPAC).

He is married and has two grown daughters and four grandchildren.  A native of New York, McCarthy currently makes his home in Southern Indiana.