Feature by Yunah Kwon
Photos by Mira Krish
Josephine Hsieh (CC ‘30) is a Freshman at Columbia College. Her works follow the thread of natural and unnatural through the mediums of ceramic, printmaking, and photography. Aside from being a talented artist she is also a lover of winter and a contemporary dancer.
Despite being a born and bred New Yorker, Josie Hsieh has always found inspiration observing nature. Her work — whether it be ceramics, screen print, and photography — is a textural exploration in the natural and unnatural. Pieces that feel as though they could be found in wilderness, but belong in equal amounts within modern, manmade environments. Josie considers her art to contain “a natural biomorphic quality,” as well as something else… something a bit more industrial.
I met Josie for our interview in her room in John Jay. She sat rather casually on her bed, crosslegged, then with her back against the wall. When I asked to see more of her work, she dove forward, phone open to her portfolio, her head hanging off her bed as she scrolled through. She shows me pictures of elaborate contorted sculptures that possess a sort of thalassic quality. Josie says that her artwork is not preconceived, rather than a concrete idea she focuses on what feels right. At the end of her process, she has this feeling that everything has been squeezed out, what remains is her art.
If anything, her process is spontaneous, despite the fact that she describes herself as a “decently Type A person.” She tells me about one particular sculpture aptly named “BROKEN/unbroken”. In trying to take off the shelf she dropped the original sculpture on the ground. “I went outside. I shed a tear. I came back, and I put it together in a different way. And then I liked it even better than I did the first way.” In putting it back, she recalls time spent brewing over the fact that it would not look how she intended in her head, then she realized, “it doesn't have to be that way.”
BROKEN/unbroken, 2024, 12.5 x 7 x 5 inches, Ceramics 1 & 2
A favorite piece of hers is one she calls “Totem George,” named playfully after her brother. She remembers her brother being offended, "You think I'm this dark and mysterious?” Despite Josie’s bubbly personality her work contains a heavy, dark property that feels tangible as the viewer.
TOTEM GEORGE, 2025, 14 x 4 x 5 inches, Ceramics
Backdropped by an eclectic mix of postcards, vintage magazines, and cyanotype prints, the plain existence of Josie’s creativity seems obvious. As an artist, her interests are mainly in ceramics and printmaking; however, she is also interested in photography, as well as trained in dance. Thus far, steering forces in her artistic development have been her high school ceramics teacher, Mr Rubin, the art summer camp that she attended for a few years, and her own self-guided art journey. She cites time spent on her bedroom floor making prints. New York itself has nurtured this sense of independence in her art practice. Josie says that New York kids grow up independent. For her, this translated to independence in making her art. In high school, she spent time doing art in independent studies. Summer days for her could look like 8 hours spent at a pottery studio in Gowanus, just shaping things with her hands.
The lines that divvy up the separation between her artistic practices are muddled and misshapen. Josie likes to think about her ceramic practice as process based, similar to the way she dances. Her art, in all its multivariable forms, is about intuition, about finding the natural order of things, order within disorder, the contrast of natural form with industrial.
Sheep Heaven, 2024, 24mm x 36mm, Photography
Raku Arowana, 2025, 4.5 x 12 x 1.5 inches, Raku clay
Josie particularly liked working with a ceramic technique called Raku, a process her ceramic teacher would do with her class once a year. It involves firing pieces at a high temperature and then placing them in a reduction bin with natural materials, leaving a metallic finish. The process is extremely unpredictable, this makes it more exciting to Josie, invigorating even.
She is constantly finding interest in the textures and the world around her. Josie loves to make prints in her freetime, trying techniques she series online with a particular love for lino cutting and gelli-plate. She also enjoys the intersection of printmaking and ceramics. In high school her ceramics teacher took her class to an Asian grocery store in Chinatown, upon which she bought dried prunes and tofu, later using these textures to print onto her ceramics.
Between Worlds, 2024, 8.5 x 11 inches, Acrylic paint, paper, image transfer gelli-plate
Josphine is new to Columbia, immersed in the brand newness of freshman year she has not yet found her artistic footing on campus. She is not sure what her future will look like, where her artistic plans will take her. But this does not stop her from having big plans for the future. “I'm definitely gonna retire and make art. Catch me in the middle of nowhere when I'm 70. Build my own little ceramic studio in the middle of the woods. No one's gonna hear from me,” she says.