Dozer (né Jeremy Priola)

The artist Dozer has struggled from a young age with hearing and verbal communication—a challenge that he credits with making him a highly tactile person. Raised a self-described “latch key kid,” in Buffalo, New York, he began conveying his complex feelings of isolation early in life, notably with sculptures of concrete made on his father’s construction sites. An affinity for art lead him to a career in the fashion industry, which he eventually abandoned after discovering clay. He finds the working and reworking of his playful, elegant pottery to be the purest mode of expressing his feelings. Of this discovery, he says, “I finally found my voice.”