Courtney Duncan grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills and has lived and worked in Los Angeles for over 15 years. Her upbringing in the woodlands of the foothills continues to shape her perspective and practice. Her work explores archaeology, ecology, and the ways cultural memory is held in objects, materials, and landscapes.

She is drawn to the briefest and slowest processes in nature.  Those that reflect the passage of time on non-human scales. She creates textures and silhouettes that evoke jagged mountain edges, surfaces chiseled by weather, and stone decorated with lichen or carved glyphs. Her glazes reference weather and sky, calling to mind the impermanence of everything. She builds up glaze surfaces and scrapes them back to reveal the layers beneath, and oxidizes metal to break it down and let it migrate across the form as stains or deposits. She sees her materials as collaborators rather than inert objects; once released into the present, they continue to interact, shift, and evolve both physically and contextually. Each piece represents a moment in the life of an artifact, shaped through a practice that is at once meditative, exploratory, and rooted in continual material colaboration.

Working primarily in ceramic, metal and light, she engages a slow, intuitive process that allows the natural inclinations of her materials to emerge. Central to her practice is an ongoing dialogue with the vessel, as both a sculptural form and a cultural symbol, through which she plays with concepts of functionality, containment, and the narratives objects carry. To her, the process of making is like unearthing rather than constructing, bringing forward forms that are both contemporary and ancient.

Duncan received her BFA in sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design in 2008.