Christopher Adams is a medical doctor, and it shows in his ceramic sculpture, which looks

Christopher Adams, "Untitled," 2006, glazed porcelain, 8" x 10 1/2".

biological and evokes an unseen plant and animal world that might be found under a microscope, in the depths of the sea or in the most uninhabitable climates of the earth. The 33-year-old Massachusetts native, who went to Harvard College and Columbia University’s medical school and is now doing a residency in Stony Brook, New York, learned the rudiments of ceramics in high school but is basically self-taught. “I’ve been making the work for about 16 years, and I’ve been compulsive about doing it,” says Adams. “The work was just accumulating, and friends caught wind of it and promoted exhibiting it.” A year and a half ago he began showing his ceramics with the Ricco Maresca Gallery in New York, best known for presenting self-taught and folk art.

This autodidact works in his Stony Brook apartment, mail-ordering clay and firing it in two kilns. His mature work, which anticipates the current work, dates to the mid-1990s, when he began to make free-standing planters for the succulent plants he passionately collected. Soon he realized the planters didn’t need the plants. “Gradually, the planters migrated to the wall.” He then started making five-legged creatures, and after having to memorize the arterial pathways in medical school, he was inspired to make “free-living vascular works.” Despite his lack of formal training, Adams’ work is technically proficient, and the medium in which he works is extremely difficult. His porcelain can be precious and delicate, and his glazes dramatically complex, but it is the imagery itself that is so compelling. Adams’ forms are not just bizarre, otherworldly and organic, but they are also primeval, suggesting elemental life long before the appearance of humankind.