Jason Derek Pacheco grew up in a small historic town of Bristol, Rhode Island. Jason received his BFA in ceramics from Rhode Island College in 2007. That summer he received the Kiln God Residency at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, ME. Jason went on to receive a Post Baccalaureate Certificate from the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth, MA in 2009. He received an MFA in ceramics from Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI in the spring of 2011. The following year Jason was the studio assistant for ceramic artist Chris Gustin. In 2012 he received the Mima Weissemann Scholarship from the Ceramics Program of the Office for the Arts at Harvard University and is currently working as the ceramic technician for the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA.

Artist Statement:
Clay in my material: it preserves the evidence of touch and its processes are important to my studio practice. Using my surroundings such as architecture, landscape and machines, I intuitively build my own shape vocabulary. These shapes begin to interact with one another giving me a freedom to arrange and rearrange. Working from my mind allows the form to be built on a platform of memory that produces angles that are loosely referential but also my own unique forms. By using a faint image of the original reference and making pieces based from memory, I can push, distort and create pieces that are ultimately playful in quality.