Shahid Khan
Shahid Khan will take over as a full time Studio Art technician, beginning this fall semester 2022. Khan was born in Ahmadabad, India and moved to Columbus as a young child. He received his MFA from Ohio State University in 2021. Khan’s glassblowing practice is international community oriented and tied to techniques and tradition. He has taken a journeyman approach to learning — apprenticing with top glass artists in Denmark, Japan and Canada. He has had exhibits in Philadelphia, Austin and Palm Springs, as well as here in Columbus. He has run glass studios and businesses, and taught at OSU. We are thrilled to be able to welcome his warm personality, skills, teaching and design thinking to Studio Art. Chair, Sheilah ReStack states, “We feel lucky to have found someone who is so skilled in a variety of materials and techniques, as well as being thoughtful and consistently interested in where art and design making and thinking allows new ways of seeing.”
Emma Laube, curator of a show with Khan’s work explains, “The suggestion of utility engenders the impulse to categorize—but why? Khan’s objects raise more questions than they answer, and that may just be the point: with too ready a resolution, we foreclose on possibility. What is the difference, Khan’s work asks, between multivalence and ambivalence? Why do we talk about the unknown in negative terms? Confusion is often framed as an aberration in the otherwise seamless process of communication. But what if it’s the end goal—or, at the very least, a pretty good place to wind up along the way? If we stay alert, Khan’s work reminds us, misidentification is useful. After all, don’t I foreclose upon myself as a viewer if I fail to remain curious?” We are so looking forward to seeing Khan around the Bryant Art Building, helping students learn important technical skills and directing them towards how to think through material and conceptual questions.
