Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Carrie Ohm

Mixed Media Artist :: Educator

Carrie Ohm is a mother, a ceramic and mixed media artist, a college art instructor, and Ironman triathlete. She teaches beginning through advanced Ceramics and other 2D and 3D studio art classes at Chaffey College, Saddleback College, and Golden West College in Southern California. She formerly taught Ceramics at the Palo Alto Art Center and CSMA in the bay area and was a long-time university lecturer at Governors State University, just outside Chicago in Illinois. She was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Later she lived in Chicago, IL for more than 15 years, before relocating to California.

Carrie Ohm received her BFA in painting and ceramics from the University of Toledo in Ohio and her MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000. She has been a visiting artist and guest lecturer many times in Michigan and Illinois. Currently she lives in Irvine, CA near Los Angeles with her artist/actor husband, their 2 amazing sons, and dog and cat.

Fire hydrants became an often-used object in Ohm’s work while living in Chicago. After hearing a radio article about the fact that many of the hydrants in the city were not even hooked up to water, she started to view these fountains of potential as underappreciated public sculptures. She liked them. She wanted others to notice them. She began to wonder what they are connected to and who decided they should be there. From there it was easy to imagine what may or may not exist below the surface.