Mike Roche is a ceramics artist from Dorchester, Massachusetts. He studied oil painting with the accomplished landscape artist Peter Roux, while taking classes in high school in advertising, art, and design. Roche enrolled in Massachusetts College of Art and Design with the intention of continuing his painting studies. He took his first course in ceramic hand-building during his freshman year and fell deeply in love with the medium's endless possibilities.
During his last year at Mass Art, from which he graduated with the highest honors, Roche had the good fortune to meet the world-renowned ceramic artist Jun Kaneko, who after seeing Roche’s thesis show, invited him to work as his assistant in his Omaha Nebraska studio. Over the next four years, Roche worked closely with Kaneko taking part in every operation necessary to run the expansive and prolific studio from fabricating ceramic sculptures to designing his largest kiln to date.
Roche received his MFA from the University of Delaware In 2012. During his time in Delaware, Roche continued to explore the scale of his sculptures and also evolved the complexity of his surface treatments on the forms. After obtaining his graduate degree, Roche moved back to Massachusetts to reconnect with his roots and become involved with the local clay community that had so greatly influenced and inspired his current journey as a contemporary ceramic artist.
