Cindy Kolodziejski was born in 1962 and received her MFA from California State University, Long Beach in 1999 and her BFA from Otis Art Institute in 1986. Her witty and provocative ceramic sculptures flout the conventions of Western decorative arts and "good taste" in favor of narrative complexity and psychological richness, qualities not typically associated with the art of vessels. She has stated that her work is "aiming at a kind of conceptual drama." Kolodziejski paints scenes, figures or landscapes on glazed earthenware vessels, often using the handles as a formal divide between different compositional elements. Sometimes, figures appear stretched, as if being sucked upwards and out of the vessel's top; other times, human organs — tongues, brains, pelvic bones and spines — appear to float inside the vessels like pickled specimens.