Dustin Gimbel is a ceramic artist, sculptor, landscape designer, and formally trained horticulturist whose work reflects a lifelong fascination with plants and the natural world.

He holds a B.S. in Horticulture from Cal Poly and spent time working in nurseries and botanical gardens in the United States and England, where he earned a Royal Horticultural Society Diploma in Horticulture at Wisley.

After more than a decade working in landscape design, Gimbel began exploring ceramics, bringing his understanding of plants, structure, scale, and landscape into a new medium.

He’s known for his distinctive segmented ceramic totems, which draw inspiration from desert plants and cactus forms while also exploring the relationship between organic and manmade geometries. Built from stacked ceramic elements and often monumental in scale, his sculptures transform familiar botanical references into art forms.

Dustin Gimbel’s ceramic sculptures draw directly from his background as a landscape designer and horticulturist. Inspired by the structure and character of cacti, he creates segmented ceramic totems that translate botanical forms into sculptural objects. Each piece begins with an extruded clay form that Gimbel then carves by hand, building in the irregularities, texture, and details found in plants. Monumental in scale and distinctly otherworldly, the finished works sit somewhere between sculpture and landscape—ceramic interpretations of forms found in nature.