The Clay Studio’s Resident and Guest Artist Programs and the Evelyn Shapiro Foundation
Fellowship share common goals: to provide opportunity and support for artists in pursuit of
their creative vision. Though varied in length and intent, each program allows artists the time
and space necessary for personal discovery and growth. All are recognized internationally
for the quality of the talent they attract and their consistent standard of excellence.
The relationship between The Clay Studio and its artists is extremely mutually beneficial.
The Studio’s successes have benefited the artists, as the artists’ successes have benefited
the Studio. We have shared and celebrated many of these together, from tenure-track
jobs, to works placed in important collections, to successful grant applications, to gallery
representation. We, and the Staff and Board of The Clay Studio, are truly honored to have
shared in the lives of the incredible makers whose work is represented within this exhibition.
These artists are truly amongst the most talented in the field, and they continue to contribute
to the constant evolution of clay as a vehicle for expression. Indeed, they are at the
forefront of a new contemporary studio craft movement. Their sensibility reflects an
intellectual and cultural mood, a zeitgeist if you will, that is taking hold within contemporary
ceramics today: to transcend clay’s innate material qualities by embracing conceptual
approaches, mixed media practices, and incorporation of new technologies and modes
of presentation. While not abandoning ceramic traditions entirely, they, and many makers
in the US and across the globe, are instead demanding their rightful place within the
discourse of contemporary art.
While many of these artists have MFA’s from University Ceramics Departments, they are
released from the constraints of the material and free to incorporate any other medium that
captures their imaginations. The conventions of ceramics no longer outweigh the conceptual
nature of sculpture and fine art. The artists featured in this exhibition are challenging the
traditional rules of material specificity and creating art with enormous potential to provoke,
seduce, surprise and bewilder.
