The Clay Studio National 2020

Juror

Lauren Sandler

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
11" x 11" x 20"

Date:
2020

Description:
Guest Juror Lauren Sandler is the Assistant Professor and Program Head of Ceramics at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. Sandler is an artist and educator whose work deconstructs mythologies and investigates narratives of power and perspective. With fragmented forms, allegorical vessels and mundane assemblages, Sandler amplifies interdependence, highlights stories obfuscated or erased and implicates our assumptions of normal and worth. With a background in anthropology, she examines the myriad chronicles told by objects and develops work where the visceral and structural meet a shared intersection of body, culture and history. Sandler exhibits nationally and publishes work and lectures concerning issues of equity in ceramics. She currently serves on the Board of The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts as Director at Large. MFA, Ceramics, Penn State University, 2007 BFA, Ceramics, State University of New York, New Paltz, 2004 BA, Anthropology, Ithaca College, 1995

Juror

Kukuli Velarde

Juror

Sana Musasama

Lauren Sandler

Weights and Bobbers

Medium & Materials:
Terracotta, glaze, luster

Date:
2020

Description:
Informed by the lidded Lekanis of Centuripe, Sicily, produced from 300 to 200 BC, and adorned with quotidian artifacts, this series invokes the conjoined vessel of my familial cultures. I am drawn to the historic pots from the region where my mother's family lives, for their visual awkwardness. In Centuripeware, multiple parts of foot, body, lid, and finial remain unattached, stacked one part on top of the other. This formal oddness called me to investigate their purpose and meaning, content and context. As I began to research the works from Ancient Greece and Rome, I found them to amplify the multiculturalism of the era, and refute the lie that classical antiquity was a homogenous time and place. These pieces interrogate a Euro-centric art history founded on racist narratives misappropriating earlier periods. The polychromatic works reflect migrations and diasporas; bridge painting and architecture, function and adornment; depict love and death, the sacred and everyday, myths and reality. The repeated objects attached to the forms create a combined vessel and evoke my own embodiment of parental heritages. They represent movements of people, trade, and commodities. This series expresses lives present often in absence, a robust declaration of the multiple perspectives and truths alive in the work. ••• Lauren Sandler is the Assistant Professor and Program Head of Ceramics at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. Sandler is an artist and educator whose work deconstructs mythologies and investigates narratives of power and perspective. With fragmented forms, allegorical vessels and mundane assemblages, Sandler amplifies interdependence, highlights stories obfuscated or erased, and implicates our assumptions of normal and worth. With a background in anthropology, she examines the myriad chronicles told by objects and develops work where the visceral and structural meet a shared intersection of body, culture, and history.

Kukuli Velarde

Burnt In (Isichapuitu Series)

Medium & Materials:
Earthenware, pigment

Date:
1998

Description:
Kukuli Velarde was born in Cusco, Peru, to an anthropologist mother and a father who held high expectations for her. At a young age, Velarde started to express herself through art, particularly painting, even getting to the point of being recognized as a sensation because of her advanced skills. Though recognized as a talented painter, Velarde felt pressure to continue doing art, which led to her having a fallout with her craft. During 1984, Velarde lived in Mexico and attended the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City, allowing her to reconnect with art. In 1988, she headed to the United States, where she continued her artwork by creating ceramic sculptures and earned her BFA from Hunter College in New York. ••• Kukuli Velarde is a former Resident Artist at The Clay Studio, and has a robust studio practice in Philadelphia. "I am a Peruvian-American artist. My work, which revolves around the consequences of colonization in Latin American contemporary culture, is a visual investigation about aesthetics, cultural survival, and inheritance. I focus on Latin American history, particularly that of Perú, because it is the reality with which I am familiar. I do so, convinced that its complexity has universal characteristics and any conclusion can be understood beyond the frame of its uniqueness."

Sana Musasama

Untitled

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
9" x 3" x 4"

Date:
2020

Description:
Musasama's deeply felt sculptures reflect her unrelenting interest in, and keen sensitivity to, the human condition worldwide that she has witnessed as it played out in life dramas that tragically are accepted communal customs. "I use my craft, my art, to bring attention to these issues," Ms. Musasama said. "I feel my work is my personal instrument of change. Also, by creating these stories, I am finding a way to comfort myself or, better yet, to get the pain of what I see from inside me into the work for the world to see. The girls give me power." ••• Musasana earned her BA in ceramics and education at The City College of New York and her MFA at Alfred State College of Ceramics, Alfred, New York. She is is an associate adjunct professor at Hunter College and several other schools.

Mother Pin Provides

Syd Carpenter

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
21" x 19" x 15"

Date:
2020

Description:
My mother's wooden clothes pins, used to hang laundry in the backyard of the house in Pittsburgh during my childhood, remain in my possession. Why the clothes pins? Most things I kept from that time have long since been removed. The ceramic bird collection, the vintage 50s clothing, the costume jewelry, carnival glass and ancient linens - all gone. Even the house has just finally been sold. But the clothes pins remain. Syd Carpenter is working on a series of mixed media sculptures inspired by the shape of wooden clothes pins. Such a shape is evocative of an elegant elongated female form, the clean lines recalling Cycladic figures from an ancient Aegean culture. In the series "Mother Pins" the shape represents the artist's mother, Ernestine Carpenter. Ernestine appears as a mother pin, providing shelter, food and fantasy. In whatever guise, she is always elegant, always elevated. The series re-imagines that long held bag of clothes pins transformed from a forgettable artifact to emblems of the complex but reverent relationship between a mother and daughter. ••• Syd Carpenter earned her MFA in 1976 from the Tyler School of Art. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Renwick Gallery Smithsonian Institute, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, James A. Michener Museum of Art, Jengdezhen Ceramic Institute in China as well as numerous public and private collections. She is a recipient of the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, the National Endowment for the arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the Leeway Fellowships in the Arts.

Untitled

Tracie Hervy

Medium & Materials:
White stoneware

Date:
2020

Description:
The surface reveals how it came into being. It doesn't strive for a machine-like perfection, one exactly like the other. Its goals are more humanistic. Each piece a new discovery. All part of the same family, generated from a similar idea, but each one attempting to explore a new possibility. My most recent work is inspired by the simplicity of prehistoric vessels. All superfluities are stripped away to reveal the essence of each form. ••• Tracie Hervy's education in ceramics began in the studios of Greenwich House Pottery in New York City. She later studied at the Rhode Island School of Design where she earned her MFA in ceramics.

Adorned II

Malene Barnett

Medium & Materials:
Dark stoneware, glaze, oxide

Measurements:
20" x 6" x 6"

Date:
2020

Description:
Redemption critiques the relationship between social relevance and inequality. Every piece, though built by hand in Brooklyn, pays homage to the traditional hand-building techniques found in the Yorubaland region of southwestern Nigeria. Using the Gele headwrap as a signifier, Barnett blends her two year study of the slab building technique with an inquiry into the uncertainties of life to construct sculptures in rippling layers of clay. She gathers inspiration for her twisted sculptures from the unpredictable obstacles we encounter in life. The bold, organic patterns are etched freehand using underglazes and wax to reference the dye resist technique used in Adire textiles. ••• Malene Barnett is an artist, activist, and authority on the cultural traditions and practices of art in the African diaspora and how it translates into her vision of the modern black experience. From her sculptural ceramic tiles and vessels to mixed media paintings to handwoven rugs, Barnett continues to evolve her craft and share her African heritage with a global audience. A passionate connector and ambassador, her mission is to use art as a tool to create community impact, open doors for the next generation of black artists, expand the conversation around marginalization in the arts, and create greater opportunities for inclusion. As the founder of the Black Artists + Designers Guild, a global platform and curated collective of independent black artists, makers, and designers, Barnett is always seeking new ways to define the black narrative and experience for a new generation while bringing awareness to inequality. She's also on the board for CERF+, an organization that provides emergency loans to artisans and craftspeople during natural disasters.

Arabesque

Angelica Pozo

Medium & Materials:
Terracotta, black clay, metal, glass beads

Measurements:
13" x 11" x 11"

Date:
2020

Description:
My work through the decades has continued to visually and thematically deal with the natural world, landscape, plant forms, and environmental concerns. It is through these themes that the work also speaks of femininity, sensuality, fertility and spirituality. Lately my sculptural explorations have been inspired by a Latin term lusus naturae, meaning a sport, or joke, or freak of nature. Examining microscopic sea creatures as well as plant forms I tend to combine characteristics of the two in my sculptures. I am creating my own "freaks" of nature. Sometimes they look menacing. Sometimes they look like they can walk away on their own. Sometimes they make me think of flowers made by someone who has forgotten what a real flower looks like. Working from distant memory. I fancy them as the plants of the future, plants that have evolved to survive in the polluted world we created for them. I see that as what could be nature's final joke. As we humans continue to pollute the earth and kill off endangered species of plants and animals, nature as a whole will ultimately be fine. Life will evolve and some form of it will survive. It just may very well not support humans anymore. The cycle of evolution would begin anew. ••• Pozo is a ceramic public art and studio artist, residing and working in Cleveland, Ohio. She has presented and taught at Alabama Clay, Potters Council Regional and Tile Heritage Conferences, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Penland School of Crafts, Southwest Craft Center. She is the author of Ceramics For Beginners: Surfaces, Glazes & Firings and Making & Installing Handmade Tile; juror for 500 Tiles, and her writing and art were also featured in The Penland Book of Ceramics: Master Classes in Ceramic Techniques. Pozo has also been an artist in residence at Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, and Baltimore Clayworks. Her awards include an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. Permanent collections include the Museum of Art & Design, New York, The Canton Museum of Art, and the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, Wilberforce, Ohio.

Radiate

Aisha Bell

Medium & Materials:
Canvas, clay, acrylic twine

Measurements:
20 x 24

Date:
2020

Description:
Inspired by the fragmentation of our multiple identities, Bell's practice is committed to creating myth and ritual through sculpture, performance, video, sound, drawing, and installation. ••• Aisha Tandiwe Bell is first generation Jamaican and ninth generation traceable Black American. Bell holds a BFA and an MS from Pratt, and an MFA from Hunter College. Bell received a NYFA in Performance Art/Multidisciplinary Work and has had artist residencies and fellowships at Skowhegan, Rush Corridor Gallery, Abron's Art Center, LMCC's Swing Space, LMCC Work space, Wassaic, The Laundromat Project, BRIC, and more. She has exhibited at the Museo De Arte Moderno's Triennial 2014, the Jamaica Biennial 2014 and 2017, the BRIC Biennial 2016, the Venice Biennial 2017, MoCADA, the Rosa Parks Museum, CCCADI, Columbia College, Space One Eleven, The Corcoran, Welancora Gallery, and Rush Arts. Bell currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

Post Migration Carrier Series

Lydia Thompson

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Date:
2020

Description:
My current research investigates the ideas of migration and residual ancestral memories that impact culture and social practices in the surrounding communities. This body of work is an examination of space and place that reference the past and present of human existence through continuous mobility. My objects are reminders of the physical process of reduction made by nature and human beings to create pathways for development. The physical space sometimes produces a visual silence, evokes the imagination, notions of commodities and value, and desperation provides insights to cultural practices and traditions. I attempted to capture a bit of North Omaha in several carts during my brief visit based on my daily walks through the neighborhood and my own interpretation of the physical change in structures during phases of gentrification. The figures are rooted and refer to the heddle pulley from West Africa. The small wooden strip weaver is attached to the loom for production and these family heirlooms are passed to the next generation to carry on the tradition. I view the heddle pulley as storytellers, the weaver is using the time to make and verbally share histories. For me they possess languages that can only be revealed when in use. The shift in scale enables a broader association with adobe architecture and the physical presence of power, possibly a guardian that may give permission to enter a space. The work in this exhibition provides an overview of subject matter that I continue to cycle through periodically because they are timeless in some sense, but also they enable me to work with a rich universal language that is present in all my travels. ••• Lydia C. Thompson is currently Chair of the Department of Art & Art History at UNCC. She has held positions as Director of the School of Art at Texas Tech University, Department Head at Mississippi State University, Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, Assistant Dean of Multi-Cultural Affairs at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Director of the Educational Opportunity Program at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Thompson has served on the boards for NCECA (National Council of Education for Ceramics), NCAA (National Council of Arts Administrators), Lubbock Arts Alliance, and is currently board member for Clayworks in Charlotte.

Blues Man (Man with a Hat)

Leroy Johnson

Medium & Materials:
Mixed media

Measurements:
20" x 20" x 5"

Date:
2020

Description:
My work explores African-American vernacular art and modernism using found objects, clay, and mixed media. I am inspired and provoked by the experiences and cultural traditions of African-Americans. My pieces are both map and metaphor for the urban landscape and the scope of the unconscious. I attempt to express not only aesthetic but also social, moral, and spiritual issues. My influences are the ceramic tradition, naïve art, cubism, collage, combine painting, improvisational jazz, and blues music. My work is concerned with existence in the inner city, the interwoven accounts of generations, and pressing contemporary conditions: inadequate access to resources, violence, and gentrification. I note the makeshift shelters I come across in the urban environment; temporary shelters of cardboard, tin, wood, made by people without tools or homes, structures shaped by necessity. ••• Leroy Johnson (b. 1937) is a mixed-media artist whose work takes the form of painting, collage, and assemblage sculpture. A native of Philadelphia, his work is poetic and reflective of his many experiences in the inner city. Johnson has exhibited widely, and has received grants from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Independence Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Johnson received a Masters of Human Services from Lincoln University (1986-88), and was a 2014 Pew Fellow at the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. He has been a participating/resident artist for several community-based arts projects, including for Ile Ife, The Village of Arts and Humanities, Taller Puertoqueño, and The Church of the Advocate, St. Francis Academy, in Baltimore, and at The Clay Studio.

Monument 13

Wes Brown

Medium & Materials:
Black clay, slip, reduction fired

Measurements:
30" x 30" x 30"

Date:
2020

Description:
My work was birthed out of a trial in my life. Through it I struggled to find a place to abide, find peace, and make sense of the turmoil and chaos. My work took on the same attributes. When I make work, it begins with force being asserted on the clay to create the unrefined surfaces. The clay is joined by pressing and hammering to create a standing form. In the midst of the joining I work to refine. I bring certain events from the beginning of the process to greater or lesser prominence. The work is cathartic to me; it is the will in me to create, triumph, and remember the actions that brought me to the completion. The work stands as the finished process carrying with it the multiplicity of actions forcefully asserted upon it. They are my markers or monuments bearing witness to what has happened. ••• I began clay in high school and my lack of immediate skill coupled with my fascination with the wheel called me to devote myself to overcoming the challenges of the material. I completed high school and began community college where I continued to build skill. I graduated and transferred to Bowling Green State University where I was introduced to Peter Voulkos' work. His work and philosophy of teaching permeated the program and I learned and took great pride in pushing my skill and myself. I was then accepted into the graduate program at Indiana University where I was pushed even further to know myself and my purpose for creating. It was through many trials inside and outside the classroom that I came to my clay quilting technique. Upon graduation I moved to Baltimore, Maryland, for a Baltimore Clayworks yearlong residency. I taught community arts in the city of Baltimore as well as ceramics at an inner-city high school. I am now living in Dayton, Ohio, where I hope to have a studio to work from in the next few months.

Robin Hood

Nick Lenker

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic, custom ceramic decals, metal

Measurements:
20" x 13" x 8.5"

Date:
2020

Description:
A disfellowshipped Jehovah's Witness, an apocalyptic religion, Lenker explores concepts of creative destruction stemming from this experience. In the Apocalypse, the world will be destroyed but in that destruction a place for a new world is created. Destruction is an ending but it is also the beginning. Lenker is interested in that space of potential transformation and new life. ••• Lenker works as the Preparator and Graphic Designer for Wexler as well as studio assistant for visual artist Virgil Marti. He has exhibited solo projects in both Philadelphia and New York and has shown in group shows both nationally and internationally. Lenker holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art and a BFA from The University of the Arts.

Head Trip

Kevin Snipes

Medium & Materials:
Porcelain

Measurements:
9" x 7" x 3"

Date:
2020

Description:
My work is based in the combination of narrative imagery on hand built ceramic forms. But primarily I think of myself as a storyteller. The stories I tell are open-ended investigations of difference and otherness. They are ways in which I can explore the underlying emotional and psychological issues of discrimination. I am interested in what happens when people who are different come together. One aspect of my work is that the narratives I portray encompass different sides, so that every side of the piece is the front side, or protagonist. This said, my approach to working with these ideas is somewhat subversive. Both the intimate scale and the jewel-like surfaces that are hallmarks of my work are a sort of misdirection that the viewer must dig through to get to the kernel of the work. I've loved working this way because I believe that the viewers of my work are dynamically engaged enough to understand that there is a layer of social unease below the surface. I am interested in pushing boundaries of my work in a direction that reveals more of unease below the surface. ••• Kevin Snipes is an American artist born in Philadelphia and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned a BFA in ceramics and drawing from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1994 and concluded graduate studies at the University of Florida in 2003. He works primarily in ceramics, blurring the boundary between craft and art. Snipes combines techniques of narrative figure drawing, text, and hand-formed porcelain constructions to create objects that can be seen as multi-layered paintings.

Winter Sun

Alex Ferrante

Medium & Materials:
Stoneware

Measurements:
12" x 10" x 10"

Date:
2020

Description:
Objects have the power to govern and transform perspective. The objects I make are closely associated with rhopography. Rhopography is the depiction of things which lack importance, are overlooked, and yet are necessary. My interest in these objects lies in their foundational presence in our everyday experience. Much like a monument, everyday objects become enduring armatures, describing our presence, documenting our experience and defining ways in which we will be remembered. By hand making objects out of clay, the act of repetitive sculpting is my desire to retain clay's malleability, an act of suspending time. The liquidity of glaze becomes a weathering and reclaiming of vibrancy. The objects in my work are in a state of recollected beauty, between familiar and unfamiliar, rigorously cared for and fading into a present imperceptibility. ••• Alex Ferrante was born in Dallas, Texas, and grew up in rural northeastern Oklahoma. He came to adulthood in south Texas studying ceramics at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi. He earned his MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2018 and has completed residencies in Pennsylvania and New York state where he spent time at Millersville University and Chautauqua School of Art. He attended art and philosophy seminars at the American Academy in Rome and has exhibited across the United States in artist-run spaces, galleries, and museums such as San Angelo Museum of Art, South Texas Museum of Art, University of Colorado Boulder Museum of Art, Millersville University, Living Arts in Tulsa Oklahoma, and Singapore Art Museum.

Money Chair

YehRim Lee

Medium & Materials:
Stoneware, glaze, resin

Measurements:
18" x 21" x 23"

Date:
2020

Description:
I build bridges. I build bridges between the masculine and feminine, between East and West, between decorative and functional, and between the eternal and the ephemeral. The bridges I build are suspension bridges. They suspend (often in the air) decay, ambiguity, and sensuality — the taut, fibrous stings of emotional labor that welcome the viewer across the chasm from one side to the other. Through colors and glaze, I explore luxury and decadence with surfaces that crystallize, facet, fragment, stylize, sharpen, distort, blur, and cause noise. As I bridge seas, I have a foot on two shores. I reflect on my upbringing in Korea. My mother made ceramic work while I was in her womb and my father is an Onggi potter. In my ceramic studies in Jingdezhen, China, I developed a keen sense of the collective nature of East Asian culture, tradition, and history. This group awareness was challenged by American individualism. Through this clash of borderlands within myself, I was able to imagine new bridges in my work that helped me negotiate my new identities. ••• YehRim Lee was born in Seoul, Korea. The way she interacts with her work is directly connected to her background in ceramics. She earned her BFA from Korea National University of Cultural Heritage (2013) and earned her MFA in Ceramic Art at Alfred University (2017). She has shown in exhibitions nationally and internationally. Lee was the visiting resident artist at the University of Georgia in the ceramics department (2017-2018) and currently visiting artist at the University of the Arts.

Digital Montessori

Dominique Ellis

Medium & Materials:
Earthenware, fiber, wood

Measurements:
24" x 25" x 1"

Date:
2020

Description:
Digital and Montessori is an educational oxymoron and a philosophical conundrum. As touch has become increasingly obsolete in 2020, mediating education through screens has become an essential rubric. This social distance game seeks to question what interaction and engagement will be in the future without touch and physical distance with other players. The inability to play with others outside of our bubble, cluster, pod or unit is restructuring the social fabric and redefining how we play. Recycling ceramic tiles and using fabric backgrounds as a design intervention, what is constant and fixed on the board is relative to how and when I rearrange the parts. The Ikea fabric was designed by South London based designer Kangan Arora and I am interested in how to collaborate globally through pattern. At the end of the exhibition the physical wall piece will transform into a digital recording of change, documenting the change of the tiles.

Footed Wreath

Andrea Marquis

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Date:
2020

Extruded & Multiplied

Audrey An

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
7" x 60" x 45"

Date:
2020

Description:
I am a Third Culture Kid. Having spent a significant part of my developmental years moving between South Korea and the United States, I developed a relationship to both. I make work that examines my identity and boundaries of cultural convergence. I navigate the spectrum between my "past and present" and my "here and there" to claim my space and locate a sense of belonging. Examining my personal history and identity, I pay homage to the historical precedent of the fabricated and natural landscapes created with clay. The history of ceramics abounds with examples of cross-cultural exchange of ideas and aesthetics including the use of terra cotta brick, the movement of blue and white ware, new inventions made to mimic porcelain, and so forth. Clay brings historical context for me to speak about my blended cultural persona. Pulling from universal to a personal understanding of architecture, landscape, and topography offers a mixture of organic and mechanized tension. I create a visual mapping of places I once inhabited by digitally sampling, hand-sculpting, and collaging them into project-based ceramic outputs. I see the integration of digital technology with the analog handling of clay as a metaphor for my transcultural experience. My work develops through transitioning between these two methods of creation. This trans-processing style of making objects is reminiscent of the transcultural making of me. ••• Audrey An holds a BFA and art history minor from Alfred University. Upon earning her degree in 2017, she received the Windgate-Lamar Fellowship from Center for Craft to fund her two-year post-baccalaureate at Colorado State University and to travel to historic and contemporary centers of ceramic innovation, including Icheon, South Korea, and Jingdezhen, China. An currently lives in State College, Pennsylvania, where she is an MFA graduate student at Penn State University. She is also a founding member of the B. Well Collective - now the Welby Collective in Denver

Slot Box

Eliza Au

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
8" x 8" x 8"

Date:
2020

Description:
My work explores the search for solitude. In many facets of life we experience a chaos of the mind, which we seemingly cannot escape. I am interested in the human need for peace of mind and what physical, ornamental forms this takes. I create forms that act as lines in space and patterns which mirror and replicate each other, seemingly in a dance of artificial mitosis. Working digitally in CAD (computer aided design) affects how I create and view artwork. The liminal space between complexity and order allows room for play and discovery through the rules of algorithms and parametric design. The digital interface has its own inherent surfaces and textures such as the wireframe, pixels ,and meshes which we experience visually. The planning and production process work in sync with each other, through line drawings in CAD which are engraved in wood and eventually cast in clay. I am interested in bringing the wireframe surface into the physical world through the processes of craft, such as plaster mold making and press molding clay. ••• Eliza Au is originally from Vancouver, B.C. in Canada. She earned her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and her MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Artist residencies she has attended include Greenwich House Pottery, The Museum of Contemporary Craft, and the Corning Museum of Glass. She has taught in Canada, United States and internationally at various institutions including the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, the Alberta College of Art and Design, Monmouth College, The University of Iowa and the Alfred-CAFA (Central Academy of Fine Arts) Program in Beijing, China. Au is currently an assistant professor of ceramics at the University of North Texas.

Gold Beaked Pitcher

Posey Bacopoulos

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
3.5" x 8.5" x 9"

Date:
2020

Description:
My goal is to integrate form, function, and surface in a manner that brings a sense of excitement to my work. I am continually exploring the relationship between surface decoration and form, using line, pattern, and color to create the varied surfaces. The floral motifs on my pots are patterns rather than actual representations, and serve to divide the space in interesting ways. I use the gold decals as a contrast to my painterly surfaces. My work is a contemporary approach to the traditional majolica of the Italian Renaissance. Majolica is a glaze tradition that began in the Middle East in the 9th century. The various colors are applied with a brush to create the patterns and decorations. The pots are then fired to cone 04 in an electric kiln. After the firing the glazed surface maintains both the line quality of the patterns and the colors of the decoration. Then the gold decals are added in an additional firing. Finally, I love to make pots and I love to decorate and I combine these two loves in my work. My hope is the pots invite use and that my pleasure in making them is shared by the user. ••• Posey Bacopoulos is a studio potter working in New York City. She studied ceramics at several craft schools including Penland School of Craft and Anderson Ranch. She also was a post bac student for a semester at the University of Florida at Gainsborough. Her work has been shown in numerous national juried and invitational exhibitions. She has taught numerous workshops on both thrown and altered forms and majolica decoration at such places as Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Penland School of Crafts and many community craft organizations. She enjoys both making and teaching.

What Goes Round

Jon Bashioum

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
36" x 36" x 48"

Date:
2020

Description:
My current body of work explores "home" and how individuals curate personal space in response to their endemic environment. This interest stems from my observations and comparisons of human spaces pertaining to culturally identifiable localities. In this globalized world, our locally available resources are expanding while losing regional identity; yet, our lifestyles are still influenced by larger forces such as the weather which determine what crops can grow and how they are stored. The home and the goods within it reflect the area in which it resides, and the utilitarian wares indicate how the people within that home navigate their environment both practically and aesthetically. By focusing on fermentation, I am delving into my interests in the methods of food storage, preservation, and presentation and exploring how these techniques can be globally similar, regionally diverse, and individually curated. My pots ruminate on how ceramic vessels play a timeless global role in cultural and individual identity since they are a product of the needs of the people using them. ••• Jon Bashioum is a recent MFA graduate from Montana State University. He earned his BA in music from Bethany College in Bethany, West Virginia, and was introduced to the medium of ceramics during this time. Afterwards, he was a Post Bacc at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia, where he had the opportunity to study abroad in China to learn about wood-fired porcelain. This experience led him to a preference for working with porcelain and finishing his work in a wood-fired kiln. Following his Post Bacc, he continued on to be an apprentice and a studio assistant. These were formative moments in his professional development that allowed him to fine tune his technical abilities. Currently, he is living in Helena, Montana, where he maintains his personal studio practice and works at the Archie Bray Foundation Clay Business. photo credit: Danielle O'Malley.

Coffee Pot

Casey Beck

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
5" x 7.5" x 7.5"

Date:
2020

Description:
Clay materials inherently record their history. Chemical compositions trace the history of clay in space, while physical attributes can identify the maker's touch. By choosing clay compositions and working with them in ways that promote this recognition of touch, I interact with the naturalness of the materials and evoke memories that are recollections of the making process. The materials that I use are also reactive to the atmosphere in which it is fired; the atmosphere of the kiln is imprinted onto the surface of the vessels, recording this dialogue as a painting of memories. With everyday use, I believe that the vessels' memories are recognized, all while the user forms their own memories. These memories accumulate and form a relationship between vessel and user. Because of this, vessels are constantly changing, creating a cumulative experience and heightening the quality of life through thought-provoking reflection. ••• Beck earned a BFA in ceramics at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls in 2019. During his undergraduate studies, Beck fell in love with atmospheric firing methods and has received numerous grants to pursue research in down-firing both wood and soda kilns, along with investigating materials within these atmospheres. Beck has shown his work locally at galleries such as the Phipps in Hudson, Wisconsin, and at Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, and has been included in many national juried exhibitions. He spent the summer of 2018 as a resident artist at the Cub Creek Foundation in rural Virginia making pots and chopping wood. Beck currently lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and works at Northern Clay Center, peddling wares in the sales gallery and teaching classes. He is a recipient of the 2020 Jerome Ceramic Artist Project Grant in which he will continue to seek understanding of the process of down-firing soda kilns.

Cutting Against the Grain

Shannon Blakey

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
4" x 5" x 4"

Date:
2020

Description:
In this recent work, I have been interested in the interplay between human-made objects and nature and the push and pull between the two. In this work specifically, it was my interest to combine water lines from my own home along with fragments from reclaimed chunks of nature in order to show the cyclical order from one action to another. In creating this work I was interested in processing my my own role within the larger whole. It is my hope that the work created is both visually interesting and texturally compelling - something that would prompt someone to look, but eventually draw them to touch the work and question why certain decisions were made. I am mining and reforming objects found in my own life in order to investigate current culture. All of these selected objects, man made or natural, existed within my daily life as a result of me simply trying to live it, but were selected for both aesthetic and symbolic reasons. ••• Shannon Blakey is an artist and educator from Columbia, Missouri. Blakely earned his BFA in ceramics from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and his MFA in ceramics from Pennsylvania State University. Blakely's experience ranges from being an artist in residence at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, serving as teaching staff at the Lill Street Gallery in Chicago, and as a visiting professor at the University of Missouri. Blakely currently teaches at Rock Bridge High School in Columbia, Missouri.

I'll Go With You

Kelsey Bowen

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
5" x 6" x 13"

Date:
2020

Description:
When I'm working on a piece, I feel in fleeting moments that it's come to life, with bright bows, dark memories, whispered stories. I work with my own personal narratives to develop a darkly whimsical illustration by building a new story that reinvents a past moment or a current truth. I see a beautiful darkness in childhood and nostalgia, in the way memories shift and shudder as we grow farther apart from them. Like looking at the drawings of a children's book before reading the story, I invite others to find pieces of themselves hidden in the details of my work where childhood exists somewhere between the fairytale and nightmare. I find parallels back to youth in our interactions as adults who navigate their lives affected by their pasts and their stories. These navigations inspire me to create sculptures that exist in our tangible space as vessels capable of holding the whispers of stories both shared and untold. ••• Kelsey Bowen grew up in the rural California foothills, spending summers making up stories and picking thistles from her socks. Her figurative sculptures serve as vessels for her self-reflection and storytelling in clay, inspired by memories from her youth and interactions with her peers as an adult. While often dark in concept, her pieces build an unsettling and surreal landscape where the viewer is both comforted and disturbed, encouraging closer inspection through friendly colors and playful characters before delivering an unsettling detail. Bowen earned her BFA in ceramics from the California College of the Arts, going on to continue creating work as a long-term artist in residence at the Red Lodge Clay Center in Montana. She has exhibited her work in various corners of the West Coast from Los Angeles to Oregon, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. She is currently working as a professional artist and part-time educator in western Montana.

Windflower

Paul S. Briggs

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
7.5" x 8" x 7.5"

Date:
2020

Description:
I use a process I call "pure pinching." That is, the goal of my practice is to be present to the largely intuitive process of growing a form, most often out of one piece of clay. It becomes a mindful practice. I don't add or subtract any clay. ••• Paul Briggs grew up in the Hudson Valley of Newburgh, New York, taking his first ceramics class in 9th grade. He eventually landed at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Paul is an artist teacher with balanced training in ceramics, sculpture, and education. He earned an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art, an MSED from Alfred University and a PhD in Art Education/Educational Theory and Policy from the Pennsylvania State University. Briggs has taught at all educational levels and in various contexts including the Penland and Haystack Schools of Craft. Recently he was awarded a South Eastern Minnesota Arts Council Grant for the installation, Cell Persona: The Impact of Incarceration on Black Lives.

Sun Kissed Vessel

Aaron Caldwell

Measurements:
6" x 18" x 7"

Date:
2020

Description:
Being Black and gay in the U.S., continuously, has placed me in positions of activism and resistance to power structures. My work serves as an opportunity to look at Black and Queer identity with a lens of interiority. My art narrates how I engage with my Blackness and Queerness in private, through culture, and how these identities inform how I engage with the world. The basis of my work is inspired by Black folks' history with moisturizing products for the hair and body, and my being conditioned to hold value in my hair, skin color and the objects that go into the care of my hair and body. Being considered physically ashy (white and dry skin) or socially ashy (wack, lame, ignorant) is a kind of lingo among Black folk. As a result, products like lotion or coconut oil have become a staple in the Black community, and I create objects that concretely elevate and highlight this relationship unique to Black culture. Ultimately, my goal as an artist is to explore the distinctions I experience through Blackness, Queerness and Black Queerness. ••• Aaron Caldwell was born in 1996 and raised in Fresno, California. He graduated from Southern Illinois University Carbondale with a BA in general studio art in 2019, and is currently in the MS in Art Education graduate program at Illinois State University. Aaron has spent the past three years honing his skill and interest in ceramics after discovering ceramics his junior year of college. He has shown work in the San Angelo Museum Ceramic National and the NCECA student show, has been published in Studio Potter, and has received the Warren MacKenzie Advancement Award from Northern Clay Center. He is also passionate about education, and believes schools and communities that serve BIPOC need access and opportunities for art making and engaging experiences, and plans on helping sustain and create art opportunities for BIPOC communities and individuals. You can see more at: www.ceramicsnstuff.com

I'll Carry You...

Danielle Callahan

Medium & Materials:
Wood fired stoneware with natural ash glaze

Measurements:
10.25" x 9.5" x 8.25"

Date:
2020

Description:
Much of my work starts with play. Energy is primary to my art-making and raw clay suits my approach. I cut, poke, drop, splay, twist, and sometimes re-attach sliced off or fallen pieces. Favorite sticks and my fingers prod a form; experiences and observations emerge. Layers are good, so I embrace wood firing. Current bodies of work include chunky gestural sculptures and dynamic, contemplative bas relief wall panels. Occasionally rugged tableware is made, too. The time and energy are quite different for each. Wall panels are comprised of methodically handmade tiles, individually rolled, cut, then pressed into sidewalk cracks, tree bark or grass. The (frequently thick) sculptures rely on my willingness to allow a focused release. They reveal a range of emotions: wonder, joy, confusion, frustration, despair. Ongoing health struggles often permeate my work, as do concerns for the U.S. and the world. I'm humbled that my partner views my art as imbued with "animus" - a conveyance of my purpose, spirit, soul, breath. ••• Born (1963) and raised Minnesotan, now living in Pennsylvania, Callahan appreciates adaptability. She earned her BFA (painting/drawing), then stopped art-making for nearly a decade. Compelled to create again, she made a foray into glasswork, then segued to wood-fired ceramics thanks to a Jerome Foundation/St. John's Pottery Fellowship. Extensive time caring for infants and toddlers informs her willingness to try things without formal knowledge. Curator and longtime friend Allyson Evans observes, "Danielle's work with clay is rhythmic and simple, not fussy... she works with what happens, making purpose out of mishap in a beautiful way."

Poodle

Kimberly Camp

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic, fiber, glass beads

Measurements:
6" x 17" x 26"

Date:
2020

Description:
In 1982 I began making soft sculpture, hand-dyed dolls which were traditional African or transitional African-American adorned. Their next evolution came in 1988 when my mother was given septicemia. For months, I watched nurses stab her with IVs. One day, I grabbed an old leather coat, needle, and scissors. As nurses stabbed, I sewed to soothe my anger. That experience opened a world of exploration. I find pure joy in using materials collected over five continents. Dolls play a part in the culture of all people around the world. I've explored different clay bodies, combining hard, soft, ornamental, structural, and I've used leather, raffia, bones, fabric, gemstones, fur, wood, beads, and bells. Most are a reflection of humor and mischief. I begin with crafting faces and heads, hands and feet. I assemble them all, then select the first one that calls to me. That one is taken from concept to completion, then placed in front of me to usher in the creation of the rest. I call that first doll the Spirit of the Table. As each one is completed, it becomes the family of the Spirit of the Table. Each one has visible stitches and knots, because dolls reflect our flawed humanity. ••• In February, Camp received the 2020 Award of Excellence: Art Makes Us Human award from the American Craft Council. Camp's paintings and dolls have appeared in over a hundred solo and group exhibitions, including the American Craft Museum, Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery, International Sculpture Center, University of Michigan, and Manchester Craftsman's Guild, and the three-year traveling exhibition, Uncommon Beauty in Common Objects, where her work was featured on the cover of the exhibition catalog.

Don't Let Me Fall

Soojin Choi

Description:
Human emotion comes from the interplay between people, physical space, and emotion itself. The ambivalence of human emotion occurs through unresolved and confusing situations in external and internal matters. An ambivalent moment reveals itself to me, and I depict that gray area of humanity. I recount these unsettled situations so viewers can empathetically encounter the emotions of the human forms I create. In making my work, I attempt to express the ambiguity of emotion through flat and spatial surfaces; subtle facial expression, gaze, and body gesture; as well as color and brush expressions. Building the surfaces with clay allows me to seamlessly weave between dimensions and textures to articulate feelings of ambivalence. ••• Soojin Choi was born and raised in South Korea, and she has worked as an artist in the United States since 2010. Choi earned her BFA at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2015 with a double major in craft/material studies and painting/printmaking. She continued her studies at Alfred University to pursue an MFA degree in ceramics in 2018. After graduate school, Choi accepted a residency at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with funding by the Anonymous Artist Studio Fellowship. Currently, she is a long-term resident artist at Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, Montana. Her work transforms objects, figures, and spaces into visual language by repeatedly layering flat and spatial surfaces.

Shale and Porcelain Gradient Jar

Justin Donofrio

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
6" x 6" x 9.5"

Date:
2020

Description:
Through the lens of functional pottery I focus on questions about our relationship with objects. I explore the concept of humanity's authority over landscape and the record of construction as a form of time materialized. The geographical layered strata of each vessel represent fragments or glimpses into the density of every assemblage. With the intersections and overlaps, I contemplate the dynamic relationship between materiality and landscape and our attempt to utilize it. Each vessel is made using clay that is colored to reference vibrant natural tones found in the wild. My work cultivates order and my pots are designed to manicure domestic space. Focusing on the fluidity of process and materials as remnants of making, I work with a limited number of tools and movements to allow the clay to actively inform the line quality and elegant volume. Relying heavily on the physicality of the technique I generously push and pull these lines to develop an undulation that resembles natural rhythms. The harmony of repetition comes through meditation of movement. The presence of process in the work is essential as my forms are searching for confidence in their construction. The conversation between the stained clay and glaze obscures or reveals a bodily response to a continuum between clay and ceramic. ••• Justin Donofrio grew up in Santa Cruz, California, where he was introduced to pottery at Cabrillo Community College. He then joined the Colorado community of artists in 2013 in the Roaring Fork Valley where he continued his clay education at Anderson Ranch, The Carbondale Clay Center, and the Studio for Arts and Works (SAW), and earned his BFA from CSU. He is both internationally as well as nationally represented in galleries throughout the U.S. and abroad. Donofrio has been a Windgate Summer Scholar at the Archie Bray Foundation and a resident at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. He has been an exhibiting artist and tour co-manager with the Artstream Nomadic Gallery, in addition to being selected as one of Ceramics Monthly's 2018 Emerging Artists. He is currently pursuing his MFA in ceramics at Alfred University.

Fate

Mari Emori

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Date:
2020

Description:
My Water Drop Series emerged as a metaphor for life and the environment. It symbolizes our physical and spiritual dependence on water. Fate depicts triple spiral labyrinths on a water drop form and represents our journey in life. Through Fate, I attempted to express deep emotions, fear of the unknown, and surrender to an environment full of forces beyond our control. Now, during these uncertain times with the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, Fate resonates with me. It reminds me of how quickly our world can change in ways we can't imagine. ••• Mari Emori was born and grew up in Japan, and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989. She earned her BFA with honors in Graphic Design from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2012. Emori has always been drawn to the creative arts and design. She explored different mediums and career paths including kimono design in Japan and floral design in the U.S., then interior design and graphic design before she found her calling in clay. Emori's life experiences have greatly influenced her work. Each area of design that she has explored has helped her to hone the discipline and skills that she now uses to create artworks in clay. Emori has a studio at Berkeley Potters Guild in Berkeley, California, where she creates and sells her ceramic work. Much of her work is now being selected in juried national and international ceramics exhibitions across the US.

Faults & Seams

Rachel Eng

Medium & Materials:
Porcelain

Date:
2020

Description:
As humans we often categorize things to help us understand them better, some being either human-made or natural. I am interested in the similarities shared between these categories and the structures that humans implement and ones that would occur without us present. I see our environment and landscape as open systems worked on by outside forces, not exclusive of ourselves. My work grapples with topics such as climate change, land use/development, and their connection to memory. I work to reveal the whole through an analysis of its parts. I create layered and contemplative pieces as well as compositions using found materials. Change, decay, and regeneration are central content to these artworks in which the subject matter is our environment and our changing relationship to it. What is defined as "nature" can be a variety of things, from a parking lot to a garden to a forest. These artworks are often driven by a question, and through the process of making more questions arise. I do not see the finished works as answers but a way to share an experience that possesses the complexity of these topics. I am in the process of rebuilding a mass of components in the studio. It is important that they are made with my hands; the process and labor are a significant part in its meaning. I think about it in relation to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of creating sand mandalas, where after the laborious process of creating, the mandala is swept away. ••• Rachel Eng grew up exploring the deciduous forests of Rochester, New York, and earned her BFA from Penn State and her MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 2017 she was selected as an NCECA Emerging Artist and in 2018 was awarded a grant through the Curatorial Opportunity Program at the New Art Center in Boston. She has been an artist in residence at NES Residency in Iceland, Mudflat in Boston, Watershed Center for the Ceramics Arts in Maine, and most recently at Studio Kura in Itoshima, Japan. Eng currently works and lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where she teaches in the studio art program at Dickinson College.

Vessels

Max Henderson

Medium & Materials:
Porcelain

Date:
2020

Description:
I make pots because it makes me feel human, and I feel conviction in my self worth. Clay's response to touch offers a sense of ownership and control I've never felt before. It's a record of my existence, and I find kinship to the concept of clay: it's commonly ignored - literally walked on; it has little to no inherent value. However, it has potential. It can be the dirt we walk on or transformed to a priceless object that captures humanity's essence. I see my potential through clay. What functional ceramics represents to me drives utility in my work. At one time, using beautiful handmade pots was a luxury I wasn't afforded. Quality was secondary because my childhood adversity of poverty made me prioritize survival. Now, making allows me to use objects that were once inaccessible. This cumulates in my artwork. My work represents the concepts of handmade utilitarian qualities I never had but learned I deserve. Clay obeys touch, conforming to my emotional whims. This manifests in fluid forms reflecting individuality while paying homage to historic precedent. Surfaces with depth and contrast, metaphorizing my narrative, interest me. My final forms possess different potentials of the wet clay I fell in love with, and I'm captivated by firing's ability to immortalize moments of my existence. Moreover, I exist in someone else's hands, evoking contemplation of their own. ••• Max Henderson will begin his MFA at University of Nebraska-Lincoln in fall 2020. After his BFA at Arizona State University, he did his post-baccalaureate at Penn State. Henderson has been a short-term resident at Red Lodge Clay Center, and he is a founding member of the B. Well Collective (now the Welby Collective in Denver).

Until Infinity

Nasrin Iravani

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Date:
2020

Description:
My work establishes a dialogue between traditional Persian art and Western contemporary art. I juxtapose these two concepts in physical forms to build a bridge between traditional values and contemporary concepts. The ceramic sculptures exist free from oppressive categorization that often result in overlooking the meaning of ceramic objects themselves. The objects I create are ambiguous in form and seemingly nonsensical in their finishes. With layers of glaze applied to the surface, they retain a decorative quality embedded in the history of functional ceramics. I also maintain a painting practice where the compositional equilibrium is inspired by Persian art notable for its exemplary combination of geometric patterns and organic shapes. My ceramic sculpture highlights a relationship between the human body and organic forms and natural and synthetic processes. ••• Nasrin Iravani holds an MFA in ceramics from the University of Alabama. Her educational background includes a BA and MA in handicrafts from the Tehran University of Art. Her work is engaged in a dialogue between traditional Persian art and Western contemporary art. Iravani has participated in many national and international art exhibitions and conferences including Artigiano in Fiera Handicraft Exhibition in Milan, Fitur exhibition Feria Internacional de Turismo in Madrid, International Handicraft Exhibition in Tehran, Graduate Student Biennial Exhibition at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, Content Matters exhibition of Marin MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) in Novato, On the Surface at Attleboro Arts Museum, the 23rd San Angelo National Ceramic Competition of The San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, San Angelo, and more.

Escaping Gender

Coco Johnson

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic, gold luster

Measurements:
18" x 24" x 27"

Date:
2020

Description:
My work initiates from an evolving interest in the nude body, cast through a contemporary feminist lens. Challenging my conservative upbringing, my concepts draw on my experiences as a woman relating to body, gender, fetishism, queerness, visibility, and, most importantly, the sport of synchronized swimming. While providing the framework for societal critique, I use "synchro" as an alternative metaphor to analyze traditional gender norms, body hierarchies, and gender power dynamics. My relationship to synchro has heavily crafted the way I view the empowered female body and the way it interacts with other beings and manipulates space. I strive to reclaim the body, its worth, and to renounce any personal convictions of otherness. My sculptural forms are androgynous and ambiguous in order to emphasize a sense of disembodiment. Layering unconventional body parts together and creating absurd formations, I challenge how the body interacts and interconnects with its surroundings while gently touching on a surrealist nerve. The fragmented anatomical configurations allude to elements of deconstructuralism and ultimately exert a disconnect from the self. ••• Coco Johnson is from Gilbert, Arizona, and is a multi-media artist focused on painting, textiles, and ceramics. After earning her BFA from the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, she accepted a residency in Reykjavik, Iceland, where she took part in several international exhibitions. Anderson earned her MFA in ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2020. By combining textile and ceramic arts, she explores the dichotomy of hard and soft, masculine and feminine, obscurity and familiarity, while presenting a strong sense of materialism.

Brought to Center

Darien Ariokski-Johnson

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
14" x 18" x 79"

Date:
2020

Description:
Darien A-Johnson's work represents the current entanglement of human cognition and digital processing. The recent proliferation of the camera phone enables us to record spontaneously. Experience is interrupted to capture and store moments. The recordings are used for recollection; however, over time our reliance on the two‐dimensional image to replace perceptual experience flattens and fragments the memory. By dissecting and altering these fragments, his work raises awareness of a continually altered state of visual consciousness. It makes reference to a shift in contemporary experience relating to the cognitive processing of sight. ••• A-Johnson's work has been recognized nationally and internationally through awarded grants, exhibitions, and residencies. In 2012 he was awarded the Emerging Artist Award through NCECA, and most recently received an exhibition grant from the Danish Cultural Ministry to complete a residency and exhibition opportunity through C.R.E.T.A. Rome. For this opportunity A-Johnson has continued to integrate digital processes with traditional forming and surface treatments. This act reflects the current state of human experience, as we navigate between reality and the illusions presented by our screens.

Lung/Pump

Dasha Kalisz

Medium & Materials:
Mixed Media

Measurements:
4" x 10.5" x 9"

Date:
2020

Description:
The physicality of making with clay invites me to mold my thoughts and emotions into its amorphous material. The clay body meets my body, letting me physically release emotions into the cool, dense, pliable earth through pushing, pulling, burnishing, and kneading. My creative process stems from the need to think through my hands and transfer my energy into an object. The transferring of my energy into the clay led to an investigation about how emotional states effect the body. It is in this investigation of functional and dysfunctional bodies that led me to biomorphic forms, and more specifically to biomorphic lung forms. Biomorphic shapes are recognizable and unrecognizable, just like the body. Our bodies are familiar and reliable until illness, trauma, or a disease impedes the system, making it strange and unpredictable. Biomorphic ceramic and found object sculptures of lung vessels reveal vulnerability and transmutation of the body through the organic forms and surfaces that imply sickness and decay, as well as the assemblage of found objects that suggest improvised assistants. Skin diseases like smallpox, shingles, and psoriasis were the inspirations for the surfaces of the ceramic sculptures. The found objects like toilet bowl floats, tubing, and masks imitate antique and modern medical equipment. The appropriation of found objects into makeshift medical equipment reveals the secrets of the liminal spaces between human biology and mechanical mechanisms. The viewer recognizes the altered organ and sympathizes with their own body as people look for patterns and connections between themselves and the world. Through the assemblage of found objects, I lead my audience to contemplate the functionality of their body and compare it to objects in the world. As Merleau-Ponty once wrote, "Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it is one of them... the world is made of the very stuff of the body."

Queen Bee

Leah Kaplan

Medium & Materials:
Porcelain

Measurements:
4.5" x 9" x 5"

Date:
2020

Description:
Lines, undulation, texture, light and shadow are recurring themes in my work. I find inspiration for them everywhere. Fortuny pleats. Mushroom gills. Aboriginal paintings. Crushed, corrugated cardboard. All these influences seep into my making. My vessel-making is an iterative process, driven by intent and intuition. Each hand-building technique has its own particular rhythm and feel, altering how I experience and interact with a piece. Some methods require meticulousness; others are fast and loose. Some techniques demand absolute focus, like a high wire act; others allow my mind to drift and my hands to take over. From this conversation, my forms emerge — a material expression of tension and balance amidst competing impulses. ••• Leah Kaplan has been working in clay for 30 years, honing her skills in studios and schools up and down the East Coast. In 2018, Kaplan renovated a studio in Old City Philadelphia from which she launched her full time practice. Her eclectic career path to ceramics included promoting New York City designers, as well as helping artisans find markets for their work. In the latter job, Kaplan was fortunate to meet gifted craftspeople, engaged in every conceivable medium, whose time-honored techniques and materials continue to inform her practice decades later. Born in Kansas City and raised in Minnesota, Kaplan lives in Philadelphia with her husband and three children.

Floating Ruin 1

Nichola Kinch

Medium & Materials:
Porcelain, wood

Measurements:
24" x 15" 12"

Date:
2020

Description:
Nichola Kinch is an artist whose creative production is propelled by technical investigations that span pre-photographic practices to computer aided design and manufacturing. Her practice centers on the creation of objects and installations that explore image production as a metaphor for a variety of fictional constructs. Kinch's commitment to learning new processes is uniquely aligned with her interest in innovative curriculum development in the areas of foundation studies and interdisciplinary practice. She has developed an approach to teaching that stems from an evocative point of view, built firmly on the belief that students must engage in individual inquiry to be successful in her courses and in the world.

Aquafina

Bradley Klem

Medium & Materials:
15" x 16.5" x 15.5"

Measurements:
Porcelain

Date:
2020

Description:
Our planet is changing forever and for everyone. My work addresses the influence of man on the environment, focusing on the impact of our pollution. The ceramic material provides a rich historical and cultural context to draw on. Ceramic works come in many different forms and from a broad variety of cultures, locations, and origins. It is deeply connected to who we are. Equally as diverse in form and source of origin, though lacking in historical significance, is the plastic garbage that we make today. I utilize the familiarity and historical context of ceramic vessels combined with contemporary imagery of man's impact on the environment. The pot behaves as a Trojan horse infiltrating the domestic space, carrying conversations of our planetary disposition. Bradley Klem caught his first fish when he was three years old, marking the beginning of a life-long concern for water, wildlife, and conservation. Today, his art addresses the influence of man on the environment, focusing on the impact of plastic, pollution, and water. Klem has been a resident artist at the Archie Bray Foundation, the Mesa Arts Center, and Project Art 01026, and his work is in the collection at the Mesa Contemporary Art Museum. He has spoken at the Office for the Arts at Harvard University, Iowa University, Western New Mexico University, and NCECA in Kansas City. ••• Klem earned his BA at Arizona State University, in both painting and ceramic studio art, and in 2018 he earned an MFA from Penn State. He continued teaching full time in the School of Visual Arts at Penn State University until the Spring of 2020. He is a founding member of the B.Well Collective which has now become the Welby Collective in Denver, where he is proud to be a resident artist.

Strippen Ein Vis (Gutting the Fish)

Trisha Kyner

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
30" x 30" x 45"

Date:
2020

Description:
Pantomime, distortion and humor are some of my favorite tools. I want my figures to confront their status as sculpted objects. Some of my figures respond to objectification with stoicism, while others rebel fiercely against any easy capture or naming. I have always insisted on a good dose of expressive energy, something to double back and challenge the viewer. As for my subjects, I have always had a weakness for both martyrs and heroines. As I grow older, I find that I am also interested in depicting states of bewilderment and confusion. My figures have fought battles for me, but now they also let me accept that some struggles are long and less than clear cut. I work primarily in porcelain and red earthenware. These are fine-grained clays, supple and gestural. When wet, these clays move like flesh. When dry, they can be carved and polished like stone. When fired, they are hard and unwieldy. My materials reinforce my interest in movement versus capture, agency versus control. I am influenced by feminist theory, art history, and dance, but I am led by the senses of touch, sight, and gesture. ••• Trisha Kyner is an associate professor of art at the Community College of Baltimore County. She holds a BA from University of California, Santa Cruz, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the University of Montana. She lives in a converted grocery store in Baltimore, Maryland, with fellow artist David Friedheim and two cats. Her work has been shown at Grounds for Sculpture, the National Council for Education in Ceramic Arts (NCECA) and the National Gallery of Art in Mumbai, India, and has had residencies at Watershed Center For the Ceramic Arts, the Clay Studio of Missoula, and A.I.R. Vallauris in France.

My Oneiric Existence

Bernadette Larimer

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
6" x 7" x 21"

Date:
2020

Description:
I am interested in mysticism as it relates to place. My work explores a fantastical world related to spirituality, and the divine feminine mystique. My work is influenced by the feminine images, sculptures, and carvings from antiquity and in particular the ancient pottery and ceramic figures found throughout the world. My art is focused on ceramic sculpture with some additional materials and functional ceramics. I create human-like beings with androgynous or simple feminine forms, references to animal-god forms, and other mystical creatures. They are Spirit Dancers that appear to celebrate, contemplate, or begin a journey of reawakening from a memory of a different time and place. There is a profound connection with the earth and the celestial universe. In essence I am making a mythology. In this contemporary moment I find myself looking inward, perhaps more than ever, as human civilization finds itself at an impasse. Stuck between scientific progress, ecological crisis, polarized political divisions, and fear of "the other," I believe human beings are moving more and more inward. My work aims to make tangible my own fantasies of a world reconnected to our base hopes and desires for symbiosis with the landscape and communities we live in. In a quiet and poetic manner, it is my hope that my sculptures can let the viewer explore their own visions. •••Bernadette Frerker Larimer works primarily with ceramics (earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain), she employs various slips, underglazes, glazes, and lusters. Her preferred techniques include coil-building and wheel throwing, as well as hand-building to create human and abstract forms. Larimer lived for nearly seven years in the high desert of New Mexico, whose stark beauty inspired her art. She recently relocated to the East Coast where - although a striking contrast to the high desert - she again draws inspiration from her surroundings, most notably the ocean, woods, and birds.

Gesture Cup Pair

Clay Leonard

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
4" x 5" x 4"

Date:
2020

Description:
Some of my favorite childhood memories were formed around the dinner table with family and friends, eating and engaging in conversation. Through my work, I highlight the important ritual of sharing a meal, utilizing my ceramic serving forms as a catalyst for interaction and communication. Formally, I'm interested in the sculptural considerations of minimal form and surface, striking a balance between pristine design and qualities of the handmade object. I have an affinity for crisp lines, creative innovation, and simple geometric form, and I pull inspiration from mass-produced objects and minimalism. My designs are developed from geometric shapes and sequences, but instilled with subtlety and softness that serve to highlight the process of production and humanize the work. Repetition plays a significant role, as I utilize the stacking and interaction of multiple forms to mimic the works intent through form and surface while making connections to mass production and social interactions. ••• Clay Leonard is an American artist (b. 1984). He earned his MFA from Bowling Green State University and his BFA from Adrian College. He currently serves as an assistant professor of ceramics at the University of Houston - Clear Lake in Houston, Texas. Clay has also been an artist-in-residence at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, the International Ceramic Research Center: Guldagergaard in Denmark, and C.R.E.T.A. Rome in Rome, Italy.

Untitled

Joan Lurie

Medium & Materials:
Porcelain

Measurements:
13" x 18" x 14"

Date:
2020

Description:
My ceramic work grew out of a photographic project where I assembled images from architecture, design, and craft books. I became fascinated by the ceramic forms found in the craft books and their relationship to the human body. Often, the images were simply traces or imprints of the human hand. This correspondence was so fascinating to me that I began to work with clay. Over the past 15 years, my work has focused on building structural forms in clay. I work with porcelain and porcelain paper clay. My sculptures are constructed by combining wheel-thrown forms into a shape, then adding coils of clay to the exterior, creating an armature in reverse on the outside of the form. Part of the underlying wheel-thrown form is cut away, while I continue to build out the hand built structure. Many ideas for my forms come from architecture while the inherent organic quality of the clay and my process always brings the work back to soft forms more reminiscent of biological and natural organisms. ••• Born in New York City, Joan Lurie is a ceramic artist working in Brooklyn. She studied photography at Rochester Institute of Technology (BFA, 1981) and New York University and the International Center of Photography (MA, 1987). Her interest in clay grew out of her photographic works, which incorporated images of ceramics along with other crafts, micro and macro photographs of biological and plant forms, and architecture and technology. In 2000, she began to work in clay. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

FC/Other Side of Darkness No.4

Wade MacDonald

Medium & Materials:
Mixed Media

Measurements:
5" x 18" x 23"

Date:
2020

Description:
The bridge between ceramics and architecture is multifaceted and synergetic. Both address social dilemmas through their aestheticism and utilitarianism. By heightening this correlation through the contextualization of the table and the use of multiple construction materials a more affable human quality to contemporary architecture emerges. As architectural models, viewers gain insight into their unique place within a larger social landscape. Clay acts as a conduit between past and present notions of material innovation, challenging our concepts of new architectural paradigms as well as questioning our responsibility in the global twenty-first century. As a studio artist, I embrace handcraft and digital methodologies as I work toward defining sculpture that is personally and culturally significant. I build "vessels" with sections formed by pressing terracotta clay into plaster molds the way bricks are formed, yet their final structures recall the dynamism of digitally rendered architecture through their complex planar relationships. ••• MacDonald was raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and holds a BA in art education from Western Michigan University. In 2014, he earned an MFA in studio art from Michigan State University, and as a graduate student, he received the Varg-Sullivan Award for Distinguished Research and the John and Susan Berding Family Foundation Endowment Juried MFA Prize. In 2018, MacDonald received an NCECA Emerging Artist award and was featured in American Craft Magazine's August/September 2018 Issue. Currently, he is assistant professor of ceramics in the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

Oil Can

Antonio Martinez

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
6" x 6" x 10"

Date:
2020

Description:
My interest in ceramics lies in its many facets of function and the roles they can play within our daily lives. These objects can instill their presence into our daily rituals to heighten mundane experiences or become quiet objects of observation. They can bring people together, allowing for moments of reflection and conversation. Often they transcend their formal use and become a reflection of our own identity and culture, establishing order and a sense of comfort. My work explores the identity of objects through the ceramic vessel beyond their function. I utilize the visual language from my own experiences to assist surface and form to elicit a feeling of otherness. This allows for an opportunity to create a relationship between object and viewer. Currently, my work is an assemblage of all-black utilitarian vessels. The surface treatment is analogous to the quiet nature of wrought iron. This is contrasted with moments of active, vibrant glaze that blend and define lines between fluxed and stable surfaces. I strive to create work that is quiet, still and offers a sense of tranquility. This enables the viewer to reflect upon the vessels and begin to re-contextualize the roles and place of my work. ••• Antonio Martinez was born and raised in Hutchinson, Kansas. He earned his BFA at Wichita State University in 2014 and his MFA from the University of Kansas in 2018. He has taught at numerous universities and art centers while exhibiting his work nationally. His work has also been published on numerous occasions in Ceramics Monthly. Currently, he is an adjunct professor and ceramics area head at Haskell Indian Nations University where he works out of in Lawrence Kansas.

Azimuth

Dan Molyneux

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
13" x 37" x 16"

Date:
2020

Description:
A physicist approaches a subject by stripping it down to its essential components in order to best understand it. If they were to examine a jazz solo, for example, they would look for an underlying algorithm, a guiding set of principles that steers the arrangement. Music is a language we relate to in a poetic way, we don't endlessly attempt to interpret its meaning because it is so often a subjective, emotionally triggering and universal experience all in the same instant. Visual art is another language structure built on a set of underlying principles and components, in the case of abstraction, it is an alphabet made up of variations of elemental form: the sphere, cube, tetrahedron, torus, parabolic cone, etc. Operating like an elegant mathematical literature, artists arrange these forms into visual poetics. More intricate and complex compositions weave together and unfold like sonnets, short stories and novellas, slowly revealing the layered visual fabric. This sculpture is an experiment, a method of seeing and working with form as if it operated like language. I envision form as having a code of representation just like alphabets and grammar, numbers and mathematics, notes and music, etc. I refer to elemental form as a system of units with a grammar that represents both the microscopic and macroscopic make-up of the universe, resonating in the psyche precisely because of its universality. Breaking down language and physical phenomena to their most basic elements is how I remind myself that we are all tied to every thing and every body. ••• Molyneux has lived and studied abroad for over twelve years and holds degrees in anthropology, comparative religion, languages and ceramic sculpture. His artwork is in permanent museum collections in North America and abroad. He currently resides in Northern California.

Autumn Ghost

Katie McColgan

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
6" x 8" x 6"

Date:
2020

Description:
I explore material in reaction to my relationships with spaces and objects. Through the visual organization of memories and feelings, I create my own understanding of these relationships. Small objects are used as character stand-ins for the body, the feeling, the thing, and different combinations and inventions of these. In rearranging objects within a grid or list, I wrangle the intangible into something tactile. The work, often referencing the familiar, seems to almost be the thing but not exactly the thing. By contextualizing the work in familiarity, I use the "almost" to invite the viewer to make their own understandings of the relationships situated within the work. Through the attachment of charms, which tend to be miniaturized souvenirs of an experience or identity signifier, I invite the viewer in closer for an intimate experience. I seek to capture emotion in material whether it's incorporating humor, rendering tangled feelings, or disrupting lines with emotion. By solidifying an emotion brought upon by memory within the permanence of clay, often rendered to be fragile, I acknowledge that the object will only ever go so far as to nudge these sharp memories back up into fleeting feelings, which are always quick to soften. ••• Katie McColgan earned her BFA in ceramics from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2016. She then attended the University of Arkansas as a Post Baccalaureate student where she spent two years furthering her ceramic research. She is currently an MFA candidate in arts practices at the University of Colorado, Boulder. McColgan's work takes form among many materials such as ceramics, fibers, painting, and sculpture. She has exhibited her work throughout the United States. She continues to be driven by material and object language in her work.

This to That

Russell Orlando

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
9" x 9" x 22"

Date:
2020

Description:
In my ceramic creations, I study subtle qualities in the material that have transpired during the making process. Shape, form, and line embody my thinking as I work through the piece. Arrangement also becomes an important factor as I consider the final presentation. The objective here is find some kind of imperceptible truth in the relationships I form with the material and the environment I decide to activate. ••• Russell Orlando was born in Detroit, Michigan. He earned a BFA at Wayne State University, and an MFA in Ceramics at Cranbrook Academy of Art. He was awarded the Kresge Artist Fellowship in 2009. His exhibitions include the Ceramic Artist Exchange - Tandem, Neumünster, Germany; Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Untitled GG

Helen Otterson

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic / Glass

Measurements:
10" x 10" x 14"

Date:
2020

Description:
Capitalizing on nature's fractal patterns, I create organic forms that repeat, yet change and are similar, distinctive from nature. Both in art and nature, a single element repeats itself many times. Many plants follow simple recursive formulas in generating their branching shapes and leaf patterns. One form may find itself nestled inside the same form, but in diminishing size, resulting in striking shapes. Nature is my guide for creating forms that, at times, resemble those found in the natural world. Inspired by the mysteries of nature, my ambiguous forms celebrate life. Creating forms with fluid movement, I use porcelain to capture the beauty of nature's organic forms. Porcelain is the ideal medium to showcase the rich surfaces, curvilinear components, and delicacies found in nature. The work draws on aspects in natural world and reflects the celebration of growth, the pursuit of life and beauty of the natural world. ••• Helen Otterson earned a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from the University of Miami. Exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, her work has been published in American Craft Magazine and Ceramic Monthly. In addition Otterson's work is published in books such as Cast: Art and Objects Made Using Humanity's Most Transformational Process, 500 Sculptures, and 500 Figures in Clay. Helen's ceramic and glass sculptures are part of the permanent collections at the Mulvane Art Museum, Nicolaysen Art Museum, and the Plains Art Museum. She has completed artist residencies at the International Ceramic Studio in Kecskemét, Hungary, A.I.R. Vallauris, France, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and the Northern Clay Center.

Germinate

Jasmine Peck

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
10" x 10" x 14"

Date:
2020

Description:
My creative practice is an intersection of material studies and sculptural ceramics. I utilize the human body as a site for exploration of cultural norms, bodily functions, and ideals around beauty and the grotesque. I am searching for the boundaries of the body: where does the inside stop being the inside? I investigate our internal commonalities, the organs we share. I transform materials such as fabric, yarn, thread, and rugs into protruding viscera and textured membranes. The absurdity of my forms alleviate an anxiety about being a body. I combat abjection through humorous lumps and celebrate. ••• Jasmine Peck is a sculptural ceramic artist with a creative practice that also includes performance, installation, and drawing. Peck earned her BFA from the University of Wyoming, with an emphasis in ceramics. She then went on to earn her MFA from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Peck's work is focused around the intersection of the body, material transformations, and humor. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, been a recipient of the Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant, and participated in a residency program in Berlin, Germany. Peck is currently teaching ceramics at Idyllwild Arts Academy in Idyllwild, California

Pillow Tile Composition

Chris Pickett

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
2" x 20" x 20"

Date:
2020

Description:
The human desire for comfort is universal. In moments of uncertainty, it insulates us from anxiety and unease. My functional ceramic vessels cater to this hunger for physical and emotional comfort and gratification. Using nostalgia as a point of reference, I utilize form, color and design to evoke a sense of familiarity and solace. I choose visual language that is suggestive of the comforting nature of physical intimacy, relaxed interactions within a community, childhood experiences and personal domestic spaces. The use of low relief stencils and compound mold systems allow me to articulate vessels with a specific formal language. With the appearance of being freshly constructed, the fullness of form allows these vessels to evoke a sense of play and ease. The generous volumes are metaphors for our own bodies that reference both the comforts of physical intimacy as well as childlike items, such as toys and stuffed animals. Exaggerated pillow forms create a desire to physically interact with the work, and voluptuous curves awaken our preconceptions of volume and what it represents: vitality, sensuality, generosity and abundance. With these vessels I provide the user with a transformative personal experience through use, rather than address needs of utility, necessity, or convenience. ••• Chris Pickett earned his BFA from the University of Tennessee and his MFA from the University of Florida. He served as a long term resident fellow at the Archie Bray Foundation from 2012 to 2014, and was the Barbara Rittenberg Fellow at the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, New York, from 2015-2016. Pickett resides in Pocatello, Idaho, and serves as an assistant professor of art at Idaho State University.

Walking on the Beaches, Looking at the Peaches

Sasha Koozel Reibstein

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
6" x 10" x 7"

Date:
2020

Description:
My obsession with transformation and alchemy manifests itself through sculptures that undulate between soft and hard, alive and static, reality and fantasy. Fragility and vulnerability are captured through tenuous and off-kilter drip formations that simultaneously appear to be rising and falling, abstractly depicting creatures either on the brink of collapse or mid-awakening. I am particularly interested in the idea of hope and illusion, wanting to offer lush forms that entice through obsessive detail and shimmering surfaces which appear too brilliant, too seductive to be what they seem. This is in part a response to being a transplant from the East to the West Coast and a reflection on growing up with the idea of the California Dream and the acceptance as an adult of the illusory nature of this idyllic perception. This narrative becomes an extension of the larger American Dream and the unfortunate reality behind this mirage. It is my hope to take advantage of this dissonance to embrace the unknown and fantasy as a means of escape and to perhaps offer solace in the form of the unexpected and alchemic. ••• Born in Boston, Sasha Reibstein earned her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and her BFA from the University of Michigan. She relocated to San Diego in 2006 and is currently a professor of art and head of the ceramics program at Palomar College in San Marcos. Reibstein has traveled extensively, working and exhibiting in China, Denmark, Hungary and Germany. During these residencies abroad and working in her home studio, she has created sculptural works and installations that have been featured in over 70 national and international exhibitions including a solo exhibition in Berlin entitled New World.

Brown Rat

George Rodriguez

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
20" x 23" x 13"

Date:
2020

Description:
George Rodriguez addresses sensitive sociopolitical issues through his work, drawing from themes of culture and identity, community, and our shared commonalities. His figurative sculptures portray characters of immutable inner strength, grace, and dignity. Their highly ornamented forms are rooted in Rodriguez's study of traditional temple guardian figures from around the world, celebrating the individual against the backdrop of community, the modern world against the backdrop of the ancient. His figures are everyday superheroes; through them Rodriguez asks us to elevate our social consciousness with empathy and inclusion. Says Rodriguez, "Through the narratives I choose, I bring whimsical, serious, and approachable aspects into my work. I realize that even when the content is heavy it can still be made accessible." ••• George Rodriguez is a graduate of the University of Washington's MFA program for ceramics, and he holds a BFA from the University of Texas, El Paso. He was the featured artist for Foster/White Gallery at the Seattle Art Fair in 2018, where he presented his first Mexican Zodiac series. An iteration of this series was also featured at Museum of Northwest Art in fall of 2018, honoring him as the recipient of the Museum of Northwest Art's Luminaries' Patti Warashina Award for Emerging Artists. His solo exhibition, Guardians, ran at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art in the spring of 2018. His work has been acquired by the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, and is part of many prestigious public and private collections around the country. Rodriguez continues to draw on his travels to 26 countries, on three continents, backed by the Bonderman Travel Fellowship, which he was awarded in 2010. Expanding on his studies of global culture and ceremony, Rodriguez seeks to bridge his Chicano heritage with Thai, Peruvian, Bolivian, Mongolian, Egyptian, Taiwanese, and Indonesian civilization and mythology.

it grew there uttering joyous leaves

Jennifer Reid

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic, wood, paper

Measurements:
12" x 64.5" x 16"

Date:
2020

Description:
Jennifer Reid's work is rooted in the study of the vessel form and the architecture of flowers. She sees each of these subjects as holding alluring notions of containment that are both metaphorical and physical. Using terracotta and porcelain paper clay as her primary medium, she builds sculptural vessels as a way to address concepts of desire, beauty, and intimacy that exist in both the botanical world and the human condition. In her work sculptural voids play with perception, or seduce the viewer to look closer. Space allows for dialogue between forms and reminds her that all objects are incomplete, vulnerable, and alive with energy. Working with many parts to create a whole, her sculptures are at once floral and figurative. ••• Jennifer Reid is a ceramic sculptor and educator. She earned her MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz and her BFA from the University of North Carolina at Asheville. She exhibits her work nationally, including at the ASU Art Museum Ceramics Research Center, The Clay Studio, The Clay Center of New Orleans, The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, Guilford Art Center, S. Tucker Cooke Gallery, Silvermine Galleries, and the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. Reid received local recognition through an emerging artist award from The Drew Friedman Community Art Center in Westport. She currently splits her time between working in her home studio in Southbury, Connecticut, and teaching art at both Fraser Woods Montessori School and Silvermine Arts Center. She is currently a member of the Silvermine Guild of Artists.

Leatherhards

Raymond Rorke

Medium & Materials:
Low-fired clay

Measurements:
24" x 4" x 36"

Date:
2018

Description:
These pieces are discards I rescued from the scrap barrels of a shared ceramic studio. My favorite stage of clay is the "leather hard" stage when the clay is firming up and becoming something — something whose form is set, but still recognizable as raw clay. When I rescue these anonymous fragments, it's an act of intervention, but without interference. I leave them intact, untouched, and, because they won't be reclaimed and mixed in a pugmill with the rest of the barrel's scraps, I am capturing — and performing — a moment of creation. Once fired, these moments of creation, preserved and gathered together, raise questions about the boundaries between object and material. At what point does an abandoned object become indistinguishable from the muck in a scrap barrel? When does a lump of clay become a recognizable object? Is a lump of clay itself an object? This collection also blurs definitions around making and ownership, chance and choice. When does one person's making end and another's begin? Is finding something an act of creation? Does it confer value? Whose art is this? ••• The conscious, orderly arrangement of these pieces is a practice called "knolling." The term knolling was first used in 1987 by a janitor at Frank Gehry's Knoll furniture design shop, where, each night, he would neatly arrange Gehry's drafting tools. It was a way of making working objects recognizable and readily accessible. Knolling has since become a practice performed by many artists and designers. It evokes archaeological finds displayed in museum collections, or exploded views of complex machinery, or even utensils hung on kitchen walls.

American Dream Byproduct

Heather Rosenbach

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic, mixed media

Measurements:
3" x 29" x 53"

Date:
2020

Description:
Palatably gauche as a two-left-footed ballerina and as tacky as shag carpeting, the self-flagellation and pseudo self-deprecation I express through my work serves both as a criticism of myself and the working class in which I was raised. I predominantly use craft or non-fine art materials that challenge American upper class aesthetics through their playful and undeniably handmade appearance. Narrative elements are developed by weaving satire between gravity and levity, referencing past wrongs and anxieties - feeling sometimes penitential. The purgation of ills and rabble of commisery leads me to the assumption that after all, I might as well be the first to get a laugh in. ••• Heather Rosenbach currently resides in Tampa, Florida, where she works in public service and teaches. She recently graduated with her MFA in ceramics from SUNY New Paltz in New York and previously earned her BFA from the University of South Florida. Rosenbach works in a multitude of craft media, drawing inspiration from the influences of sunshine laws, kitschy beach towns, and the pure color saturation of her local environment. She has work exhibited and privately owned across the United States and United Kingdom. Rosenbach has joined the art collective Crab Devil and its Peninsularium, a permanent and immersive art installation experience. In 2021 she will join other Florida artists for the Skyway 2020-2021: A Contemporary Collaboration exhibition across prominent Florida fine arts museums; she will be exhibiting in particular at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota.

A Field Trip Past the Oil Rigs

Harris Rosenblum

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
4" x 7" x 7"

Date:
2020

Description:
I like to think of the work I make as relics of the influence of social forces on the natural world. In my work, I attempt to evince the motivations of represented landscape by using the earth as its own language. I am interested in the memory and drive of places entangled in political circumstance and gentrification and how these places would reform if suddenly isolated. ••• Harris Rosenblum is an artist and educator currently living and working in the Boston area. He primarily works with clay and open source software. He likes thinking about utopian futures with no cops, money, or property, where everything is art and everyone makes things they care about because they aren't constrained.

Irrepressible

Judith Rosenthal

Medium & Materials:
Porcelain, paper clay

Measurements:
12" x 14" x 21"

Date:
2020

Description:
I delight in working with clay. The pull and the pinch. The rough and the smooth. Most of my work is inspired by the beauty in nature. I try to bring natural beauty to my work by using forms that are reminiscent of the sea, the earth, plants, trees, and wind. I approach my work with a sculptural attitude although some of my work can be functional.The use of paper clay presents opportunities for creating pieces that are impossible with other clay bodies. I use very thin clay that gives my work an atmospheric effect of elegance and poetry, expressing the fragility of life and its delicate beauty. Contrasts of glazed and unglazed portions of my pieces are of interest to me. I also like to use varieties of textures juxtaposed to create subtle embellishment. Part of every day should be a joyful and beautiful experience. Appreciating and making art does, in some unexplainable way, give me that joy. ••• Judith Rosenthal was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and presently lives in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Starting at the Fleischer Art Memorial in Philadelphia as a young child, Judith has continued her arts education throughout her life at almost every art institution in the Philadelphia area. Judith has degrees in Interior Design and Education from Drexel University. She has taught art to children for twenty-five years. In 1996 she received "The Teacher of the Year Award" from the Alloway Township Board of Education, Alloway NJ.

Morning Light

Amanda Salov

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
4" x variable x 36"

Date:
2020

Description:
Amanda Salov is an artist whose work examines the qualities of a moment, or the idea of a moment in physical form: temporal, fragile and fleeting. These moments are plastic, sometimes they seem to stretch translucent thin, changing in strength and quality. Our settings can have a profound effect on how we as individuals process and cope with the details of our own interconnected lives. At times, it helps to know that some things will be constant while other things change. I find comfort in this dichotomy - things both constant and reliable while at once ever-changing - mirrored in the bodies of sea and sky. I seek to bring such things to attention in my porcelain sculptures and installations using these natural phenomena as metaphors and anchors for the transitions we all face. I ask for my work to listen rather than to profess loudly, I want it to be present, stable, but dynamic like the sea and the sky. ••• Raised in Cambridge, Wisconsin, Amanda Salov earned a BFA from the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater and an MFA from the University of Missouri - Columbia. She has shown extensively and earned a number of awards, including being named an NCECA Emerging Artist, a recipient of three Oregon Arts Council grants, a Ford Family Foundation Grant, and a Washington State Artist Trust Grant. Salov has worked at Anderson Ranch Art Center, University of Arkansas, Oregon College of Art and Craft, The Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramics Arts, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, University of Washington, Oregon State University, Tainan National University of the Arts in Taiwan, Ash Street Project, The Reykjavik School of Visual Arts, and Pottery Northwest. She is currently a studio artist in Seattle, Washington.

Restless

Corran Shrimpton

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic, decals

Measurements:
26" x 23" x 19"

Date:
2020

Description:
By combining the familiarity of the human form with unexpected elements, I make figurative ceramic sculptures that contend with the classical definition of the genre. My work externalizes and distorts emotion, inviting the viewer to investigate, empathize, and connect with it from a new perspective. My figures battle against the long history of heroic male statues and nude females through the male gaze. While many of my pieces are of the female nude, they are not sexualized nor are they trying to conform to traditional beauty standards. Additionally, I experiment with how to infringe on the figure, whether it be a surface pattern, moving parts, compartments, segmented parts, or multiple figures in one. I am inspired by the quiet intimate moments one experiences in solitude. These are often emotional experiences related to anxiety and depression but also universal states such as loss, longing, hope, and even boredom. I create sculptures that prompt the viewer to reexamine the relationship between their own physical body and emotional interiority. ••• Corran Shrimpton is from Syracuse, New York. She earned her BFA with a minor in philosophy from Alfred University, and is the recipient of the Lisa Elwell Ceramic Artist Endowed Encouragement Award. Shrimpton has exhibited throughout the U.S. She has worked at the Saratoga Clay Arts Center in Saratoga Springs and the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach as the sculpture artist in residence and has recently accepted an offer as artist in residence at Lillstreet Art Center in Chicago.

There there

Anna Marie Valenti

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
13" x 35.75" x 11"

Date:
2020

Description:
Anna Valenti is a ceramic artist born in New York and raised throughout the United States. She creates woven and pinched clay vessels ranging from pots to chairs to screens. Her heavily touched installations highlight the emotional valence of crafted spaces and the objects that inhabit them. Valenti earned her BA in psychology from the University of Colorado Boulder, studied there again as a ceramics post-baccalaureate student, and earned her MFA in studio arts from the Maine College of Art. She has exhibited nationally at the Visual Arts Complex, Bray North Gallery, Tippetts & Eccles Gallery, Soo Visual Arts Center, New System Exhibitions, and Hyde Museum. Valenti is the recipient of the Professional Development and Creative Entrepreneurship Grant (2019) and NCECA Graduate Student Fellowship (2020). Her research is in hemp clay bodies.

Rest in Yellow and Roses

Stephanie Wilhelm

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
.5" x 10" x 12"

Date:
2020

Description:
I find inspiration in the history of decorative ceramics moving beyond conventional function and form, creating union between shape, ornamentation, and story. One particular theme in my work uses narratives of the dog to communicate the internal sense of belonging and comfort formed through companionship. These large decorative pieces are used not to convey a specific animal, but instead a feeling and our innate desire to belong. Aside from what dogs provide us emotionally in our current lives, within many canonic masterpieces they were essential to the meaning of the piece and depicted to symbolize protection, loyalty, and love. In my most recent body of work I am interested in how the layers of pattern and texture can call attention to the piece, provide visual direction, and emphasize depth within its decorative surface. A new interest in sewing has encouraged me to incorporate visual elements influenced by how patterns meet at a seam. They can interrupt one another, feel swallowed by an edge, or emphasize a rim and change our perception of the form. The work I make requires a great deal of hand painting and sitting down with each piece encourages me to ask questions about the relation between functional and decorative form. ••• Stephanie Wilhelm is a ceramic artist from Maryland who holds a BFA from Elizabethtown College and an MFA from the University of Florida. She was a 2018-2019 Artist in Residence at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and is a dedicated educator with experience in outreach, community, and university studios. Wilhelm references the history of decorative ceramics through her forms. She uses floral patterns and texture to evoke nostalgia and a sense of belonging, as well as providing visual direction and emphasizing depth.

Vena #3

Shiyuan Xu

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
10.5" x 11" x 19.5"

Date:
2020

Description:
My work is inspired by the research of scientific and microscopic phenomena ranging from single-celled organisms in the ocean to diverse plant seeds on land, and to cells, the building blocks of all life forms. My fascination with shapes, patterns, structures and textures of these microorganisms stimulates my creation. I reinterpret these visual elements into sculptural forms revealing the intricacy and fragility of the hidden world. In D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form, the form of an object is a "diagram of forces." I see the structure of these micro life forms as traces of their growth and response to internal and external forces. It is about movement, time, and space, recording the way they move and grow, and the ways react to the surrounding environment by interacting, altering, evolving, and adapting to generate infinite new forms. I hand build structures with porcelain paperclay, and I use unconventional processes to apply glazes. The materials allow me to push the boundaries of fragility and strength, simplicity and complexity, order and chaos. Meticulously, the thin skeletal lines are woven into a harmonious volume. The regular and irregular structures and layers also contain the memory of my sensations. They are in many ways like living organisms, reflections of my own life path, and an abstraction of the complexity and delicacy of life itself. ••• Shiyuan Xu was born in Hangzhou, P.R China. She currently lives and works in Chicago. Xu earned her BA in ceramics from China Academy of Art in 2012, and her MFA from Arizona State University in 2016. She has been awarded several prestigious artist-in-residency programs across the country, such as the Archie Bray Foundation, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Lawrence Arts Center, and Lillstreet Art Center. Xu is the recipient of Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist of 2017. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including the U.S., U.K., Slovenia, China, and South Korea, and her work has been added to the permanent collections at San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, Archie Bray Foundation, Korea Ceramic Foundation and the National Museum of Slovenia.

Jinsik Yoo

Dancer 3

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
20" x 29" x 14"

Date:
2020

Description:
I repeatedly cut and attach the slab pieces to switch the image of the figure from being representative to symbolic. The process of randomly cutting clay slabs with drawn images using various tools is much like cutting up a picture with a scissors in order to create a puzzle. Some people may see humans, animals, plants, or architecture through this method of abstraction. I enjoy the visual disconnect, as it serves as a portal through which the viewer may enter. Growing up queer in South Korea with a strict moral code influenced my interest in using symbols to communicate, as the message is disguised through another language only those that know could understand. My background studies of graphic design further enhanced my knowledge of how to utilize color, line, shape, and form, so that I can manipulate, cut up, and reshape the context of what the viewer is seeing. With clay I find that I am able to create sculpture that remains abstract yet references the human form, which I understand to be complex and exists with many layers composed of histories, experiences, and emotions. Through the mash up of 2-D and 3-D work I explore issues relative to my life, including gender binaries, and how memory affects our perception and conscious decision making.

The Edge of the World

Rebecca Zweibel

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
6" x 8" x 10"

Date:
2020

Description:
My pieces serve as a canvas for my use of line and color, and their various forms allow me to express different ideas of volume and even sometimes function. The use of dark clay beneath the applied colored layers enables me to use sgrafitto to outline and scratch and scribble which expresses my feelings of freedom and abandon. I work instinctively and thoughtfully, with no preplanned design in mind. Clay provides me with infinite challenges that I look forward to solving every day. ••• Rebecca Zweibel works primarily in earthenware clay which she fires multiple times to achieve her desired surface. Her pieces are handbuilt and often freeform, sometimes using her own molds for a base to start from and adding thrown elements. Her sculptural forms offer a feeling of containment; color, texture and scratched-in line work add to the sense of vibrancy in her work.

Cloud Creamsicle

Carolina Alamilla

Medium & Materials:
Ceramic

Measurements:
16" x 20"

Date:
2020

Description:
Clouds and fruit—these motifs represent my experience of home. Colors and playfulness are the tools I use to recreate the memories of home. It is necessary that I detach myself from the details and relive from a standpoint of preservation. The objects produced are so far removed from their original seed of inspiration that they live in a future space, one where freshness is prioritized over truth. This requires an inherent questioning of the concept of home, or hogar. Throughout this process of interrogation, I have found it useful to refer to the interior as “homespace” and the exterior as “city/landscape”. These environments help shape our development--interiors and exteriors communicating with one another; they impact our evolving personalities, our habits, and our sense of cultural identity. In this work, my intention is to understand the essence of these things and manifest that essence into tidy, organized presentations. I’ve neatly cataloged my memories so that they can exist in a public hogar, away from their reality.