INVITED ARTISTS
ROBERTO LUGO
BIOGRAPHY
Roberto Lugo is an American artist, ceramicist, social activist, spoken word poet, and educator. Lugo uses porcelain as his medium of choice, illuminating its aristocratic surface with imagery of poverty, inequality, and social and racial injustice. Lugo’s works are multicultural mash-ups, traditional European and Asian porcelain forms and techniques reimagined with a 21st-century street sensibility. Their hand-painted surfaces feature classic decorative patterns and motifs combined with elements of modern urban graffiti and portraits of individuals whose faces are historically absent on this type of luxury item - people like Sojourner Truth, Dr. Cornel West, and The Notorious BIG, as well as Lugo’s family members and, very often, himself. Lugo holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Penn State. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, among others. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2019 Pew Fellowship, a Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize, and a US Artist Award. His work is found in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The High Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Brooklyn Museum, Walters Art Museum, and more. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia, PA.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Known for his graffiti-inspired porcelain sculptures, Roberto Lugo’s work centers around the notion of representation. Specifically, representing the culture and struggles faced within Black and Latinx communities through the lens of craft history. Lugo chooses to depict Civil Rights leaders, hip hop artists, musicians, writers, and cultural figures representative of Black and Latinx culture. Their likeness is elevated to a space that was historically inaccessible to people of color. Drawing from iconic forms, such as an urn or a teapot, Lugo works with the existing associations inherent to a form, while adding his own stylized imagery and content. The result is a complex, contradictory body of work that embodies both poverty and resilience as well as opulence and wealth. He combines status symbols from European society and urban America to create works of art that cross boundaries and weave together seemingly disparate cultures into one multifaceted vision.
MAC MCCUSKER
BIOGRAPHY
Mac McCusker is a ceramic artist working in Durham, NC as the studio manager at Claymakers. Before moving to Durham he spent four years at Odyssey Clayworks as a resident artist and instructor. Mac received his MFA from Georgia State University and taught at Armstrong State University in Savannah, GA.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I am a transgender ceramic artist. While being trans is not a choice, being visible and therefore vulnerable is. I do not neatly fit into a box. In my work, I am addressing inequality, prejudice, and fears of otherness. The bathroom laws targeting transgender people are promoting those fears and injustices. These laws promote discrimination against gay, bisexual, transgender, genderqueer, and intersex people. It catapults transgender individuals into the spotlight and forces their private lives into a public dialogue. These preconceptions of trans and gender non-conforming persons are why I have put myself on display despite my discomfort. It has become my own mission to both educate and inform through my work. I occasionally use humor in my work to make it approachable and relatable to a less informed audience. I incorporate my story and portrait into ongoing narratives about transgender individuals. It is an effort to place myself and others like me onto a broader platform where identity can be discussed, amplifying the voices of those of us whose lives are affected by stigma and stereotyping.
KEITH SMITH
BIOGRAPHY
Keith Wallace Smith is a figurative sculptor and educator working primarily in ceramics and cast metal. He received a bachelor of science in art education at Morgan State University and went on to attend graduate school at The University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, where he received a MFA in 1999. He is currently Associate Professor of Sculpture and Ceramics at Kennesaw State University.
Prior to his tenure at Kennesaw State University Smith’s teaching and administrative experience has included positions as associate educator for the Baltimore Museum of Art, program coordinator of Art in State Buildings and teaching lab specialist at The University of Florida. He also received positions as visiting assistant professor at Georgia Southern University and lecturer/technician at Northern Kentucky University.
Smith’s work employs the use of varied scale, fragmentation and gesture to approach the figure; he shares his process and hand-building techniques with students and the general pubic through teaching and workshops. His work is included in the collection of the Montgomery Museum of Art, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Contemporary Ceramic Arts Museum, Izmit-Değirmendere, Turkey and in several teaching collections throughout the southeast such as Florida Atlantic University, Georgia Southern University and Appalachian State University.
Smith continues to exhibit regionally and nationally, his work has been published inConfrontational Clayby Judith Shwartz,The Figure in ClayI & II by Suzanne Tourtillottt,500 Figures in Clay: Ceramic Artists celebrate the Human Formby Veronika Gunter, “Poetic Expressions of Morality: Figurative Ceramics From The Porter/Price Collection”,Clay and Glazes for the Potterby Daniel Rhodes andEnough Violence:Artists Speak Outby Paul Schifino.
ARTIST STATEMENT
As an artist my primary interest is in creating narrative work that connects with the viewer on an intuitive level. This narrative is often expressed through use of the figure, implied motion, materiality, scale, process and form. The work is inspired from folklore, my own experiences, beliefs, or concerns, and is created with the expectation that people will find something in the work they relate to personally. It generates a sense of empathy or contemplation, conveying motion and emotion, through gesture, expression and color. Installation, modeling, surface and composition are used to draw in the viewer and further inform the work. To affect how the viewer relates I often change the size of the piece, working on a monumental or intimate scale. Use of monumental scale and isolation of the main areas of gesture focuses viewer attention and encroaches on personal space. This, in essence, magnifies the work and the issues it addresses. Use of intimate scale creates a sense of voyeurism, looking in on a moment without the knowledge of the subject.
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PAUL ANDREW WANDLESS
BIOGRAPHY
Paul Andrew Wandless was born in Miami, FL and grew up in Smyrna, DE. He earned his BFA in ceramics and sculpture from the University of Delaware, his MA in ceramics from Minnesota State University—Mankato, and his MFA in ceramics and printmaking from Arizona State University. While earning his MA and MFA, he worked with art historians to study different styles of writing in the visual arts. After finishing graduate school, Wandless taught and worked as a studio artist in the greater Philadelphia area for ten years. He currently lives and maintains a studio in Chicago, IL.
His sculptures and prints feature ceramic processes, printmaking methods, and a wide variety of sculptural techniques and mediums. He uses clay, printmaking, stone-carving, mold- making, leatherworking, metalsmithing, wood carving, and painting in combination or individually for creation of his works. His clay work, prints, and sculptures have been widely exhibited since 1995, including a solo exhibition at the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in 2017. His artworks are published in sixteen books and collected privately and publicly. In addition to thirty articles published in national and international clay publications, Wandless is the author of Image Transfer on Clay, 500 Prints on Clay, and Image & Design Transfer Techniques. He is coauthor of Alternative Kilns & Firing Techniques and contributing author for ten clay technique books.
Wandless has given close to one hundred workshops regarding his art, techniques, and research around the US and Canada. He lectures frequently and sits on panels addressing a wide range of topics in the arts, from technique and process to aesthetics and art theory. He has received Minnesota State University—Mankato Distinguished Young Alumni Award and the Outstanding Achievement Award from the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA). He is also featured in the American Ceramic Society DVD Fundamentals of Screen Printing on Clay with Paul Andrew Wandless.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I am a storyteller and my artwork is a vehicle through which I share my voice. As a artist, craftsman, and writer, I engage and inform the viewer both visually and intellectually in both medium and process. My personal philosophies and concerns manifest as musings, stories, or philosophical statements, which then take form as visual narratives through my work —often as figurative art or pictorial scenes.
My clay prints and prints on paper—the most direct interpretations of my creative writings—tell stories and share insights. My mythologized philosophy, symbology, and narratives show up in pictorial format, which allows for the use of compositional geometry to imbed multiple layers of coded information. I make room for the viewer to decipher and interpret the narratives manifest in the compositional arrangements of objects and symbolism of the imagery contained in the prints. My sculptural figures are metaphorical interpretations, or personas, of musings and concerns, which have come into being through clay and stone—like putting a face to an emotion (or in this case a figure to an idea).
My artistic point of view is filtered through my own personal experiences as a Black artist, craftsman, and writer. I want the viewer to reflect on something from the dialogue and storytelling occurring between them and me, through my work. Then hopefully, due to this shared experience, the person will feel a commonality or recognition of the narrative I’m communicating through my art.
JURIED SELECTION
SOOJIN CHOI
BIOGRAPHY
Soojin Choi was born and raised in South Korea, and she has worked as an artist in the United States since 2010. Soojin 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 a MFA degree in ceramics in 2018. After graduate school, she accepted a residency at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, MN with funding by Anonymous Artist Studio Fellowship. Currently, she is a long-term resident artist at Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, MT. Her work transforms objects, figures and spaces into visual language by repeatedly layering flat and spatial surfaces.
ARTIST STATEMENT
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.
SEAN CLUTE
BIOGRAPHY
Sean Clute grew up in the Chicago area. He has been a builder since he could remember. He has built with many different materials. When he first touched clay, it allowed him to speak through material for the first time. He used his mesmerizing interest in people and filtered it into clay. This pursuit has carried him through graduating from the University of Montana. Then opportunities for residencies at The Clay Studio of Missoula, St. Pete Clay Co. and Lillstreet Art Center. During this time, he has been published in 500 Figures in Clay vol. 2, shown in NCECA's National Juried Show Visual Voices: Truth Narratives, Arrowmont School of Arts and Craft New Forms and much more. He has just recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This piece ‘Political Influence’ was a part of his MFA Show Surrounding Circumstances.
ARTIST STATEMENT
As we engage the world around us, there are moments that will test our character. I look to capture that honest response where our true personality comes to surface. To be able to get this response, I surround these figures in a scene that makes them respond in a specific way. The scene pressures the personality and encapsulates the figures in this moment in time. This subsequently reveals what is at the core of each person. I break down their psychology to project an honest response to the scene. Just as an actor would dissolve the nuances of a character, I will give cause to this response. This gives each character I make an individual piece of my soul.
Within my projects, I push myself to expand my reaches of the human form. When I make my figures, I look at the diverse range the world offers and reflect that in my work. Within that comprehension, I can project the layers of their innermost self. I use subtle indifferences to the pose, the face, and the clothes to reinforce a response or to push the demeanor in a unique direction. By understanding the character’s position, physically and mentally, the pose can drape a mood onto the piece and provokes a conversation with the figure. This is when the personality can come to the surface and react to the scene. I will look at the scene as a whole and play the character’s natural reaction. I will stop the action at the climax of the moment or one that reflects his or her personality correctly. After the reaction is set, I can go back and add elements that make the viewer ask why this person is doing what they are doing. This can give further reason to the action or just add to the informal nature of the scene. My figures reflect everyday people that are burdened by the weight the world gives them.
CHRISTOPHER DANCE
BIOGRAPHY
Christopher M. Dance is a figurative sculptor from Indianapolis, IN. Dance’s classical figurative approach exists as an anachronism and also as a celebration of history, craft, and the beauty and mystery of the human form and psyche. He is a classically trained artist who studied at Herron School of Art and Design, as well as in Italy. Dance has been a teacher at Pike High School in Indianapolis for 12 years serving as the main ceramics and sculpture instructor.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Universal themes and delicate mysteries evoke the power and drama of the posture and gesture and create a play between subject and viewer. I am intrigued by what the form reveals and conceals by ways of movement and dialogue, and I seek to capture the moment where physicality bends to the realm of the unseen and the magic of our everyday existence is revealed.
HEATHER KAPLAN
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Heather Kaplan is an artist, educator, and researcher who studies studio artmaking and early childhood education. She is interested in notions of play and materiality, community, contemporary artmaking practices, and storytelling. Theoretical investigations of epistemology and ontology prevail as reiterative themes in her writing, research, and pedagogical and artistic practice. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art Education at the University of Texas El Paso
ARTIST STATEMENT
My studio practice revolves around play and experimentation and the pieces that I create convey the language of toys, figurines, and collectibles in their form, content, and size. Because of their size, what they are made of, their interchangeability, and their figurative qualities my works deal with the imaginative. Like figurines and toys my work begs to be arranged, rearranged, and played with. Texture and form drive my decision making as well as a desire to keep the content and narrative fluid. I work in primarily in low fire clay where I render some of the forms by hand and others are caste and altered. I apply many layers of glaze and re-fire the pieces in order to achieve my surfaces.
I am drawn to complex forms and textures and find that my decision making in terms of what elements to include for others to later play with, curate, and rearrange has to do with an interest in figuration, pattern (particularly where pattern and repetition break down into texture) and an exploration of play and childlike aesthetics –the aesthetics of carnival, festival, imagination, and play. I also assume that what I am drawn to play with, to rearrange, to look at more closely, and am generally fascinated with will catch the fascination of others. I work with and foster this interest and through this experimentation with forms, color, and texture, I am questioning aesthetics of interaction, play, and adult relations to children and childhood.
BIANCA LOSCOCCO
BIOGRAPHY
Bianca Loscocco is a ceramicist from Natick, MA born in 1994. She received her BFA in Ceramics from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2016. Since that time she has been dedicating herself to clay and parallel explorations of the body such as yoga and figure modeling. She completed an internship at Baltimore Clayworks from 2016-17, followed by a residency at the Mother Brook Center for Community Arts in Dedham, MA from 2018-19, and a Studio Staff positon at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in 2019. She currently lives in Taos, New Mexico and is pursuing her second year of apprenticeship with Logan Wannamaker, where she maintains a practice of making, wood firing, and seeking out wild clays or other local materials to incorporate into her work.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work finds its meaning through process: it is an ongoing practice of growth and self-creation, a metaphor for the making of myself. Each object I make in clay is an expression of my inner experience, a moment of intuition. It indicates the shape and state of my emotional container, and so it is ultimately a self-portrait. I find this to hold true for pots just as much as it does for a sculpture modeled after my own body. In allowing my work to exist as an expression of something indescribable within myself, it is my hope that it can elicit something similarly nebulous in the viewer. I wish to create space for folks to feel seen and recognized for parts of themselves that seem to slip through the cracks of our conscious understanding. I strive to embrace my own liminality and that of everything around me - to understand that all things exist in a state of ongoing transition and growth. I achieve this level of communication with my viewers and understanding of myself through any means necessary - I coil, throw, sculpt, hollow, pit fire, wood fire, dig for clay, test, and play. I prefer to fire my work in atmospheric kilns whenever possible, because during that process a collaboration occurs between the maker and the elements to bring the piece to its final form. The result reminds us that our own bodies and experiences are much the same: a collaboration between our own spirit and the world around us.
ANGEL LUNA
BIOGRAPHY
Angel Olegario Luna was born and raised in Prosser, Washington. He graduated from Whitworth University with a Bachelor of Arts in history. He completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in ceramics/sculpture at Eastern Washington University in 1998. He received his Masters of Fine Arts at University of Idaho in 2002. He is a residential faculty of art at Mesa Community College in Mesa, Arizona. Angel enjoys doing workshops and lectures about his life and artwork. He has presented at many colleges and universities over the years. His artwork has been in multiple national juried exhibits, invitational exhibits and solo exhibits over the last decade. He has artwork in the collections of Western Nevada College, Carson City, Nevada; South Cobb Arts Alliance, Mableton, Georgia; Arts For All Inc., Tucson, Arizona; and Northwest College, Powell, Wyoming.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I have worked in figurative art methods for the last twenty years. I grew up working in farm fields, so I find clay to be like keeping my hands in the earth as I did as a child. My work is based on current political issues in the United States, especially immigration. Gente Not Numbers is a series I started in 2004 after an invitation to make work for a show dealing with sense of place. The series is of farm workers with false social security numbers on their chests or in hidden locations on the body. Workers are not just numbers you can replace, but also the experiences of being and interacting with the worker. The clothing is based on actual examples from my time as a field laborer and being part of a family of laborers. Who is Your Superhero? is my new series branching out from Gente Not Numbers. It is based on farmworkers who are essential and critical at bringing food to our dining room tables. This pandemic has shown that these workers are critical for society to function.
KATELYN ODENHEIMER
BIOGRAPHY
Katelyn Odenheimer (she/her/hers) is an artist based in Shawnee, Colorado. Odenheimer studied Art History at the University of Colorado Denver (BA) and Ceramics at Metropolitan State University of Denver (BFA). She works primarily in clay, exploring human anatomy and the relationship between physiological and psychological states. Intrigued by chance and atmospheric soda firing, Odenheimer incorporates non-traditional materials and tools into her practice. In 2020, she was awarded Best of Show in D'art Gallery's juried Spot On exhibition and in 2021, received Juror's Choice in Edge Gallery's On Edge juried exhibition and was hand-selected to exhibit at The Other Art Fair presented by Saatchi Art in Brooklyn, NY. Odenheimer is a member and studio assistant at the Arvada Ceramic Arts Guild.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Atria
The heart is both a vital organ and a forceful image, real and symbolic, literal and figurative. It is the center of vitality, houses the soul, and encompasses the innermost emotions. The anatomical hearts that make up Atria represent the anxiety and panic that consumes me. Conceptually, each form demonstrates the relationship between my physiological and psychological states: converting neurotic, obsessive thoughts, and the debilitating physical symptoms of anxiety attacks into a positive act of creating. I meticulously sculpt one porcelain form a day, allowing time for self-connection, a release of emotion, ritual, and a moment that is captured in time. Each form has life, a story that is burned and petrified by fire.
I am drawn to the process-based and meditative aspects of working in clay. Porcelain traditionally embodies perfection but here, through a tactile, responsive, and intuitive approach to making, the surface is marked by the process. Likewise, the glazed surfaces result from a highly unpredictable atmospheric firing. Each form is fired repeatedly until the surface variations genuinely reflect my mental state. I collaborate with the tools and materials that I use, allowing for accident, chance, and serendipity to take effect. By giving in to a process and allowing for it to dictate the results I can work to similarly relinquish control in my own life, thus releasing me from the pressures of living with a mental illness.
Chance and accident are inevitable in life. The forms ultimately become a representation of self. Synthesizing personal experiences through self-expression with fate and coincidental occurrences from the firing. There is a presence of the unpredictable. Much like how experiences and hardships leave imprints on a person. No two forms are identical just as no two humans experience anxiety the same way. The atrium of porcelain hearts float gracefully in space, allowing for an immersive experience, a space for deep thinking, inquisition, and transformation.
KATY OSTRONIC
BIOGRAPHY
Katy is a potter and Pittsburgh native who specializes in wheel-thrown, altered, carved porcelain. After spending 8 years as an Art Educator she turned into a full-time artist in 2021. Katy spent the last few years of her teaching career overseas in Yangon, Myanmar and her time in Southeast Asia has inspired her pottery immensely. The lush tropical plants, gorgeous ornate buildings, and daily sights and sounds are all represented in Katy’s porcelain forms and carvings. The patterns she uses are all her own compositions based on a compilation of views from her travels.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I focus my sculptural creative energy on making elegant forms that shed light on atrocities occurring across the globe, specifically focusing on Myanmar. My goal in creating this work is to bring awareness to the unrest in Myanmar after the ruthless military seized power in a coup d’état on February 1, 2021. This work intends to capture the rise of the Spring Revolution against the military junta led by the brave and beautiful citizens of Myanmar.
DEREK REEVERTS
BIOGRAPHY
Derek Reeverts grew up in rural Illinois surrounded by faith and farming. He received his MFA in ceramics from Miami University of Ohio in 2009 and his BFA in ceramics from Western Illinois University in 1999. He has been the Ceramics area Teaching Lab Specialist for the University of Florida since 2013. His work deals with satirical reflections of human nature through small-scale figurative ceramics.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I have a question for you.
The idea of identity carries much of my attention. What makes us who we are and why do we do the things we do? In my work, I try to pay a great deal of attention to addressing the questions that I ask myself in order to help define the world around me as well as the events that take place. The intent of addressing these questions is not necessarily to come to an answer.
My inspiration comes from the flaws and foibles of human nature, to me they are the most interesting and defining part of what make us human. By examining these flaws I try to create a dialogue of the universal so that the work has the ring of truth that everyone can access on some level. I attempt to create expression and predicament that has a subtle sense of gravity while, at the same time, adding levity with an element of satire.
My work draws upon the rich history of the ceramic figurine because it has often been used in a ritual and mythic sense and also as a means of cultural and personal identification. I see these figures, much like the adages and archetypes that they are titled with, as a reservoir of cultural investment that changes with us as we change. I like to skirt and play with the gray area between kitsch and fine art and that of the hand-made figures before the industrial revolution and the production figures that came after.
The fact that each figure has a certain production aesthetic while all being hand fabricated is very important to me. I work on a small scale because I believe it allows a more intimate connection with the piece while still allowing the viewer a broad exploration into the individual reality of each work. Along with my strong interest in pop culture and illustration, I attempt to create figures that carry in them a hybridization of the old and the new while still carrying a flavor of middle America from which they are born. The figures that I create are parts of my self identity and my experiences. I try to use them as a lens through which I focus my self-exploration, questions and observations about life. They embody my wonderment and discovery of the world, but also my apprehension and fears.
PATRICIA SHAW
ARTIST STATEMENT
My sculpture is the result of my reflections and observations of the outside world. It is seldom an expression of my personal life, exterior or interior. I find the outside world far more interesting and more important for my well being and peace of mind. My work is primarily concerned with content. The forms and techniques I use are those which seem to best suit the content of the particular piece. My work is sometimes surrealistic or even fantastic. Other times it is very straightforward and almost literal as to what it is trying to convey. At yet other times the meaning has been expressed unconsciously and even I cannot be sure of it.