CLAY NATIONAL XVIII
INVITED ARTISTS
AWARDS
Best in Show: $500
Sonia Simoun ‘Continuum’
Staff Selection: $250
Kade HB ‘Tafoni Mug’
People’s Choice: $100
Anna Valenti ‘Woven Cup’
2024 Exhibition Theme:
The Handle
Juried by Sanam Emami
Sponsored by Larry Cohen
Exhibition on display
August 26th - October 5th, 2024
First Friday Reception September 6th, 6-8PM
Carbondale Clay National is an exhibition of ceramic art held annually at the CCC Gallery in Carbondale, CO. Each year CCC’s selected juror(s) develop a theme for the exhibition, invite a handful of contemporary ceramic artists who emulate the theme, and choose about 25-30 works from the jury pool.
Humans have been tinkering with the idea of how to hold artifacts and pots since they began to make them. From cups and teapots to buckets and trays, handles allow us to hold, carry and embrace pots and many other objects in our daily lives. The handle of any object becomes a bridge between the object and the user or viewer, it extends out to us and much as we extend out to it.
George Simmel in his 1911 essay ‘The Handle’, describes “The unconscious criterion for the aesthetic effect of the handle seems to be the manner in which its shape harmonizes these two worlds - the world on the outside that, with the handle, makes its claim on the vessel, and the world of art that, heedless of the other, demands the handle for itself.” As the juror, I am excited to see an expansive and diverse interpretation of what a handle is and how the handle bridges the world of the vessel/object/container and the space of the viewer/user.
- Sanam Emami
Exhibiting Artists
Click an image to learn more about each artist and their work below.
JUROR BIOGRAPHY
Sanam Emami is a studio potter living in Fort Collins, CO with her husband Del Harrow and their son William. She received a BA in History from James Madison University in Virginia, and an MFA in Ceramics from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Pottery at Colorado State University. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor in Ceramics at Alfred University, resident artist at the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana, and has lectured at the Office for the Arts at Harvard University; the Kansas City Art Institute; Arizona State University Art Museum-Ceramic Research Center, and NCECA in Louisville, Kentucky. She received a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant for Craft and her work has been in exhibitions at numerous galleries across the country including The Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston; The Art-Stream Nomadic Gallery; Harvey Meadows Gallery, Aspen; Schaller Gallery; Hostler Burrows.