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Lauren Francescone & Rebecca Ramsey: Homebody at Galerie ...

2026-10-20T16:23:00Z

Lauren Francescone & Rebecca Ramsey: Homebody at Galerie d’Outremont, Montréal

Lauren Francescone & Rebecca Ramsey: Homebody is on view at Galerie d’Outremont, Montréal
September 9 – November 1, 2026
Essay by Anaïs Castro
The home is often imagined as the place where the self begins: a space of retreat, intimacy, habit, and protection. Yet a home is never simply a shelter. Homes absorb histories, regulate movement, mediate relationships, and quietly shape the ways bodies inhabit space. It is an extension of the body, a vessel for memory, a system of boundaries, and a site where invisible forces such as care, labour, technology, desire, contamination, and communication circulate continuously. Walls regulate intimacy as skin regulates touch; windows are like eyes that open onto the world. Long before architecture became an object of design, the house functioned as a living organism, mediating our relationship to the world. At the heart of Lauren Francescone and Rebecca Ramsey’s two-person exhibition lies this simple yet expansive proposition: that the body and the home are reciprocal structures through which we understand ourselves and our relationship to the surrounding world.
Having developed an ongoing dialogue over the past four years through their respective ceramic practices, Francescone and Ramsey have discovered a remarkable convergence of interests while maintaining distinct artistic voices. Both approach clay as a material capable of registering transformation while investigating domestic space as a site where intimacy and broader ecological, technological, and cultural systems intersect. Developed through parallel residencies in the spring of 2026—Francescone at Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park in Japan and Ramsey at Medalta in Alberta—the works presented here mark a significant evolution in both artists’ practices. These residencies afforded opportunities to work at a larger scale while deepening an engagement with ceramic processes, particularly reduction firing and soda firing. In the gallery space, the resulting sculptures create a deconstructed domestic environment.
The exhibition’s title, Homebody, evokes a term often used to describe someone who prefers the familiarity of home to the bustle of public life. It suggests someone choosing withdrawal, introversion, or even social disengagement. Yet in recent years, the home has become increasingly charged as a place where care and labour converge and where work and private life collapse into one another. For both Francescone and Ramsey, home is understood not as a stable refuge but as a permeable organism whose boundaries are constantly negotiated. Their works suggest that isolation is never absolute. Even the most private spaces remain entangled with networks of communication, energy, and exchange. The home is simultaneously as sanctuary and an interface, a shelter and a conduit, a place where vulnerability is both protected and revealed.
Clay is uniquely suited to such an inquiry. Before becoming ceramic, clay remains infinitely responsive and capable of recording the slightest pressure of a hand while preserving traces of time itself. Once fired, it becomes fixed, durable, yet perpetually vulnerable to fracture. Francescone and Ramsey approach clay as a conceptual material whose transformations mirror broader cycles of ecological, bodily, and technological change. Fire, pressure, crystallization, sedimentation, drying, melting, and fracture are not merely technical processes but metaphors for the conditions through which contemporary life itself is experienced.
For Lauren Francescone, the domestic interior has become increasingly entangled with invisible technological infrastructures. Contemporary homes are saturated with signals, networks, wireless transmissions, and glowing screens that quietly organize everyday life while remaining largely imperceptible. Rather than opposing digital technologies to handcrafted making, Francescone proposes unexpected continuities between them. Both involve systems of transformation, the transmission of energy, and acts of translation.
Her ceramic sculptures borrow from familiar domestic and architectural forms while subtly destabilizing their functions. These recognizable objects become strangely autonomous, inviting viewers to consider the hidden infrastructures they normally overlook. The apartment buzzer, for instance, becomes more than a practical device: it marks the invisible thresholds that regulate access, belonging, and exclusion within urban life. Likewise, fused glass works evoke luminous screens, or portals through which perception itself becomes mediated.
Francescone’s practice is deeply invested in the sensuous qualities of ceramics. Saturated glazes, richly coloured surfaces, and carefully composed forms recall both the decorative traditions of pottery and the visual language of graphic design. Yet beneath this seductive materiality lies an ongoing meditation on communication itself. Electricity moving through wires, heat circulating within a kiln, information travelling through digital networks—all depend upon invisible forms of energy that transform one state into another. Earth becomes stone through fire; raw matter becomes image or interface. The ancient alchemy of ceramics quietly parallels the magic of digital communication.
Rebecca Ramsey approaches domestic space through another set of circulatory systems. For her, the house and the body are reciprocal metaphors whose internal structures correlate to one another. Hidden behind walls, ceramic pipes weave through custom drywall constructions, appearing and disappearing as though veins beneath skin. Their looping trajectories evoke anatomical drawings while simultaneously referencing plumbing systems that sustain everyday domestic life. These open and closed circuits suggest bodies that are both autonomous and dependent, self-contained yet profoundly interconnected.
Ramsey’s sculptures frequently draw attention to those architectural elements designed to remain unseen: drainage systems, cavities within walls, hidden conduits through which water, waste, and energy circulate. By rendering these concealed infrastructures visible, she invites us to reconsider the fragile systems that support everyday existence. Hygienic fixtures become sites where questions of purity, vulnerability, and mortality quietly converge.
Her work engages with anthropologist Mary Douglas’s influential arguments in Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, where dirt is famously understood as “matter out of place.” Douglas argues that concepts of cleanliness and contamination are never purely hygienic but instead reveal cultural systems for maintaining order and establishing boundaries. Domestic objects play a central role within these systems. Vessels simultaneously contain nourishment and receive refuse; lavatories facilitate cleansing while collecting waste. They occupy a paradoxical position between preservation and rejection.
Ramsey extends these ideas materially through her sophisticated use of ceramic glazes. Soda-fired surfaces, crystallized deposits, oozing textures, compressed forms, and fractured finishes evoke geological as well as bodily processes. Her tiled wall installation, punctuated by shell-like protrusions resembling shower niches, is glazed with soda ash—a crystalline residue considered an undesirable by-product in soap making. Here, what is ordinarily discarded becomes aesthetically productive, collapsing distinctions between cleanliness and contamination, ornament and residue.
Running throughout Homebody is a sustained investigation of thresholds. The exhibition repeatedly inhabits spaces of transition: inside and outside, visible and concealed, handcrafted and digital, organic and architectural, softness and rigidity, liquid and solid. These oppositions never fully resolve. Instead, they remain in productive tension, allowing each sculpture to function as a kind of portal between multiple states of being.
This condition is reinforced through the exhibition’s architectural design. In the exhibition, sculptures emerge from architectural fragments and reveal unexpected spatial encounters between bodies and objects. Francescone and Ramsey have constructed a series of freestanding drywall structures that function simultaneously as partitions and exhibition plinths. Drywall, an essential component of contemporary architecture, also serves in ceramic studios as an absorbent surface on which clay is formed, dried, and stored. This dual function complicates the distinction between process and finished object, positioning the exhibition itself as a space where acts of making remain visibly embedded within the final form.
These temporary constructions organize the gallery less as an exhibition than as a sequence of domestic vignettes. Visitors navigate partial rooms, concealed corners, interrupted sightlines, and moments of unexpected discovery. Sculptures appear to emerge naturally from these architectural fragments, encouraging movement through the space that mirrors the intimate rhythms of inhabiting a home. Following the exhibition, the drywall will be dismantled and returned to the artists’ studios, where it will resume its ordinary function within ceramic production. Even the exhibition architecture participates in an ongoing cycle of transformation rather than existing as a fixed monument.
In shaping clay, Francescone and Ramsey do not seek to illustrate these relationships directly. Rather, their works operate through material analogy. The transformations undergone by clay become vehicles for thinking about bodies, technologies, homes, and environments as interconnected systems in perpetual exchange. Their sculptures resist fixed interpretation, preferring to remain open, suggestive, and quietly enigmatic. The artists invite us to reconsider the thresholds we cross every day, the infrastructures we rarely notice, and the material worlds that quietly sustain us. In doing so, Homebody reminds us that to belong to a home is also to belong to the earth itself.
Lauren Francescone (b. 1983, New York City) lives in Montreal. She is the publisher and designer of Temperatures, a biannual publication about artists working in clay. She has attended numerous residencies including the Banff Centre (2015), the European Ceramic Workcentre (2020), and Anderson Ranch Art Center (2021). Recent exhibitions include Timeline at the ICA, Richmond, Virginia (2024), and Visitor at the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park in Japan (2026). She has a BS from the University of Virginia School of Architecture and an MFA from the Yale School of Art.
Rebecca Ramsey is an artist originally from British Columbia and currently based in Montreal. She has a BFA from Emily Carr University (2017) and an MFA from Concordia University (2024). She has attended residencies at Guldagergaard, Denmark (2017), Est-Nord-Est, St. Jean Port Joli (2025), and Medalta, Medicine Hat (2018/2026). Her work has been exhibited at Projet Casa, the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, DRAC, Centre d’art et de diffusion CLARK, Galerie Nicolas Robert and Axenéo7.
Anaïs Castro is a curator and writer based between New York and Montreal. She holds a Master’s degree from the University of Edinburgh and a Bachelor’s degree from Concordia University. Her professional experience includes the National Gallery of Canada and Arsenal Contemporary Art, and she currently serves as Curator at Centre d’art CAB. Castro has independently curated exhibitions and projects across North America, Europe, and Asia. She regularly contributes to a range of art publications, engaging with contemporary artistic practices and the evolving discourses that shape the field.
Contact
galerie.outremont@montreal.ca
Galerie d’Outremont
41 Av. Saint-Just
Montréal (Québec) H2V 4T7
Canada
Photos by Atlas Documentation and Lauren Francescone

https://www.ceramicsnow.org/exhibitions/lauren-francescone-rebecca-ramsey-homebody-at-galerie-doutremont-montreal/

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Twenty-Eight Forms of Belonging: The 6th Officine Saffi Award By ...

2026-10-19T16:21:51Z

Twenty-Eight Forms of Belonging: The 6th Officine Saffi Award

By Katherina Perlongo
What does it mean to belong? To a place, a community, a culture – or to a shared memory, gesture or ritual? Forms of Belonging, the sixth edition of the Officine Saffi Award, explores these questions through an international exhibition dedicated to the ways ceramics can create spaces of recognition and connection.
Opened in Milan on September 30, Forms of Belonging brings together 28 artists selected from more than 1,000 applications submitted from 41 countries across five continents. Presented at Fondazione Officine Saffi until November 13, 2026, the exhibition offers a broad view of contemporary ceramic practice, bringing together sculpture, functional objects, installations and narrative works situated between contemporary art, craft and collectible design. Rather than proposing a single definition of what ceramics can be, the sixth edition of the Award reflects the extraordinary diversity of the medium today. The selected artists approach clay through different cultural backgrounds, generations and artistic languages, revealing a field in which traditional knowledge and experimental research exist side by side.
The idea of home provides a first point of departure for thinking about belonging. Home can be the place we return to, a retreat that offers protection, intimacy and a sense of recognition. In Forms of Belonging, this idea is articulated not only through the works themselves, but also through the exhibition display. Pale blue partition walls divide the light-filled spaces of Fondazione Officine Saffi, the Milanese home of contemporary ceramics, founded by Laura Borghi in 2011 and relocated to its present premises two years ago. Matching blue shelves line the walls, creating a setting that evokes a domestic interior – an environment in which the works appear to inhabit different rooms, niches and arrangements. The house itself emerges as a motif at the very beginning of the exhibition, in Jonathan Baldock’s It’s my house and I live here (2025). A vertical, column-like ceramic house, built from what resembles a brick structure, sprouts ears, a mouth and limbs. Half house, half human, it appears as though its inhabitant has merged with the architecture itself. Two wall-based works, hung like pictures in a domestic interior, reinforce the sense of a lived-in space. Samantha Kerdine’s L’Ètreinte (2026) presents a framed fragment of a person sitting comfortably with a cat. Its composition evokes the intimacy of a domestic photograph – the kind of image that might hang above a sofa, quietly recording a moment of closeness. Gerald Mak’s Over Persimmon and Tea (2026), meanwhile, turns to another kind of everyday scene. Two hands are depicted peeling a persimmon over a table set with tea and grapes. The scene suggests the quiet rituals of domestic life: a table prepared for family or friends, the attentive gesture of peeling fruit, and the act of passing it on to others. The long, delicate fingers give the gesture an almost fairy-like quality. This distinctive motif recurs throughout Mak’s work, imbuing familiar moments with a sense of quiet poetry. Both artists were also among the recipients of this year’s residency prizes: Kerdine received the Taoxichuan Art Centre Residency Prize in China, while Mak was awarded the Albuquerque Foundation Residency Prize in Portugal.
Officine Saffi Award 6 exhibition “Forms of Belonging” at Fondazione Officine Saffi, from 30th September to 13th November 2026, ph. Alessandra Vinci, courtesy Fondazione Officine Saffi
Throughout the exhibition, objects appear as vessels of memory. They carry traces of earlier stages of our lives, remaining with us as tangible links to places, people and experiences that belong to the past. There is a particular kind of recognition in returning, as an adult, to one’s childhood home and finding a room preserved almost exactly as it was left behind – the objects still occupying their familiar places, suspended in another moment of life. This sensation resonates in Ornaghi & Prestinari’s Uscire dal Guscio (2026), placed on a small shelf at the edge of one of the exhibition displays. Like a remnant from childhood, a small sailing boat rises from a stone. The hull is made from half a walnut shell; its ceramic sail and white ceramic wave carry the boat forward, the wave itself shaped from the imprint of a kitchen sponge. The Italian title, Uscire dal Guscio – “coming out of one’s shell” – suggests a movement outward, away from the protected space of childhood and towards independence. The work thus resembles a small relic of a life already left behind: an object that might once have held meaning and now survives as a fragment of memory. A similar sense of persistence surrounds Agalis Manessi’s cat sculpture It’s behind you (2024). Like an object kept on a shelf in a family home, waiting patiently to be encountered again, the sculpture seems to carry the weight of something remembered rather than simply something seen. But what, exactly, lies behind us? The childhood in which such an object might once have had meaning? The object itself? Or the memory that remains attached to it?
For Marten Herma Anderson, belonging is closely connected to memory and place. His work Held Together (2026) draws on the landscapes and memories of his childhood on the Baltic island of Rügen, particularly his grandmother’s garden. The vessel is constructed from a sequence of pressed-flower forms, arranged one after another to build up its sculptural body. Their delicate shapes recall botanical specimens preserved in childhood memory. In striking contrast, the entire surface is covered with a silver glaze, which envelops the flowers in a reflective, almost protective skin. In Mel Arsenault’s And All This Time We Were In Heaven (2026), a vase becomes almost a field of colour. Its surface is covered by flowing glazes from which flowers seem to emerge, as if taking shape within a constantly shifting stream of pigment. Positioned in front of the glass facade, the work is reflected in the windows overlooking the green courtyard, creating a subtle dialogue between the ceramic object and the vegetation beyond. Flowers also reappear in Cody Hoyt’s (Untitled) Landscape Drawing Vessel (2026), one of the works that immediately catches the eye upon entering the exhibition. Hoyt, recipient of the Fondazione Officine Saffi Special Residency Prize, constructs his vessels from differently pigmented clays, layering, cutting and recombining them into intricate patterns before transforming the flat compositions into three-dimensional forms. The technical mastery of this process is striking, requiring an extraordinary degree of precision as the individual elements are layered, cut and assembled into a coherent whole. Loong Pan’s ongoing series Leaves (2022–ongoing) approaches the relationship between plant life and environment through an extraordinary act of ceramic imitation. Each work meticulously reproduces an actual leaf, capturing its delicate veins, contours and irregularities in clay with remarkable precision. The technical skill is striking: fragile organic structures are translated into enduring ceramic forms with an almost uncanny degree of accuracy. Arranged in an archival sequence reminiscent of a natural history collection, the leaves appear like specimens preserved for close observation. Their glazed surfaces reinforce this impression of conservation, as if the fragile forms had been captured and suspended in time. The works thus blur the boundary between natural specimen and crafted object, transforming something ephemeral into something enduring. Pan is one of two recipients of the Young Artist Prize by Ottostumm | Mogs, alongside Takumi Morozumi. Conceived as an acquisition prize to support a new generation of artists at a crucial stage in their careers, the award recognises emerging practices and supports their further development and visibility. For Pan, whose Leaves combines exceptional technical precision with a sensitive engagement with the natural world, the recognition feels particularly well deserved.
Jonathan Baldock
Samantha Kerdine
Gerald Mak
Ornaghi & Prestinari
Agalis Manessi
Marten Anderson
Mel Arsenault
Cody Hoyt
Pan Loong
Belonging can also unfold through cultural memory: through stories, images and symbols inherited from a shared cultural history. In Krzysztof Strzelecki’s Labour IV: The Erymanthian Boar and the Death of Chiron (2025), references to ancient mythology bring a centuries-old narrative into a contemporary ceramic context. At the same time, the work connects to the history of ceramics itself, recalling the long tradition of using vessels as surfaces for storytelling. Marta Pierobon’s Cecilia 2 (Las MENINAS) (2026) approaches cultural memory through another canonical image. By referring to Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas, the work enters into a dialogue with one of the defining traditions of Western painting. Here, belonging is no longer tied to a specific landscape or personal biography, but to a shared visual history: a repertoire of images that has been transmitted, reinterpreted and continually revisited. The reference transforms the ceramic work into part of a larger conversation about how cultural memory is formed – and how artists can position themselves within, respond to or reconfigure the histories they inherit. Both artists were also recognised with residency prizes this year: Pierobon received the Bruckner Foundation Residency Prize in Switzerland, while Strzelecki was awarded the Fondazione Museo della Ceramica di Savona Residency Prize in Italy.
Belonging can also be expressed through the materials we inherit and the places from which they come. In Bisila Noha’s practice, clay becomes a means of connecting personal experience, cultural identity and the histories carried by materials. Her vase Baney B60 (2025), presented at Officine Saffi, is composed of different earths brought together within a single vessel. The work turns soil into a tangible expression of place, bringing different landscapes and histories into one form. Noha’s wider practice explores identity, memory and community, drawing attention to the knowledge and traditions carried across generations, as well as to the often-overlooked contributions of Black women to the history of art and craft. This affinity with materiality and the relationship between artistic expression, human experience and design also informs the Tacchini Prize, awarded to the artist. Conceived as an opportunity for further research and exchange, the prize includes a dedicated exhibition at Casa Tacchini in Milan, where a selection of her works will be presented from October 1 to November 13, 2026. Set within the domestic environment of the apartment in Brera, the exhibition brings Noha’s work into dialogue with the idea of home, extending the exploration of belonging beyond the walls of Officine Saffi. A related connection between material and cultural heritage emerges in Phoebe Collings-James’s Infidel (2023). Drawing on West African and Caribbean coiling techniques alongside other historical and visual references, her ceramic forms bring different cultural histories into dialogue with one another. The vessel becomes more than a functional or sculptural object: it becomes a site where knowledge, memory and identity can meet.
Takumi Morozumi
Krzysztof Strzelecki
Marta Pierobon
Bisila Noha
Phoebe Collings-James
Andile Dyalvane
The question of belonging finds a particularly powerful expression in the work of South African artist Andile Dyalvane, winner of the €10,000 Main Prize. Born in the rural Eastern Cape, Dyalvane draws deeply on his Xhosa heritage and his spiritual connection to the land and his ancestors. For him, clay is more than a material: it is umhlaba, or “mother earth,” a medium through which histories, cultural knowledge and lived experiences can be carried across generations. Created together with his wife, Nkuthazo Alexis Dyalvane, iThwasa (The One Who is Blossoming) (2026) embodies this understanding of ceramics as a vessel of memory, identity and lineage. The work takes on the presence of a body, suggesting a living entity that holds traces of both individual and collective experience. Surreal and quietly unsettling, it seems at once deeply grounded in reality and to belong to another realm, bringing the ancestral into dialogue with the contemporary. Its title evokes a process of transformation and becoming, suggesting that identity is never entirely fixed but continues to unfold through relationships, inherited knowledge and encounters with the world. In this sense, belonging emerges not simply as an attachment to a particular place, but as an ongoing connection to those who came before us and those with whom we share the present. Dyalvane’s work affirms ceramics’ capacity to hold collective memory and give material form to a sense of belonging that is at once deeply personal and shared. As the recipient of the Main Prize, the work will become part of the Fondazione Officine Saffi Collection, allowing this conversation between material, memory and cultural inheritance to continue beyond the exhibition.
Beyond the works discussed above, the Award’s residency programme also recognises the practices of Trude Westby Nordmark, recipient of the Guldagergaard Residency Prize in Denmark, and Tomás Díaz Cedeño, awarded the Senter for Keramisk Kunst Residency Prize in Norway. Together with the other residency awards, these opportunities extend the exhibition beyond Milan, allowing artists to pursue further research, experiment with materials and processes, and develop new connections within the international ceramics community.
Katherina Perlongo (*1989 in Bolzano, Italy) is a Berlin-based curator working at the intersection of contemporary art, craft, and design. With experience in curatorial and leadership positions across institutions dedicated to modern and contemporary art, her practice focuses on materiality, making, and the narratives embedded in objects.
The 6th Officine Saffi Award, Forms of Belonging (September 30 – November 13, 2026) presents works by Marten H. Anderson (Germany); Mel Arsenault (Canada); Arun Baburaj (India); Jonathan Baldock (United Kingdom); Gianluca Brando (Italy); Soledad Christie (Chile); Phoebe Collings-James (United Kingdom); Tomás Díaz Cedeño (Mexico); Andile Dyalvane (South Africa); Sean Gerstley (USA); Benedikt Hipp (Germany); Cody Hoyt (USA); Samantha Kerdine (France); Pan Loong (China); Corwyn Lund (Canada); Gerald Mak (Hong Kong); Agalis Manessi (Greece); Takumi Morozumi (Japan); Antoine Moulinard (Belgium); Bisila Noha (Spain / Equatorial Guinea); Trude Westby Nordmark (Norway); Ornaghi & Prestinari (Italy); Marta Pierobon (Italy); Yaerin Pyun (Republic of Korea); Coline Rosoux (Belgium); Emily Stapleton-Jefferis (United Kingdom); Krzysztof Strzelecki (Poland); and Flávia Vieira (Portugal).
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Captions
Installation views, Officine Saffi Award 6 exhibition “Forms of Belonging” at Fondazione Officine Saffi, from 30th September to 13th November 2026, ph. Alessandra Vinci, courtesy Fondazione Officine Saffi
Jonathan Baldock, It’s My House, and I Live Here, 2025. Courtesy Fondazione Officine Saffi
Samantha Kerdine, L’étreinte (The Embrace), 2026. Courtesy Fondazione Officine Saffi
Gerald Mak, Over Persimmon and Tea, 2026. Courtesy Fondazione Officine Saffi
Ornaghi & Prestinari, Uscire dal guscio (To Come Out of One’s Shell), 2026. Courtesy Fondazione Officine Saffi
Agalis Manessi, It’s Behind You, 2024. Courtesy Fondazione Officine Saffi
Marten Anderson, Held Together, 2026. Courtesy Fondazione Officine Saffi
Mel Arsenault, And All This Time We Were in Heaven, 2026. Courtesy Fondazione Officine Saffi
Cody Hoyt, (Untitled) Landscape Drawing Vessel, 2026. Courtesy Fondazione Officine Saffi
Pan Loong, Leaves, 2022-ongoing. Courtesy Fondazione Officine Saffi
Takumi Morozumi, Abystrata, 2025. Courtesy Fondazione Officine Saffi
Krzysztof Strzelecki, Labour IV – The Erymant

https://www.ceramicsnow.org/articles/twenty-eight-forms-of-belonging-the-6th-officine-saffi-award/

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Lydia SooJin Park: Selected works, 2021-2026 Lydia SooJin Park: ...

2026-10-19T15:56:09Z

Lydia SooJin Park: Selected works, 2021-2026

Lydia SooJin Park: Selected works, 2021-2026
My work explores the accumulation of memory, emotion, and time through layered ceramic surfaces that exist between painting and sculpture. Using thin sheets of clay, I construct compositions that function as both physical objects and painterly images, blurring the boundary between two- and three-dimensional space.
Rather than approaching clay as a material to be transformed beyond recognition, I work with it in a way that preserves its material presence—its weight, fragility, and tactile resistance remain visible throughout the process. In this sense, the clay is not merely a carrier of image or form, but an active surface that continues to assert its own materiality.
I use clay as a medium for abstraction, gesture, texture, and accumulation. Fragments, stains, and assembled surfaces become visual traces that resemble emotional residues or incomplete memories. The works are often wall-mounted, operating as sculptural paintings or tactile surfaces that extend beyond conventional definitions of ceramics.
I am interested in how memory continuously shifts through time—never fixed, but repeatedly accumulated, fragmented, and transformed. Through processes of layering, erosion, and material tension, the works reflect the instability of perception and the persistence of emotional traces.
While some forms subtly reference organic shapes or functional vessels, they ultimately move away from utility and toward abstraction. By navigating between surface and object, image and material, I aim to create works that hold memory not as narrative, but as embodied sensation embedded within form.
Surface Memory – Norwegian Crafts & Ceramica Suro Residency, 2025-2026
My Deepest Blue: landscape II
Process documentation at Ceramica Suro Residency
My Deepest Blue: Untitled
Materiality I (Landscape)
Unfolding Comes to Rest II
Sustaining Memory and History
Green Light Beneath
When the Sky Breathes, the Water Listens
Material Memory (Accumulation), 2021-2026
Reflections in the Current
The Blooming Vessel
Goryeo Celadon Re-born in 21st-Century Mexico
Beneath, Many Tales II (That which breathes with us)
Enfolding Currents – Foundations
Time of Observation
Winter Butterfly
Blue Cobalt in 2022
Blue Cobalt in 2023
Wishes
2.5 Dimensions, 2021
In between
Untitled
My day
4 different shapes
Unused 1
Blue bottle
Captions
My Deepest Blue: landscape II, 2026, glazed ceramics, 90.9 x 121.2 cm, photo by Santiago Vega
Process documentation at Ceramica Suro Residency, 2026, photo by Santiago Vega
My Deepest Blue: Untitled, 2026, glazed ceramics, 90.9 x 121.2 cm, photo by Santiago Vega
Materiality I (Landscape), 2022-3, glazed ceramics with glass, 50 x 60 cm
Unfolding Comes to Rest II, 2026, glazed ceramics, 60 x 60 cm (each), photo by Santiago Vega
Sustaining Memory and History, 2025, glazed porcelain, 21 x 30 x 6 cm, photo by Thomas T.
Green Light Beneath, 2024-5, glazed ceramics, 7 x 22 x 3 cm, photo by Thomas T.
When the Sky Breathes, the Water Listens, 2025, glazed porcelain, 23 x 40 x 6 cm, photo by Thomas T.
Reflections in the Current, 2026, glazed ceramics, 42 x 40 x 85 cm, photo by Santiago Vega
The Blooming Vessel, 2026, glazed ceramics, 40 x 35 x 60 cm, photo by Santiago Vega
Goryeo Celadon Re-born in 21st-Century Mexico, 2026, glazed ceramics, 30 x 30 x 82 cm, photo by Santiago Vega
Beneath, Many Tales II (That which breathes with us), 2026, glazed ceramics, 17 x 22 x 44 cm, photo by Santiago Vega
Enfolding Currents – Foundations, 2026, glazed ceramics, 23 x 35 x 56 cm, photo by Santiago Vega
Time of Observation, 2023-5, glazed ceramics with gold, 29 x 16 x 24 cm, photo by Thomas T.
Winter Butterfly, 2023-2024, glazed ceramics, 30 x 30 x 27 cm, photo by Thomas T.
Blue Cobalt in 2022, 2022, glazed ceramics, 40 x 20 x 50 cm
Blue Cobalt in 2023, 2023-2024, glazed ceramics with cobalt oxide, 36 x 21.5 x 31 cm, photo by Thomas T.
Wishes, 2021, glazed ceramics, 19 x 30 x 13 cm
In between, 2020, glazed ceramics, 34.5 x 31.5 x 7.2 cm, photo by Heesoo Park
Untitled, 2020, glazed ceramics, 31.5 x 27 x 3.8 cm, photo by Heesoo Park
My day, 2020, glazed ceramics, 26 x 27 x 5 cm, photo by Heesoo Park
4 different shapes, 2020, glazed ceramics, 66 x 48 x 5.5 cm, photo by Heesoo Park
Unused I, 2021, glazed ceramics, various dimensions, photo by Heesoo Park
Blue bottle, 2021, glazed ceramics, 26 x 31 x 4.5 cm, photo by Heesoo Park

https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artworks/lydia-soojin-park-selected-works-2021-2026/

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Lydia SooJin Park Lydia SooJin Park Lydia SooJin Park (b. 1989) ...

2026-10-19T15:30:04Z

Lydia SooJin Park

Lydia SooJin Park
Lydia SooJin Park (b. 1989) is an artist based between Seoul and Oslo. Working primarily with clay, her practice engages with memory, perception, and materiality through ceramic-based works that move between painting and sculpture. Her surfaces unfold as layered structures where image and object remain in constant negotiation, emphasizing the physical presence of fragile material as a carrier of temporal and emotional traces.
She received her BFA in Ceramics from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2009–2013), her MA from Hongik University (2019–2021), and her MFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2021–2023). In 2023, she was awarded the Student Prize by the Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts, and in 2024 she received the Talente Prize – Meister der Zukunft from the Chamber of Crafts for Munich and Upper Bavaria (HWK für München und Oberbayern), Germany. She has participated in residency programs including Arabia Art Department Society in Finland (2024), Senter for Keramisk Kunst in Norway (2025), Hanwha Foundation of Culture (2025), and Cerámica Suro in Mexico (2026).
In addition to exhibitions and residencies, Park has been commissioned to create permanent public ceramic works for Psykisk Helsenvern Nordbyhagen at Akershus University Hospital (AHUS HF) in Norway. The project, which includes both interior and exterior installations, is scheduled for completion in 2026.
Her work has been exhibited internationally across Europe, the United States, and Asia, and is included in institutional collections such as the National Museum of Norway (Nasjonalmuseet), KODE Art Museums of Bergen, Oslo Municipality, the National Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Trondheim, and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Visit Lydia SooJin Park’s website and Instagram page.
Featured work
Selected works, 2021-2026

https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/lydia-soojin-park/

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Anemoon On Fire: Selected works, 2022-2026 Culter Cat The Dolabra ...

2026-10-17T01:30:58Z

Anemoon On Fire: Selected works, 2022-2026

Culter Cat
The Dolabra Swine
Misty Mountain Rat attacked by a Snowball Bat
Giant Bottle Shrimp
The Gulo Gulo Hoká (Gulo Gulo Bear Badger)
Helicophorus
Lichen Toad with Frogspawn
Blue Mangrove Marten female with cub
Melanocetus
Tasmanian Decorator Crab
Black Mangrove Rootpoint with Black TreeFrogs
Cryptobranco Salamander
The Balaena Decem Trunci
Blue Mangrove Martens
Animals Far From Now and Beyond
Lumen Swamp
Anemoon On Fire: Selected works, 2022-2026
Anemoon On Fire creates ceramic sculptures that imagine how life might evolve in a future transformed by climate change and pollution. Fascinated by marine biology, deep-sea creatures, and speculative evolution, she invents new species that appear to have adapted to increasingly hostile environments. Her fictional organisms combine recognizable elements of existing animals with mutations driven by rising waters, plastic pollution, and other ecological disruptions.
Nature is both fascinating and concerning in her practice. Drawing partly on her experiences as a diver, Anemoon considers survival and adaptation as ongoing processes: some species disappear, others transform, and entirely new forms of life emerge. Personal experiences and inner anxieties also enter this imagined ecosystem, giving the creatures an emotional dimension as well as an environmental one.
Working primarily with porcelain, she builds highly detailed sculptures and develops their surfaces with engobes, oxides, pigments, and layered glaze combinations. The resulting works sit between scientific specimen and fantasy creature, proposing strange yet conceivable inhabitants of a world altered by human activity.
Captions
Culter Cat, 2024, Handbuild porcelain and stoneware. The Culter Cat dominates the forests, both on land and in the water. Their powerful hind legs combined with the development of membranes between their toes make them fast swimmers, able to pursue their prey into the water. On land they are able to rush through the dense vegetation of the mangrove thanks to the razor-sharp protrusions which extend from the exposed skeleton at their shoulders. Together with their speed, agility and strength, the Culter Cat’s low-profile demeanour has granted it a position at the top of the food chain as the apex predator of the mangrove environment.
The Dolabra Swine, 2025, Handbuild porcelain. In the future, the Dolabra Swine is widespread around the globe, but this one in particular is found in Asia. They use their downward-facing tusks to dig in the hard, rocky ground of the Yellow Mountains and among the fossilized roots in search of food.
Misty Mountain Rat attacked by a Snowball Bat, 2025, Handbuild porcelain.
Giant Bottle Shrimp, 2023, Handbuild porcelain.
The Gulo Gulo Hoká (Gulo Gulo Bear Badger), 2025, Handbuild porcelain. The Gulo Gulo Bear Badger gets its name from its resemblance to a small bear, but has in fact evolved from the American badger. Due to climate change, the species has spread all over the continent. It’s a solitary animal and is mostly a scavenger, but it’s very much capable of killing prey much larger than itself, in some cases even bears.
Helicophorus, 2023, Handbuild stoneware. This sculpture is 1.60 m high and was made for Prospects (Art Rotterdam 2024). Due to climate change and pollution, the water is rising and sloshing through the streets of New York. Therefore, creatures that normally live in oceans, rivers, and sewers come up through the manholes. These creatures have skin and health problems due to the polluted and poisoned environment. Rapid evolution allows them to turn this pollution to their advantage.
Lichen Toad with Frogspawn, 2024, Handbuild porcelain and glasfusion. The Lichen Toad is covered by a fungal layer and lives in symbiosis with this fungus. The Toad and its fungal companion have established a mutualistic relationship which has evolved into an indivisible union.
Blue Mangrove Marten female with cub, 2024, Handbuild porcelain and black stoneware. Part of the exhibition Oracles From Far And Near.
Melanocetus, 2022, Handbuild porcelain and stoneware.
Tasmanian Decorator Crab, 2023, Handbuild porcelain.
Black Mangrove Rootpoint with Black TreeFrogs, 2024, Handbuild Black Stoneware and porcelain. Part of the exhibition Oracles From Far And Near.
Cryptobranco Salamander, 2023, Handbuild porcelain.
The Balaena Decem Trunci, 2022, Handbuild in stoneware and porcelain. Third prize in the National Dutch Ceramic Award 2022. Here you can see the Balaena Decem Trunci in development, preserved as a foetus of 8 months, a newborn specimen, and at 1 year and 3 years of age. The Balaena Decem Trunci can grow up to 24 meters and has 10 trunks. It’s a toothed whale, but they are true omnivores. With their trunks they suck over the bottom of the sea and the deep sea. The trunks contain a filter system that ensures that the edible parts are separated from the plastic particles. This plastic is stored and converted in a special part of the body. Once the animal becomes sexually mature, this plastic comes out in the form of large, long, luminous sails running down the length of the animal. In this way, it can find a partner to mate with even in the dark deep sea.
Blue Mangrove Martens, 2024, Handbuild porcelain and black stoneware. Blue Mangrove Martens move in pairs and carry their young on their backs. They mate for life and raise their kits together. They have become highly adapted to live in mangrove areas; their special fur and layer of blubber under the skin allow them to transition between water and land without dysregulated internal body temperatures.
Animals Far From Now and Beyond, 2024, Porcelain and Stoneware. Part of the exhibition Oracles From Far And Near, on display from November 30, 2024 to October 26, 2025 at the Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. Created for a glass display case measuring 2.5 by 11 meters and accompanied by a specially composed soundscape, the installation transports viewers into a distant future inhabited by imagined species and unfamiliar ecological relationships. Due to climate change, the water has risen and the coastlines of the world have changed. Parts of the world are flooded and some parts have changed into mangrove forests and giant swamps. Animals had to adapt and evolve to survive. New species have emerged from these adaptations. The first thing that catches the eye is a sea of what looks like Waterlily leaves, but are in fact a new kind of crabs: the Lotusleaf Crabs. They come in different sizes and colors. The sea of Lotusleaf Crabs symbolizes the water level. Near the mangrove, the pencil roots of the black mangrove are visible. Under and above the water level, there are a lot of animals to discover.
Lumen Swamp, 2026, Handbuild porcelain. Millions of years into the future, the swamps of China will have developed into a bioluminescent spectacle. This ecosystem is a feast for the eyes. Along the petrified trees, which are in the first stage of fossilization, glowing green lichen slithers. This slime is a life form in itself. Lotus Leaf Crabs dominate not only the coastlines, but evolved, smaller versions can also be found inland along rivers and in swamps. These Lumen Lotus Leaf Crabs have no eyes, but their sensitive tentacles sense vibrations in the air, they catch prey, and the acids in the slime digest it. Well-camouflaged moss frogs and small blue tree frogs inhabit this area in large numbers. When night falls, it is easy to see how many species exhibit glow-in-the-dark effects; both plant and animal.

https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artworks/anemoon-on-fire-selected-works-2022-2026/

#gulogulo #selectedworks #cultercat #gulobear #fire #anemoon #gulohoka #dolabraswine #bluemangrove #bearbadger

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Anemoon On Fire Anemoon On Fire Anemoon On Fire (Anemoon ...

2026-10-17T01:01:38Z

Anemoon On Fire

Anemoon On Fire
Anemoon On Fire (Anemoon Fokkinga, b. 2003) is a Dutch self-taught ceramic artist working primarily in porcelain. She began working with clay at the age of fifteen during a period in which health challenges prevented her from attending school, and has developed her practice independently through experimentation, research, and studio work.
After discovering ceramics in various studios between 2019 and 2021, Anemoon established her own studio, Anemoon On Fire, in 2020. The studio continues to serve as the center of her artistic practice, providing a space for experimentation with hand-built porcelain, colored clay, engobes, glazes, and surface techniques. Since her first exhibitions at the age of seventeen, Anemoon has built a rapidly growing exhibition record in the Netherlands and abroad. Her work has been presented at Art Rotterdam, Dutch Design Week, Prospects (Mondriaan Fund), the International Ceramic Art Fair in Jingdezhen, and numerous gallery and museum exhibitions focused on contemporary ceramics and emerging talent.
In 2022, she received a Kunstenaar Start grant from the Mondriaan Fund and support from the Cultuurfonds. International residencies have played an increasingly important role in Fokkinga’s development, including period at the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, Florida (2022–2023), a workshop at the Morean Workshop Center in St. Petersburg, Florida (2025), and residencies at Yiji Studio in Jingdezhen, China (2025 and 2026–2027).
A major milestone in Fokkinga’s career came in 2023, when curator Dr. Wendy Gers invited her to create a large-scale installation for the Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. The resulting project, Animals Far From Now and Beyond, was exhibited as part of Oracles from Far & Near (2024–2025). The museum subsequently acquired seventeen sculptures from the installation for its permanent collection. Her recent exhibitions include Evident Talent at Galerie Terra, in Delft, the Netherlands; the anniversary exhibition 16Up at 38CC, PROSPECTS in Rotterdam; the International Ceramic Art Fair in Jingdezhen, China; and the 2025 edition of the Dutch National Ceramics Prize De Kei. Inspired by extensive time spent in nature and by her experiences as a scuba diver, Anemoon On Fire continues to expand her technical and conceptual practice through new materials, processes, and international collaborations.
Visit Anemoon On Fire’s website and Instagram page.
Featured work
Selected works, 2022-2026
Anemoon On Fire creates ceramic sculptures that imagine how life might evolve in a future transformed by climate change and pollution. Fascinated by marine biology, deep-sea creatures, and speculative evolution, she invents new species that appear to have adapted to increasingly hostile environments. Her fictional organisms combine recognizable elements of existing animals with mutations driven by rising waters, plastic pollution, and other ecological disruptions.
Nature is both fascinating and concerning in her practice. Drawing partly on her experiences as a diver, Anemoon considers survival and adaptation as ongoing processes: some species disappear, others transform, and entirely new forms of life emerge. Personal experiences and inner anxieties also enter this imagined ecosystem, giving the creatures an emotional dimension as well as an environmental one.
Working primarily with porcelain, she builds highly detailed sculptures and develops their surfaces with engobes, oxides, pigments, and layered glaze combinations. The resulting works sit between scientific specimen and fantasy creature, proposing strange yet conceivable inhabitants of a world altered by human activity.

https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/anemoon-on-fire/

#anemoon #fire #ceramicart #artfair #mondriaanfund #internationalceramic #jingdezhen #studio #fokkinga #dutch

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The call is coming from… beneath our feet: Review of E. ...

2026-10-15T15:33:58Z

The call is coming from… beneath our feet: Review of E. Saffronia Downing’s Call for Clay

By Graham Feyl
Spring 2025
As velvety darkness began to wrap around me, I started my habitual observance of the day’s end: lounging in bed, letting the blue light from my phone pierce the darkness and flood my mind with a temporary digital dopamine rush. I listlessly moved from the biting comments on Reddit posts to the clickbait titles across art news platforms. As I concluded this ritual by scrolling through friends’ stories on Instagram, I stopped the moving feed. Ceramic artist E. Saffronia Downing had posted a call: “CALL FOR CLAY. Participate in a Wild Clay Project! Deadline June 13. Send or bring a zip-style bag of unfired wild clay to…John Michael Kohler Arts Center…Include a letter describing where you found the clay and any thoughts, images, or reflections from your foraging experience. The more details the better!”1 [Fig. 1]
“What does the ‘wild’ of wild clay feel like?” I thought. Sleep came with dreams of warm earth.
Figure 1: Digital Call. E. Saffronia Downing
Winter 2026
My fingers fumbled impatiently as I attempted to peel the tape that held down the opening of a manila envelope. After yielding to scissors to finish the job, my hand rushed into the package opening to pull out the publication that awaited inside. [Fig. 2]
Call for Clay catalogs the results of Downing’s clay crowd-sourcing that had appeared on my feed the year prior. Through public open calls – between Downing and in collaboration with Interloc (Thomaston, Maine) in 2023 and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) in 2025 – Downing asked and invited participants to send samples of foraged clay along with letters describing the places where the clay was gathered. Forty contributors from nineteen states and three countries sent in bits of clay.
Thematically, the project examines how wild clay is a material embodiment of both place and memory; each submission documents the deeply personal stories and memories associated with each piece of foraged clay.
Theorizing Wildly
Downing’s Introduction demonstrates how the personal and the theoretical are deeply intertwined, at times blurring. Beginning with a chance encounter with wild clay on the sidewalks of Chicago at an active construction site, Downing centralizes a way of thinking with and through “wild clay” to consider how place and the self are connected.
What does ‘wild’ mean here? Downing defines ‘wild clay’ along its material form; that is, clay “dug up from its native environment” with minimal to no processing. Queer theorist Jack Halberstam, in his 2020 book Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire, theorizes wildness as “…a way of being in the world differently, of interacting with rather than separating from vegetal and animal forms of life.”2 This interacting-with-rather-than-separating denotes community, a togetherness rather than a separation. By requesting submissions that were both clay bits and letters describing the memories and stories around the places from which the clay was foraged, Call for Clay illustrates just how intertwined we are with the earth beneath our feet.
Figure 2: Cover of Call for Clay. Photo Credit: Nick Carter
While Call for Clay is about listening to what is happening beneath the surface, how does one know when they have come across wild clay? While this claim can be scientifically measured – as scientists are able to identify clay by measuring its grain size, which has the smallest particles of any soil type, under a microscope – Downing states: “My knowledge of clay is rooted in my sense of touch.” Although the idea of touch and ceramics are interconnected, Call for Clay adds an important dimension to this conversation by foregrounding touch not only as an embodied experience but as a mechanism for community formation. Touch becomes an action woven through every stage of Downing’s call: from the fingers that stopped their social media feeds to read the call, the hands that reached down into the earth to pull up the clay, to the hands that moved the packages containing the submissions from one location to another, to Downing touching the clay samples, and to my adhesive-sticky fingers that left little marks on my copy of Call for Clay. We might not be able to touch one another, but we are joined through our holding of various parts of Call for Clay.
Sprinkled throughout the introduction, the word ‘clay’ appears in varying shades of brown. A contribution by Jacob Lindgren, co-founder of Inga Books in Chicago and the designer of Call for Clay, these bursts of brown add a subtle shift to how to consider the project. They not only act as a mnemonic device for recalling that clay is the central component of the booklet, but also act as a tool for training the eye to spot these bits of earth even in the most ordinary settings.
Odes to Clay
While the submissions follow a similar structure – a letter describing the process of foraging for the clay, including photos of the clay – each is a distinct embodiment of the individual who brought their chunk of clay from the depths of the earth into the light. Call for Clay has been discussed as both a scrapbook and an archive, and it is this very descriptive pairing that I find demonstrates a blurring of the boundaries between the personal and the collective. Each submission is personal in its uniqueness, yet when placed next to other stories, each narrative becomes part of a larger chorus. What Downing presents collapses the academic weight of ‘archive’ with the intimate, familial sense of ‘scrapbook.’ Where ‘archive’ and ‘scrapbook’ are finite containers of memory, Call for Clay seems to have no definite end or specific location. While there was an end date for submissions (June 13), the sense of foraging for wild clay and what that process evokes can, and should, continue on even beyond the pages of the booklet. Clay, as Downing notes, has always been there and will continue to be there. So why not continue to forage on?
As one moves from submission to submission, they encounter how far-reaching Call for Clay extended. Some submissions have a personal connection with Downing, such as Alexis Ortiz-Durate, who opens their letter with “Thank you yet again for the sweet reminder…this is becoming quite the tradition!” and ends with a caring “with so much love.” Other submissions seem to have learned about Downing and the project only from the call, ending their letters with “sincerely” or “Let me know if you have any questions!” Regardless of the sense of how familiar one is with Downing, each submission becomes connected to one another through their shared process of participation. [Fig. 3]
Figure 3: Call for Clay, submission by Alexis Ortiz-Durate. Photo Credit: Nick Carter
Several submissions marked not only the process of foraging for the wild clay, but how memory and time are integral to this process. A typed letter from Calvin Cohen, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, opens with: “Me and my cousin harvested this clay together in the Wissahickon Valley Park, in Philadelphia, PA. When we were younger, we spent time together in the Wissahickon on hikes, in the water, in the mud.” But as time passes, relationships alter and change: “Since we’ve both gone to school in other places and moved out, we haven’t seen each other as much as we did living in the same house or neighborhood as kids. Finding this clay was the first time we had intentionally spent one-on-one time together in years.” Foraging, then, becomes not only a process of harvesting wild clay but also a means of digging up the ways one used to connect. Cohen even reflected on how their body has changed, noting that “I realized that my feet are far less calloused than they used to be when I was a kid. I wasn’t as well adjusted to walking quickly on the rocks and gravel.” Our bodies and clay change. [Figure 4]
Scattered throughout the deeply personal, some submissions are quite exact in their information. A David Miner from Elliot, Iowa wrote: “The sample is a gray clay variety at the Miner Farm in Douglas Township, Montgomery County, Iowa. An earlier batch has been fired to cone 10 in a reduction atmosphere. I also use another red clay found at the same location.” Though brief, Miner’s submission alludes to foraging and working with wild clay from the same location as a continuous process beyond the scope of the call. While Downing’s call has ended, the search for wild clay will continue on. [Figure 5]
Figure 4: Call for Clay, submission by Calvin Cohen. Photo Credit: Nick Carter
Figure 5: Call for Clay submission spread. Photo Credit: Nick Carter
Hearing Clay Calling
In a submission by Jenn Eiser from Glenn, Michigan, they open their letter stating that the clay they submitted was harvested “from a beach in Michigan with many names.” Rather than describing the clay itself, Eiser navigates what clay means, what it can do, and how it reflects connection. Clay has an “ability to feel so special and so forgiving. The feelings of safety for experimentation risk taking in the clay’s natural abilities mirror the way I feel about the friends who show me this beach.” While clay might become referential to a particular location -”I’m looking for ways to carry a place with me when I’m not there – to raise it to my lips” as Eiser writes- Call for Clay highlights that clay is a reflection of ourselves. In the Introduction, Downing asks: “If clay has a memory, does it remember its primordial origins…Does clay remember the human hands that scooped it up from the depths?” If one begins to think about clay itself, and imagine that it remembers its formation and removal from one location to another, alongside ourselves, we can begin to see that we might not be so different.
It is here that Call for Clay embodies Halberstam’s idea of wildness as a process of interacting-with-rather-than-separating. Halberstam concludes Wild Things through his own “call of the wild”: “… to be with the wild, accept the wild, give yourself to the wild, and float or drown in its embrace.”3 Call for Clay is precisely this: an embrace of the wild as a collapse between boundaries, one that draws together individuals who might never otherwise have encountered one another. I find myself among them. Lying in bed that night, stopping my scroll to read Downing’s call, and now sitting with Call for Clay next to me, I have become part of this larger group. I might not have foraged for wild clay, but I can now hold and touch the very stories about this process.
Call for Clay does more than just ask for submissions; it asks us to look beneath our feet once in a while and remember how even something as still and constant as clay can hold and reflect so much of who we are. [Figure 6]
Figure 6: Call for Clay. Photo Credit: Nick Carter
Call for Clay is available for purchase online or in-stores at Inga Books (Chicago), Printed Matter (New York) and other independent artist book stores. This publication was made with support from the John Michael Kohler Art Center.
Works Cited
Downing, E. Saffornia and contributors. Call for Clay. 2025.
Halberstam, Jack. Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire. Duke University Press, 2020.
Graham Feyl is an art historian and curator whose work centers on queer and transgender artistic production, design, craft, and material cultures. He has curated exhibitions – in Chicago, Portland, Chattanooga, and Santa Barbara – around similar themes. His writing has appeared in publications such as ASAP/Review, Lum Art Magazine, and the Decorative Arts Trust Bulletin. Graham is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture.
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https://www.ceramicsnow.org/articles/the-call-is-coming-from-beneath-our-feet-review-of-e-saffronia-downings-call-for-clay/

Steven Edwards: Selected works, 2025-2026 Striped Fold XXIX ...

2026-10-15T14:00:27Z

Steven Edwards: Selected works, 2025-2026

Striped Fold XXIX
Striped Fold XXIX
Analogous Fold II
Dip Fold III
Dip Fold IV
Dip Fold IV, detail
Monochromatic Fold XIV
Striped Fold with inclusions II
Striped Fold with inclusions III
Striped Fold with inclusions III, detail
Striped Fold XXIV
Striped Fold XXVI
Striped Fold XXV
Striped Fold XXV, detail
Soft Geometry solo exhibition
Soft Geometry solo exhibition
Steven Edwards: Selected works, 2025-2026
My practice is rooted in a process-led approach, where each work evolves through intuitive actions, experimentation, and a continual dialogue with materials. Cutting, rearranging, layering, and reworking are central to the making process, allowing each piece to develop organically rather than towards a predetermined outcome. The finished forms become records of their own construction, revealing the decisions, disruptions, and transformations that occurred along the way. Ultimately, the work grows out of curiosity and wonder, shaped by an eclectic mix of influences spanning art, craft, design, geology, architecture, and theory.
Working primarily with clay, I investigate the language of making through the material’s physicality and responsiveness. Traditional ceramic techniques provide a foundation, but I deliberately push beyond their conventional applications, using clay bodies in ways they were not intended to perform. Through manipulation with bespoke tools and an openness to uncertainty, I encourage unanticipated outcomes that become integral to the work.
The resulting forms embody both control and resistance. As the clay is stretched, compressed, and challenged, it often cracks, buckles, and bears permanent scars. These fissures are not treated as flaws to be concealed, but as evidence of the extremes demanded of the material and of the process itself. They create a subtle sense of unease, acting as a counterpoint to the idealised, layered rings and confectionery-like surfaces that characterise the work.
By embracing both intention and accident, precision and disruption, my practice explores the expressive potential of clay as a material capable of carrying the narrative of its own making. The work exists in the space between order and instability, inviting reflection on transformation, resilience, and the potential that can emerge from uncertainty.
The viewer’s perception is important to me. My work is recognised for its unique surface texture, which often leads people to question what they are looking at. At first glance, viewers can be uncertain whether the work appears curious, playful, or unsettling. This ambiguity encourages them to look more closely and consider how the piece was made and what it is intended to be. There is often a playful confusion, with questions ranging from, “Is that really ceramic?” to “Can I eat it?”
My background in graphic design has significantly informed the way I develop and execute my work. It taught me to think critically about composition, balance, and visual hierarchy—skills that continue to inform how I construct images and communicate ideas. The discipline of design instilled a respect for clarity and purpose, but over time I’ve become more interested in pushing those boundaries—allowing for intuition, texture, and imperfection to take up more space in my work.
Captions
Striped Fold XXIX, 2026, parian and porcelain, H46 x W30 x D30cm
Analogous Fold II, 2025, parian and porcelain, H51 x W27 x D27cm
Dip Fold III, 2025, parian and porcelain, H36 x W30 x D30cm
Dip Fold IV, 2025, stoneware and porcelain, H49.5 x W28 x D28cm
Monochromatic Fold XIV, 2025, parian and porcelain, H53.5 x W26 x D26cm
Striped Fold with inclusions II, 2025, parian and porcelain, H36 x W26 x D26cm
Striped Fold with inclusions III, 2025, parian and porcelain, H36 x W29 x D29cm
Striped Fold XXIV, 2025, parian and porcelain, H47.5 x W24 x D24cm
Striped Fold XXVI, 2025, parian and porcelain, H49 x W26 x D26cm
Striped Fold XXV, 2025, parian and porcelain, H49 x W29 x D29cm
Soft Geometry solo exhibition, Vessel Gallery London, stoneware/parian/porcelain, variable dimensions

https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artworks/steven-edwards-selected-works-2025-2026/

Summer 2026 at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY By Cammi ...

2026-10-15T12:32:09Z

Summer 2026 at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY

By Cammi Climaco
It’s not often, if ever, that I go to an art museum and see three ceramics shows happening at the same time, but here I am in August at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY. It’s been fifteen years since I visited the Everson. They had a basement room filled with glass cases holding hundreds, maybe thousands of pieces of ceramics jumbled together with bad lighting and industrial carpeting. I can’t remember anything in the collection, when there’s too much stuff to look at, I get overwhelmed and exhausted and end up seeing nothing. But today everything’s changed. Foremost, the addition of Curator of Ceramics, Garth Johnson. For the past eight years, Johnson has completely transformed the landscape of ceramics at the museum. The galleries have been shifted, programming promotes ceramics, and they’ve added a working ceramics studio for classes and workshops. This. Is. A. Ceramics. Museum.
A few important things about the Everson, it’s an I.M. Pei building in downtown Syracuse, one of the warmest pieces of brutalist architecture you’ll ever see. The Everson has a hundred-year history with ceramics, with over 6000 pieces in its permanent collection, one of the largest in the country. AND, it owns, not arguably, the most important piece of American ceramics: the Scarab Vase by Adelaide Alsop Robineau. It’s truly glorious. As Robineau was a Syracuse local and all-around badass, the museum acquired thirty-two of her pieces in 1916. Later, in her honor, it started a juried exhibition called the Ceramics Nationals which went on for sixty years. They were the first for American ceramicists. The museum bought work from these shows, expanding its collection into a who’s who of American ceramics. I can talk about Robineau and everyone else in the collection, Maija Grotell, Karen Carnes, Toshiko Takaeusu, Jun Kaneko, Robert Turner, all day but I’m here to talk about the shows.
New Works in Clay: By Contemporary Painters and Sculptors
In 1975, the Everson received a National Endowment for the Arts Grant to take an uninhabited can factory in Syracuse and turn it into a ceramics studio. Conceived and spearheaded by Ceramic Artist/Syracuse University Professor Marjorie Hughto, it was designed to invite artists who didn’t primarily use clay to give them the opportunity to create a body of work. At the time (pretty much until sixteen years ago) there was a distinct divide between fine artists, painters and sculptors, and ceramic artists with very little crossover. This residency was meant to bridge that gap. In early 1976, the first New Works in Clay exhibition took place and for the first time in fifty years, Curator Garth Johnson brought the work back together for this exhibition. Artists included Larry Poons, Michael Hall, David Smith, Billy Al Bengston, Anthony Caro and Helen Frankenthaler amongst others.
It’s weird to write about work that was made fifty years ago, I was little. But as time works its magic, everything has concurrently changed and stayed the same. While clay was once a material in the background of culture no one would take seriously, ceramics is now a force in the galleries. There used to be a war between art and craft, it was like everyone on earth colluded in a conspiracy that work made of clay wasn’t fine art. It went on for decades. That divide between fine art and craft isn’t really an argument anymore, all kinds of artists use it all the time with reckless abandon, some would argue too much. Not me, not me, just kidding.
This show is a mix of explorations, experimentations and big decisions. As a ceramicist, my first instinct is to deconstruct the pieces and the parameters of the materials. Almost all the work is made with a white stoneware with the addition of colored slips and a suspicious lack of glazes. This could be because it was the 1970’s, land art by artists like Robert Smithson, Walter de Maria and Anna Mendiata was getting a lot of attention so slips would have been a more natural approach and they were hot at the time. Artists in the residency could have been focused on the making, new to learning the properties of a material that can do anything. Or, maybe they just wanted to keep a simple approach for artists who have never worked with clay-to dive in without being weighed down in the chemistry aspect of glazes. Or, of course, budgetary concerns and time constraints. For someone new to clay, glazes can be totally overwhelming. Maybe all of those reasons.
The contrast between what we see in ceramics now is astounding. While we’re watching thirty second videos of coded 3D printing machines dropping slip into colored patterns, glazes formulated to run, and colors, this show feels so analog. There’s a tile piece with some screen-printed tiles, but even those feel pre-computer-aided design.
All the artists chosen for the residency brought a different approach. Larry Poons approached the material like he would a painting, covering a wall with canvas, laying clay on it and building up surface with thick colored slips feeling like a layered stucco wall revealing a color underneath. The wall was then cut into tiles. The lack of a clear glaze in this work was more noticeable than the other pieces in the show, the colors would have really popped. But, there’s something in the natural clay that’s endearing, the absolute lack of technology gives the tiles a sense of humility. His oil paintings are vibrant, active and full of color, without that color, the depth of the surfaces is where all the drama lies. They felt a little like Death Valley, like this is Larry Poon’s work in an alternate universe. Apparently, this project changed how he approached surfaces in his painting practice.
Helen Frankenthaler’s pieces are perfect, some of the few which have glaze. Known for working her giant canvases on the floor, she’s taken big slabs of clay, bowed them then dragged quiet, thin layers of colors across the surface, typical of her paintings. You can see the Helen Frankenthaler you know and love. Can you tell I’m a big fan?
Anthony Caro’s approach to the residency was material based. Caro, originally from London, was at one time an assistant to Henry Moore. He’d worked with oil clay for casting bronze but never clay as the end material. During the residency he really tested, pushed and learned what clay can do. And his slab piece in the show reflects that. It’s bent, folded and propped like a thick frozen piece of paper.
Painter Friedel Dzubas’ piece in the show was one of my favorites. A slab, ripped edges visible, was stacked with shiny glazed smooth edged pieces, still in the bisque state. It feels like he had to make a choice, you either get the color from the glaze or you get mature clay and he chose color. In the 70’s the only way to get the color in glazes was low fire, so it makes sense. The colors satisfyingly hit the edges. While I’m annoyed they’re in bisque, these are actually some of my favorite pieces in the show. They are making order of the material, they are putting math on chaos to me. I love it.
Billy Al Bengston’s dinnerware was quietly standing out. Bengston, once a student of Peter Voulkos, was one of the few artists in the show who had worked with clay before. Normally a painter, Bengston designed a dinnerware set and worked with Syracuse China Corporation to realize the project. It had all the painter’s brush marks, making the pieces both design and canvas.
Back to Land Art, painter Jules Olitski’s work in the show defined the era to me more than any other work in the show. It reminded me of Spiral Jetty and, in a more modern way, the ramps at the parks for Razor scooter riding. The concentric circles with the cuts create a sloppy sacred geometry. The spiral feels like architecture and nature at the same time.
Nanni Valentini: Interspaces
After spending time in the New Works show, Nanni Valentini’s work was refreshing, even as some of it was made in the same era. Valentini was an artist who understood clay. Valentini was born in 1932 in Sant’Angelo in Vado, Italy. He first trained in ceramics but inevitably attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna (where he took classes with Morandi) to study fine art. Valentini died in 1985. It’s so fun to walk into a space and think, what is happening here? What am I even looking at?
Back in the old days, a lot of people who made pottery thought that if they wanted to be taken seriously as an artist, even if they made the most beautiful pots, they would have to make sculpture. The pieces on display show just that. The first piece that stood out to me was a footed bowl with a skirt that felt like armor. Its form is a classic example of Midcentury Modern ceramics. The shape was painted, burned, smoked and scratched. I love when you can see the artist moving across the surface of a piece, deciding which mark to make, how deep to scratch, as a form of communication, a language. It was just on that cusp of looking like an ancient alien object.
As Valentini aged, it feels like his work changed and became about an inner understanding of existence, rumination on earth, life and materials. My favorite piece was Trasparenza (…e del cielo e della terra), 1979-80. It’s a glowing indigo-dyed gauze panel with the grid of the warp and weft, with thick, harder lines creating soft geometric planes. Next to it was a piece of terra cotta architecture looking like it was found in a dig from the Roman Empire. It was a match between the ancient materials versus the poetry of constantly looking back to look forward.
In Valentini’s work, you can see an artist reaching for the form, the surface and emotion simultaneously. The pieces are assertive, not aggressive, with a quiet power. They feel somber. I’m so happy I got to see this show and learn about Nanni Valentini, I’ve got a bit of a crush on him really.
Renqian Yang: Neither Here Nor Elsewhere
There’s nothing more joyous than walking into a room full of porcelain. The amount of effort it takes to make it happen, thousands of years of material research, mining, mixing, your personal material research, testing, making, glazing and firing is extraordinary. Any artist who uses it as their primary material is incredibly brave. It’s temperamental, it’s expensive and could turn on you in a moment. Renqian Yang uses it with alacrity in this show. Yang is a Chinese American artist who lives in Oswego, New York. The pieces in this show, all porcelain, were produced in three separate studios: her studio in Oswego, STARworks Ceramics in North Carolina and the Jingdezhen International Studio in Jingdezhen. Because porcelain is the rarest form of clay, it feels important to the narrative.
Starting with a piece of architecture, ribbons or strands of clay blast out of the geometry to make a weighty tangled chaos of interconnectedness. The clay looks smushed, pinched and worked, giving the impression of neural pathways or DNA strands processing information. The porcelain is dazzling, popping out of the confines of the cube. They sometimes look like slumping toxic ooze or sometimes like a flower coming out of a crack in the cement. It’s like language, math, science, time, memories, everything coming out of Pandora’s boxes.
The surfaces and the undulating lines feel soft, versus the rigidity of clay. Sometimes buried in the nests will be some discernible form, maybe a lightbulb or a kind of cookie, hitting an idea, which gives a pause in the chaos. The color is everything, it shifts and sets the tone for each piece, sometimes leading to flames, anger and danger or Spring, joy and growth. Very moody. Some of the ribbons made me want to grab onto a line and follow it through the interior of the piece and get lost in its chaos, like I’m in for a wild ride.
The pieces made in Jingdezhen, where Yang did a residency, are like aliens. It’s fascinating to see how different locations make different work. Since Yang is primarily using porcelain, you can see the location in the clay bodies. The Jingdezhen porcelain is so white it looks blue, there’s nothing else like it on earth. These pieces have collaged super saturated color decals of florals or butterflies floating on the surfaces creating dizzying erratic patterns. Some decals depict nature in the most unnatural way, the colors too bright and imagery too flat reaching for the flowers above. The architectural boxes or industrial pipes with organic forms coming out of them feel like our struggle with the natural world versus our need to create systems to sustain and support us.
What I ended up liking about Renquin Yang’s work in this show was its ability to shapeshift. The work felt heavy and light, in the same piece. There was a nature vs. architecture push and pull I really liked. She’s giving so many clues into how we work, think and react. There’s a struggle between the confines of a geometrical form and the freedom of letting yourself feel the world.
If you’re ever in the area, visit the Everson.
Cammi Climaco is a ceramicist and multidisciplinary artist based in Queens, New York, with a studio practice in Brooklyn. She earned her BFA in Crafts from Kent State University and an MFA in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Cammi has taught at institutions such as Pratt Institute, 92Y, BKLYN CLAY, and Greenwich House Pottery. In addition to her teaching and studio work, she co-hosted The Ceramics Podcast and now hosts The Ceramics Companion, where she talks about ceramics.
New Works in Clay is on view at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY, between June 20, 2026 and January 3, 2027; Nanni Valentini: Interspaces between May 2 and September 6, 2026; and Renqian Yang: Neither Here nor Elsewhere between June 13 and August 16, 2026.
Subscribe to Ceramics Now to read similar articles, essays, reviews and critical reflections on contemporary ceramics. Subscriptions help us feature a wider range of voices, perspectives, and expertise in the ceramics community.
Photos courtesy of the Everson Museum of Art

https://www.ceramicsnow.org/articles/summer-2026-at-the-everson-museum-of-art-syracuse-ny/

Ornament Unbound: Tissue Transferware Reframed at the Museum of ...

2026-10-15T11:45:11Z

Ornament Unbound: Tissue Transferware Reframed at the Museum of Royal Worcester, Worcester

Ornament Unbound: Tissue Transferware Reframed is on view at the Museum of Royal Worcester, Worcester
September 10, 2026 – February 21, 2027
The Museum of Royal Worcester is inviting audiences to see Worcester porcelain differently as it launches Under the Glaze: Re-viewing Worcester Porcelain’s Art & Design, a major new contemporary art programme exploring the connections between historic craftsmanship, creative practice and today’s artists.
The first exhibition, Ornament Unbound: Tissue Transferware Reframed, opened to the public on 10 September 2026 and features new work by Worcestershire-based interdisciplinary artist Lisa Sheppy.
Drawing on extensive research in the Museum’s collections and archives, Sheppy explores tissue transferware, a pioneering industrial printing technique first developed at the Worcester porcelain factory in the 1750s. The technique enabled intricate designs to be transferred onto ceramic surfaces and became an important part of Worcester’s celebrated decorative tradition. For Ornament Unbound, Sheppy combines historic ceramic printing methods with 21st-century digital drawing and laser engraving, creating a new body of work that brings a historic process into contemporary artistic practice.
The exhibition offers visitors an opportunity to look beyond the finished porcelain object and discover the skills, experimentation, technology and creative decisions that lie behind it. Lisa Sheppy said: “Tissue transferware is a fascinating meeting point between craftsmanship, technology and cultural exchange. I am thrilled to bring this to life through my new exhibition Ornament Unbound: Tissue Transferware Reframed. I hope to open up this historic technique to new audiences and show how these skills can inspire contemporary creative practice.”
The exhibition is accompanied by a programme of Artist in Residence days, giving visitors the opportunity to meet Lisa Sheppy, see elements of the creative process first-hand and discover how historic techniques can be transformed through contemporary approaches.
A programme of hands-on creative workshops also invites visitors to experiment with ideas inspired by Worcester porcelain, pattern and making. The project includes opportunities for Heart of Worcestershire College and University of Worcester students, community groups and former Royal Worcester factory workers to engage with the Museum’s collections and the contemporary artists involved.
Museum Director Kate Travers said: “Worcester porcelain has a remarkable history of creativity, craftsmanship and innovation, and today these objects continue to inspire new ideas. Under the Glaze allows us to connect historic skills with contemporary skills and communities, creating new ways for people to explore, question and enjoy Worcester porcelain’s art and design heritage.”
Supported by the Headley Trust and Arts Council England through the National Lottery Project Grants Unlocking Collections scheme, Under the Glaze is a two-year programme running from September 2026 to October 2027. The programme will bring together contemporary artists, students, communities and former Royal Worcester workers with the Museum’s internationally significant collection.
The Museum cares for more than 10,000 ceramic objects and over 100,000 archive records, preserving the stories of the designers, artists, craftspeople and communities behind one of Britain’s most significant porcelain manufacturers.
Following Ornament Unbound, artist Matt J Smith will create new work for the second exhibition in the programme, opening in March 2027. His project will take Worcester’s iconic figurines as a starting point for conversations about identity, representation and cultural exchange.
Contact
info@museumofroyalworcester.org
Museum of Royal Worcester
Severn Street
Worcester WR1 2ND
United Kingdom
Photos courtesy of the Museum of Royal Worcester
Captions
Lisa Sheppy, Ornament Unbound Series, Tissue transfer engraving on earthenware, 2026

https://www.ceramicsnow.org/exhibitions/ornament-unbound-tissue-transferware-reframed-at-the-museum-of-royal-worcester/

Roxanne Jackson: Ovum at The Pit, Los Angeles By Sarah Walko ...

2026-10-15T11:12:15Z

Roxanne Jackson: Ovum at The Pit, Los Angeles

By Sarah Walko
Roxanne Jackson’s ceramic sculptures and installations are created as singular forms, some composed of multiple parts, yet they are not singular objects. They function more like words within a larger narrative: together they form a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, and ultimately an exhibition that unfolds as a complete mythological tale. It is a narrative filled with birth and death, destruction and resurrection, sacred objects and trash, violence and rapture. If this exhibition were a book, it would belong equally on the shelves of fantasy, horror, dystopian fiction, history, and magical realism.
Most of the sculptures, depicting various animals, objects, and a monster drawn from Greek mythology, are displayed on pristine white pedestals, creating a stark contrast to the elaborate, ornate, and maximalist aesthetic for which Jackson is known. A flayed lizard and two split feline heads hang on the wall, while a floor sculpture rises to seven feet in height. As viewers move among these works, countless questions emerge, perhaps the most central being: What happened here? The story is presented and the spaces left for interpretation are marvelously expansive. The exhibition invites us to inhabit those gaps, imagining our own connections, causes, and consequences within Jackson’s constructed world.
Any consideration of a Roxanne Jackson exhibition must also contend with her craftsmanship. The lustrous glazes that shimmer across the surfaces of vessels and creatures, the ambitious complexity of the sculptural forms, and the painstaking attention lavished on even the smallest details all speak to an artist deeply attuned to her material. Whether rendering a monumental creature or a seemingly incidental object, Jackson brings the same level of care and precision, creating works whose technical sophistication equals the richness of their narrative worlds.
The two split-skulled feline sculptures, Split Feline and Gilded Maw, depict fractured heads suggesting both fissure and revelation: a volatile transformation, or perhaps something long dormant breaking through from within. They appear as creatures caught in a state of becoming, neither fully alive nor entirely extinct. At the same time, they evoke guardians of hidden knowledge, their consciousnesses forcibly opened to expose what would normally remain concealed. The exposed interiors invite us to consider what lies beneath the surface, whether memory, trauma, wisdom, or instinct. The sculptures also call to mind the severed head of Medusa, which retained its power even after death. Like that ancient relic, these felines seem to possess an enduring agency, their wound transformed into a source of potency rather than defeat. The savageness of their division is inseparable from their authority, suggesting that knowledge, transformation, and power often emerge through acts of rupture.
Split Feline
Split Feline
Gilded Maw
Gilded Maw
Pelican
Pelican
Pelican
Frilled Dragon
Frilled Dragon
Frilled Dragon
One particularly arresting installation centers on a pelican whose body has been opened, its innards spilling across the surface of a low circular pedestal. Surrounding the bird are objects one might expect to find in or near the water: a seashell, a fish, a fish skeleton, shrimp, seaweed, and oyster shells. Interspersed among them are the traces of human presence: an eaten apple core, plastic bottles, fragments of packaging, aluminum cans, empty medicine bottles, tampon applicators, condoms, and partially eaten strawberries. Completing the tableau are objects that suggest a more sinister narrative, including a knife and additional organs placed alongside the pelican’s exposed viscera.
The pelican occupies the center of the composition while the surrounding objects are carefully spaced around it, transforming the pedestal into something akin to an altar, an archaeological display, or the site of a funerary ritual. Refuse, animal remains, consumer debris, and sacred offerings are granted equal status. Nothing appears ancillary. Each object seems imbued with significance, as though participating in a ceremony whose meaning has been forgotten but whose power remains intact. The piece resonates with what author Sophie Strand describes as “the animate everything,” a worldview in which animals, objects, bodies, histories, and myths are not inert symbols but active participants in a living network of relationships. The sculptures possess an uncanny agency. The pelican is not simply a victim, nor merely an ecological allegory. It becomes a conduit through which multiple stories converge: consumption and waste, sacrifice and desecration, mortality and renewal. The fish skeleton, the oyster shell, the discarded needle, and the plastic bottle all seem equally alive within the narrative logic of the work.
Also in this installation, the boundaries separating nature from culture, the sacred from the profane, and life from death are dissolved. The pelican’s opened body functions almost as a portal, exposing a world in which all things are connected through cycles of use, decay, transformation, and rebirth. It presents a mythology of entanglement, where every object, whether organic or manufactured, carries its own history and participates in a larger story about what humans leave behind and what the world remembers and asks us, startlingly, to slash our human superiority complex, as it’s creating quite a mess.
Perched atop the exhibition’s seven-foot-tall sculpture is a harpy in her nest, one of the most infamous creatures of Greek mythology. Traditionally depicted as part woman and part bird, harpies occupied a liminal position between the earthly and divine realms, serving as agents of punishment, messengers, and beings associated with sudden disappearance and ferocious transformation. Their names reinforce these associations: Aello, storm-swift, Ocypete, swift-wing, and Celaeno, the dark one. Like personifications of weather itself, they embodied forces that could not be controlled, only endured. In Ovum, however, the harpy feels less like a monster than a sentinel. Elevated above the other sculptures, she occupies a position of watchfulness, surveying the strange landscape that unfolds below. Her presence brings together many of the exhibition’s recurring themes: flight and earth, life and death, destruction and renewal, myth and material reality. The harpy is resonant within an exhibition populated by wounded creatures, discarded objects, relics, and evidence of transformation. In Greek mythology, harpies often arrived in moments of transition, carrying away souls, food, or even people. They functioned as intermediaries between worlds. Jackson’s harpy appears to serve a similar role, bridging different states of being. It overlooks a mythology where creatures are split open, shells are abandoned and reoccupied, and bodies continually shift between decay and regeneration.
Harpy Candelabra
Harpy Candelabra
Harpy Candelabra
Harpy Candelabra
Harpy Candelabra
Harpy Candelabra
Harpy Candelabra
Harpy Candelabra
Harpy Candelabra
Disco Snake
Disco Snake
Trixie’s Vessel
Trixie’s Vessel
Seen in relation to the exhibition’s broader themes, the harpy may also be interpreted as a guardian of deep time, arriving from a past that remains strangely alive in the present. Its perch atop the sculpture transforms it into a kind of witness, surveying the cycles of creation and destruction that animate this world. Neither entirely benevolent nor threatening, it embodies the exhibition’s refusal of clear distinctions. If the Ovum suggested by the exhibition’s title represents the potential for life and creation, the harpy seems to represent the midwife here for what emerges after birth: the unpredictable forces that shape destiny, transformation, and survival. Positioned at the apex of the exhibition, she becomes both messenger and oracle.
Another compelling work features a tarantula perched atop an empty turtle shell. Across cultures, the spider is associated with fate, weaving, hidden knowledge, and the unseen forces that connect all things. The tarantula in particular carries an added sense of unease, evoking fear, mystery. As a maker of webs, it becomes both architect and storyteller, spinning connections between disparate worlds. The turtle shell beneath it, associated with creation myths, endurance, protection, and longevity, often symbolizes the earth itself, a being that inhabits both land and water and mediates between realms. Here, however, the shell is empty. Its former inhabitant is absent, leaving behind only a protective architecture, a home transformed into a relic. The relationship between the two forms suggests a cycle of succession rather than extinction. The spider occupies the abandoned shell not as a conqueror but as a continuation, repurposing an old world as the foundation for a new one. The sculpture evokes an image of something emerging after catastrophe, patiently weaving fresh connections across the remains of the past. Together they embody a recurring theme throughout the exhibition: that endings are never absolute. What appears abandoned, broken, or extinct remains available for reimagining. Like many of Jackson’s creatures, this hybrid pairing seems to exist between worlds, part archaeological remnant, part mythological messenger, quietly spinning a future from the materials of the past. It also brings to mind the author Rebecca Solnit quote on climate change, “People have always been good at imagining the end of the world, which is much easier to picture than the strange sidelong paths of change in a world without end.”
The exhibition’s title, Ovum, is one of humanity’s most enduring symbols. As the cellular beginning of life, the egg is associated with birth, fertility, transformation, and the possibility of worlds yet to emerge. The egg is both container and threshold, holding within it the tension between what is known and what has yet to come into being. Jackson’s sculptures too inhabit a state of perpetual becoming. Like an egg, many of these works seem poised at the boundary between interior and exterior worlds. Breaking becomes a generative act rather than a destructive one.
Within this context, clay itself functions as a kind of cosmic egg. It is the substance from which the entire mythology emerges. Every sculpture carries the possibility of transformation, stating creation is not a single originating event but an ongoing process of beginning again, metamorphosis, and regeneration. Endings and beginnings are inseparable, every fracture contains potential and the work resists any single interpretive framework. They can be understood as mythological narratives, archaeological remnants, personal symbols, ecological allegories, or feats of ceramic craftsmanship all at once. They are objects where multiple histories remain active simultaneously, where the ancient and contemporary, the spiritual and material, coexist without cancelling one another out.
The power of myth lies not in its factual accuracy but in its capacity to endure, gathering new meanings as it passes through different eras and cultures. Jackson’s creatures, vessels, and relics seem to operate in this way. They feel both newly made and impossibly old, carrying stories that continue to evolve each time they are encountered. Clay, in this context, becomes more than a medium but rather a repository of time, holding together geology, history, belief, and imagination in material form. In addition to being the egg, the clay is also the bedrock. The sculptures seem less constructed than unearthed, as though they have risen from geological depths.
As permafrost melts across Arctic regions, long-buried remains of woolly mammoths, ancient horses, and other Ice Age animals are emerging from the earth, startlingly preserved after thousands of years. What was once accessible only through fossils, stories, and imagination is reentering the present. Visually, it’s like the earth itself appears to be remembering. Jackson’s sculptures evoke a similar sensation. Excavated rather than invented, surfaced from a forgotten epoch carrying traces of extinct creatures, sacred narratives, and ancestral knowledge. The exhibition suggests that the boundary between history and mythology is more permeable than we imagine. Fashioned from clay, itself a material drawn from the earth and transformed by fire, Jackson’s beings embody the possibility that what has been buried is never entirely lost. Ultimately, one must walk out of the exhibition but the story continues, both in our minds and seemingly, in the gallery as well. The exhibition answers another, quite satiating question too. What is always in a clay vessel? Nourishment.
Sarah Walko is an artist, director, curator and writer. She is currently the Director of Visual and Performing Arts at Lenox Hill Neighborhood House.
Roxanne Jackson: Ovum is on view at The Pit, Los Angeles, September 12-October 22, 2026.
Subscribe to Ceramics Now to read similar articles, essays, reviews and critical reflections on contemporary ceramics. Subscriptions help us feature a wider range of voices, perspectives, and expertise in the ceramics community.
Photos courtesy of the artist and The Pit, Los Angeles. Photography: Chris Hanke
Captions
Installation views, Roxanne Jackson: Ovum, The Pit, Los Angeles, 2026
Roxanne Jackson, Split Feline, 2025, Ceramic, glaze, luster, 12.5 x 15 x 7 inches, 31.75 x 38.10 x 17.78 cm
Roxanne Jackson, Gilded Maw, 2026, Stoneware, glaze, luster, 14 x 20½ x 9 in., 35.56 x 52.07 x 22.86 cm
Roxanne Jackson, Pelican, 2026, Ceramic, glaze, luster, 4 x 48 x 48 in., 10.16 x 121.92 x 121.92 cm
Roxanne Jackson, Frilled Dragon, 2026, Ceramic, glaze, luster, 12 x 40 x 19 in, 30.48 x 101.60 x 48.26 cm
Roxanne Jackson, Harpy Candelabra, 2026, Ceramic, glaze, luster, carved black candles, steel base, 84 x 30 x 30 in., 213.36 x 76.20 x 76.20 cm
Roxanne Jackson, Disco Snake, 2026, Ceramic, glaze, luster, 20 x 23 x 16 in, 50.80 x 58.42 x 40.64 cm
Roxanne Jackson, Trixie’s Vessel, 2026, Ceramic and glaze, 26 x 14.5 x 10 in, 66.04 x 36.83 x 25.40 cm

https://www.ceramicsnow.org/articles/roxanne-jackson-ovum-at-the-pit-los-angeles/

Deirdre McLoughlin Deirdre McLoughlin Deirdre McLoughlin began ...

2026-10-15T09:26:20Z

Deirdre McLoughlin

Deirdre McLoughlin
Deirdre McLoughlin began working with clay in 1972, when she was handed a lump of clay and invited to make something. From the beginning, her coiled forms have been abstract in intent and feeling. Between 1981 and 1985, she developed her skills and language of form among the Sodeisha artists in Kyoto. From Japan, she travelled throughout China.
Sculpture, rather than ceramics in itself, has remained her main concern as an artist. Her work is shaped by ideas of space, balance, geometry, formal logic and material quality. Her forms have been described in different ways, including organic, abstract expressionist, biomorphic and minimalist, as well as edgy, touchable, elegant and humorous. She continues to explore physical movement through practices such as dance and meditation. Places where she has lived or stayed have also influenced her work, from the grey Irish landscape and the straight lines of the Dutch landscape to the volcanic energy of Hawaii. She developed a deep feeling for indigenous people in Indiana, while in Japan her work was considered to show the influence of Jōmon pottery.
McLoughlin’s first solo exhibition was held at Gallery Beni, Kyoto, in 1984. Her major institutional exhibitions include RECENT WORKS at the Ulster Museum, Belfast, in 1993, which travelled to Limerick City Gallery of Art and Green on Red Gallery, Dublin, and SHAPING THE VOID, a 2012 Design and Crafts Council of Ireland exhibition that travelled to Wandesford Quay Gallery, Cork, and the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris.
She was honoured at the Korean International Ceramic Biennale in 2007 and 2019, and was a two-time winner of the Ceramics of Europe Westerwald Prize, in 2004 and 2014. She is currently represented by Modern Shapes Gallery, Antwerp, and Taste Contemporary, Geneva, where she will have a solo exhibition in 2027. Recent group exhibitions have taken place in Oxford, London, Tokyo, Cork, and across five venues in Benelux between 2023 and 2026. In 2026, the Loewe Foundation and La Residencia Belmond awarded her a residency.
McLoughlin graduated with a BA in Humanities from Trinity College Dublin. In 2021, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Trinity College Dublin for her life’s work as a visual artist. She is based in Amsterdam.
Visit Deirdre McLoughlin’s website and Instagram page.
Featured work
Selected works, 2021-2026

https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/deirdre-mcloughlin/

MORE CLAY! The Power of Repetition at Fuller Craft Museum, ...

2026-10-15T08:48:08Z

MORE CLAY! The Power of Repetition at Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton

Zimra Beiner
David Hicks
Kate Roberts
Kahlil Robert Irving
Walter McConnell
Walter McConnell
JJ McCracken
Vanessa Ryerse
JJ McCracken
Vanessa Ryerse
Bean Finneran
Brockton High School Students
MORE CLAY! The Power of Repetition is on view at Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA
March 28, 2026 – February 7, 2027
Fuller Craft Museum presents MORE CLAY! The Power of Repetition, a striking exhibition that brings together eight contemporary artists who push the creative and structural possibilities of clay through repetition, accumulation, and inventive feats of construction.
Curated by Rebecca Cross, MORE CLAY! The Power of Repetition explores how repeated gestures and serial forms can build sculptures of extraordinary scale and meaning. By building piece by piece, the artists transform clay from a familiar sustainable material into immersive sculptural environments that reflect on labor, time, and identity. Through patience, discipline, and sustained focus, the artists transform countless small gestures into monumental forms, revealing the meditative rhythm of making while inspiring reflection and appreciation for the power of craftsmanship.
Fuller Craft Museum Executive Director Jenn Chrzanowski shares, “We are thrilled to welcome MORE CLAY! to Fuller Craft to share with our patrons. This exhibition reminds us that the most powerful art is often built one small act at a time. It is a stunning reflection on labor, identity, and the transformative potential of clay in visionary hands.”
Participating artist Kate Roberts reflects on the delicate balance between strength and impermanence in her installation, Gates to Nowhere.“I wanted to create structures that initially look solid and imposing, but are actually fragile and capable of shifting or dissolving over time.” Suspended from above and built from thread-like strands of unfired clay, Roberts’ monumental gates invite viewers to consider thresholds, boundaries, and the fleeting nature of the environments we create.
MORE CLAY! The Power of Repetition was first presented at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center and traveled to Fuller Craft Museum with support from the Hamilton Company Charitable Foundation.
The exhibition features work by Zimra Beiner, Bean Finneran, David Hicks, Kahlil Robert Irving, Walter McConnell, J.J. McCracken, Kate Roberts, and Vanessa Ryerse. Each artist employs repetition in a distinct way, whether by assembling hundreds of individual components, layering forms, or building intricate surfaces that reward sustained viewing. Together, their works reveal how the act of assembling multiples becomes a powerful expressive strategy, one that amplifies meaning, challenges structural boundaries, and invites viewers to reconsider the physical and conceptual possibilities of clay as a sustainable, contemporary material. Work by Brockton High School students is also included in the collaborative Homage to de Waal Wall.
A fully illustrated printed catalogue has been developed in conjunction with MORE CLAY!, featuring an essay by Fuller Craft Museum Artistic Director & Chief Curator, Beth McLaughlin. The publication will be available for purchase throughout the run of the exhibition and offers deeper insight into the artists’ processes and themes. This exhibition is made possible by the generous support of The Hamilton Company Charitable Foundation and the Caroline R. Graboys Fund.
Contact
508.588.6000
Fuller Craft Museum
455 Oak Street
Brockton, MA 02301
United States

https://www.ceramicsnow.org/exhibitions/more-clay-the-power-of-repetition-at-fuller-craft-museum-brockton/

Bianca MacPherson Bianca MacPherson Bianca MacPherson creates ...

2026-10-15T07:28:17Z

Bianca MacPherson

Bianca MacPherson
Bianca MacPherson creates ceramic sculptures that explore identity, perception, memory, and the experience of existing between worlds. Drawing on her experience as a mixed-race Black woman, as well as personal and collective histories, she examines how identity is shaped by what we remember, overlook, assume, or claim as our own. Using abstraction, she transforms references from historical and personal photographs, illustrations, and archival research into forms that exist between recognition and ambiguity, inviting viewers to question how perception is shaped by their own experiences, assumptions, and histories.
Originally from Buffalo, New York, MacPherson’s work has been exhibited nationally. Selected exhibitions include Compulsion (2026) and Fractured Foundations at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, California; the 2026 NCECA Conference exhibition, Volumes, in Detroit, Michigan; BLACK CLAY at ARTE NOIR Gallery in Seattle, Washington; and VIEWPOINTS: Ceramics at the Hyde Art Gallery at Grossmont College in El Cajon, California. She has also presented her work at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, New York, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the Academy Center of the Arts in Lynchburg, Virginia.
MacPherson was selected as a 2026 NCECA Emerging Artist and has led educational workshops throughout the United States, sharing both technical building strategies and conceptual approaches to making. She received her MFA from Pennsylvania State University and her BFA from Buffalo State University. She has participated in workshops and residencies nationwide, including residencies at Laguna Clay Company, the American Museum of Ceramic Art, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts (2025), Haystack Mountain School of Craft, and Penland School of Craft. MacPherson co-organized the Re-Mixed Residency at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in 2025 and serves as the Community Arts Representative on the executive board of the Critical Mixed Race Studies Association, fostering dialogue and advocacy around nuanced and multiracial identities through artistic and community engagement.
Visit Bianca MacPherson’s website and Instagram page.
Featured work
Selected works, 2025-2026

https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/bianca-macpherson/