NCECA

Christa Assad

Christa Assad can be found combing the railroad tracks and Ironworks District of West Berkeley, CA, for discarded treasure. A teacher, traveler and full time ceramicist with an MFA from Indiana University, Assad’s work is in the permanent collections of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The Ceramic Research Center at Arizona State University Museum, and The Penn State Fulbright Scholar Collection, among others. Assad is represented by Ferrin Gallery, Harvey Meadows Gallery, and Fourth & Clay. She teaches and exhibits internationally, creating both useful and sculptural pieces that begin on the potter’s wheel, but move beyond the round.

Walter Keeler

Born London, England 1942, trained at Harrow School of Art, under Victor Margrie and Michael Casson. First studio in Buckinghamshire 1965 - 1976, present studio in South Wales since 1976. Pioneer of salglaze revival in 1970's, developed distinctive range of useful saltgazed pottery which is still in production. Also makes innovative earthenware pots which reflect a deep rooted interest in pottery from the past.

Tip Toland

A Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award and National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship recipient, Toland received an MFA in ceramics from Montana State University in 1981 and a BFA in ceramics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1975. She has taught extensively nationally and locally at schools including Louisiana State University, University of Montana, Montana State University, University of Washington and Seward Park Clay Studio. She exhibits nationally and is represented by Nancy Margolis Gallery, NY and Pacini Lubel. Her work is in many prestigious collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Jason Walker

Jason Walker received his BFA from Utah State University and MFA from Penn State University. After teaching for two years in Napa, California he resigned to pursue life as a studio artist. A past resident and recipient of the Taunt Fellowship at The Archie Bray Foundation, Walker was also awarded NCECA’s International Residency Fellowship to work in Vallauris, France. Recently he was a visiting artist and instructor at the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in China. Walker’s work is included in collections of the Fine Art Museum of San Francisco: De Young, the Carnegie Museum, and the Arizona State University Art Museum, Ceramic Research Center. Represented by the Ferrin Gallery, Walker works as a studio artist in Bellingham, Washington.

Stefano Catalani joined Bellevue Arts Museum in 2005 as Curator and was appointed Director of Curatorial Affairs/Artistic Director in February of 2010.
Highly regarded in the field of contemporary art, Catalani has been chosen as a nominator for many awards, including the Neddy Fellowship Award (Behnke Foundation, Seattle, WA), the Irving and Yvonne Twining Humber Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement (Artist Trust, Seattle, WA) and the Contemporary Northwest Art Awards (Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR). He also serves as a guest lecturer at the University of Washington, Evergreen State College and other educational institutions.
An Italian native, Catalani relocated to Seattle in 2001. His classic studies in Italy provided him with a strong theoretical background in art history and philosophy. At Bellevue Arts Museum, he focuses on “craft as a cultural signifier,” stressing the social implications of craft.

Gwen F. Chanzit is curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Denver Art Museum where she has presented many exhibitions, from those on individual artists Herbert Bayer, Matisse, and Bonnard, to group exhibitions, including Color as Field .  In 2011 she organized the DAM ceramics exhibitions, Focus: Earth and Fire and Overthrown: Clay without Limits.
An expert on Bauhaus artist Herbert Bayer (1900-1985), Chanzit published The Herbert Bayer Collection and Archive at the Denver Art Museum , Herbert Bayer and Modernist Design in America, and a revised edition of the latter, From Bauhaus to Aspen: Herbert Bayer and Modernist Design in America.  For a 2009 Austrian exhibition catalogue on Bayer, Ahoi, Herbert: Bayer und die moderne. she wrote “ein visuelles alphabet: die entschlϋsselung von bayers  ‘anthologien,’” (“A Visual Alphabet: Deciphering  Bayer’s Anthology Paintings.”) She authored the 40 artists’ essays in the Denver Art Museum catalogue, Radar: Selections from the Collection of Vicki and Kent Logan, and was editor and essayist for DAM catalogues, Embrace! and Overthrown: Clay Without Limits.  Chanzit holds a Ph.D. in art history and contributes to future generations of museum professionals as director of museum studies for the University of Denver’s graduate program in art history.

Robert Brady  is recently retired from Sacramento State University. He received his MFA in 1975 at the University of California in Davis, California, and his BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco in 1969.
Brady has participated in many solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States. He has pieces in permanent collections in various galleries and museums such as the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; the Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock; and the Stedelijik Museum in Amsterdam, Holland. In 2008, Brady received the Aileen Osborn Webb Award from the American Craft Council. He has also been featured in various publications such as Artweek, San Francisco Chronicle, American Craft, Ceramics Monthly and recently, Art Forum.

I was a student at the University of Minnesota in the late sixties studying with Warren MacKenzie.   In 1970 a group of us moved to Georgia to live rurally and cheaply to establish a communal pottery studio.  After 8 years I left Georgia to pursue teaching at the Chicago Art Institute in 1978.  From there my teaching experience multiplied to include many adjunct positions across the country.  In 1995 I started my gallery, TRAX in Berkeley, CA to showcase the work of nationally known potters. I currently live and work in Berkeley,CA , making pots and running TRAX.

W. Lowell Baker is currently Professor of Ceramics at the University of Alabama. He has been interested in developing experimental kiln designs and burner systems throughout his long career.
Baker is most well known for the development, since 1973, of a burner system which uses a variety of particulate fuels. Professor Baker is currently firing some of his kilns to temperatures exceeding cone 14 using sawdust as a fuel.

Janet DeBoos has had a long career in making, teaching and writing during which she has had an abiding interest in process. She sees the domestic pot as occupying the space between making and use. This rich field has led to examinations over the past thirty years of the way we both make, and use, objects. Initially this was related to skill and to the way in which we develop 'object-related meaning'. For the last five or six years she has become increasingly interested in the way in which meaningful making and using can contribute to health and the way in which creative thinking is enabled through periods of what is commonly called boredom.

Julie Emerson established the Seattle Art Museum’s Decorative Arts Department in 1981, with an emphasis on building the European and American Decorative Arts collections.
The Seattle Art Museum opened its newly expanded building in May of 2007, featuring decorative arts galleries curated by Emerson that include a wood-paneled Italian Room dating from 1550-1580, in which the maiolica collection is showcased, and the Porcelain Room, brimming with one thousand magnificent European and Asian pieces. 
The Porcelain Room is the culmination of research that began with a course on the history of porcelain, taught at the University of Washington by Emerson and co-instructor Mimi Gardner Gates, which led in 2000 to the most ambitious decorative arts exhibition and book ever organized by the museum, Porcelain Stories: From China to Europe.  

Mimi Gates

Mimi Gardner Gates was director of the Seattle Art Museum for fifteen years and is now director emerita, overseeing the Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas. She has a BA from Stanford University in Chinese history and a PhD from Yale University in the history of Chinese Art. Previously, she spent nineteen years at Yale University Art Gallery, the last seven-and-a-half of those years as director. She is a fellow of the Yale Corporation; a trustee of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment; a manager of the Blakemore Foundation; and serves on the boards of the Yale University Art Gallery, the Northwest African American Museum, and Copper Canyon Press. Dr. Gates formerly chaired the National Indemnity Program at the National Endowment for the Arts and served on the Getty Leadership Institute Advisory Committee

John Grade is the recipient of the 2010 biennial Willard Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, an Andy Warhol Foundation Award (NY), two Pollock Krasner Foundation Awards (NY), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (NY), A Contemporary Art Award from the Portland Art Museum, four grants from Artist Trust, five grants from 4Culture and four grants from the city of Seattle. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. He recently exhibited at Galerie Ateliers L'H Du Siege in France, Fabrica in the UK, and Cynthia Reeves Gallery in New York. Grade has been a fellow at the Djerassi Foundation (CA), the MacDowell Colony - twice - (NH), the Espy Foundation (WA) and the Ballinglen Foundation in County Mayo, Ireland. His work has been featured and reviewed in Art in America, Sculpture, Artweek, American Craft, ARTUS, the Boston Globe, and on NPR’s All Things Considered and Studio 360. Two monographs of the artist’s work have been published coinciding with major museum surveys of his work. Articles about his current work are forthcoming in Sculpture, Art in America, The Seattle Times, American Craft, Ceramics Monthly, Arcade, Conde de Nast Traveller and Italian and Russian Domus.

My name is Mark Hall. Ceramics was a big part of my high school experience. I graduated from CCAD in 2010 with a BFA in Industrial Design. Currently I'am working on my MFA in ceramics at BGSU as a research assistant. I have participated in design projects/competitions with Battelle, Elmers and McGill Air Flow.

Garth Johnson is a studio artist, writer, and educator who lives in Eureka, California. He is a craft activist who explores craft's influence and relevance in the 21st century. His weblog, Extreme Craft is a "Compendium of Art Masquerading as Craft, Craft Masquerading as Art, and Craft Extending its Middle Finger." Garth is currently an Associate Professor at College of the Redwoods.

Charles Krafft is a self-taught painter based in Seattle, Washington USA. His work in the Delft ceramics tradition was inspired by his friendship with American motorcycle and hot rod hero Von Dutch. In the early 1990s, Krafft began a series of natural and socio-political disasters painted on found china plates called Disasterware™, with the logo designed by Von Dutch. In 1995, Krafft traveled to war-ravaged Bosnia Herzegovina with the Slovenian industrial rock band Laibach. Moved by the plight of the besieged residents of Sarajevo, he returned to Central Europe and created an arsenal of Delft weaponry. The Porcelain War Museum Project premiered at the Republic of Slovenia Ministry of Defense headquarters in Ljubljana in 2000, and has subsequently been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world.

 Jo Lauria is an independent curator and author specializing in decorative arts, design, and craft. She has organized several national touring exhibitions and worked on multi-media presentations and documentaries focused on artists and topics relevant to her field. Her primary publications include   Color and Fire: Defining Moments in Studio Ceramics, 1950-2000; Ruth Duckworth: Modernist Sculptor; California Design: The Legacy of West Coast Craft and Style; and most recently, Craft in America: Celebrating Two Centuries of Artists and Objects. The most recent exhibition which Jo Lauria has organized, Golden State of Craft: California 1960-1985, is on display at the Craft and Folk Art Museum through Jan. 8, 2012 and is part of the Getty Initiative, Pacific Standard Time.

I started painting in oils when I was eight, and sold my first painting when I was ten. I never wanted to be anything other than an artist. In college, I got seduced by clay and glazes, and made my living as a potter for 22 years. Since 1986, I've worked exclusively on ceramic tile and have done well over 1000 tile commissions.Recently I've started painting again, this time in acrylic. It's like being a kid again, and I'm painting the same things I was painting as a kid- landscapes and wildlife. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoy doing them.

Dr Andrew Livingstone holds a BA(Hons), MA and a PhD, The Authenticity of Clay and its Redefinition within Contemporary Practice: Ceramic Familiarity and the Contribution to Expansion. He is an academic at the University of Sunderland where he leads both MA Ceramics and CARCuos the Ceramic Arts Research Centre. His exhibitions include The Smithsonian Institute and the Garth Clark Gallery, New York.
www.andrewlivingstone.com

Matt received his MFA in Ceramics from Ohio University in 1997, his BFA in Ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1995. Matt went on to become a Teaching Lab Specialist at The University of Florida in Gainesville for six and a half years. In 2005, Matt moved to Oxford Mississippi to join the art faculty at The University of Mississippi. Currently, Matt is an Associate Professor of Art, and the Graduate Coordinator for the Department of Art at Ole Miss.

Paul Mathieu is a potter working and teaching in Vancouver, Canada, at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. His most recent book on the History and Theory of Ceramics "The Art of the Future" is available for FREE online, text and images at www.paulmathieu.ca/theartofthefuture

Gail Nichols was born in Michigan and is now an Australian ceramic artist, recognized internationally for her innovative approach to soda vapor glazing. She completed a PhD at Monash University in 2002. Her book, Soda, Clay and Fire (American Ceramic Society) has been heralded as a leading text in the field. Gail lives on a rural property near Braidwood, New South Wales. She makes pots and occasionally teaches at Australian National University in Canberra.

Yael Novak

Graduate of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem – English and Art History York University, Toronto, Canada – Education and Special Education. A chance encounter with an exquisite wood fired ewer led to a career change and a lifetime commitment to clay. Studio Potter since 1990 - Her work found in international - private and corporate collections. Yael has taught, curated and exhibited throughout the world and participated in several workshops, professional conferences and symposia. Council member of the Ceramic Artists Association of Israel – CAAI in charge of Foreign Affairs. Over the past several years she has been initiating global connections for the CAAI in an effort to establish Israeli ceramic art as part of the international clay community and to contribute to its professional dialogue with the world.

Greg Pugh grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Greg became involved in serious art making when he was 17. After a summer session at Alfred summer school, Greg became very involved in Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, in Grand Rapids. Greg received his BFA from Bowling Green State University, in Bowling Green, Ohio.
Greg is now currently a Research Technician for the Ceramic 3D Printing project, lead by professor John Balistreri. Greg Pugh has been working on the team since 2007.

John Roloff is a visual artist with a background in science who works conceptually with site, process and natural systems, whose projects often take the form of large-scale environmental and gallery installations.  His work has been seen both outdoors and in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, UC Berkeley Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian Institution, Photoscene Cologne, the Venice Architectural and Art Biennales and The Snow Show, Kemi, Finland.  A recipient of 3 artists visual arts fellowships from the NEA, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, a California Arts Council grant for visual artists and an Bernard Osher Fellowship at the Exploratorium, he is currently chair of the Sculpture/Ceramics Department at the San Francisco Art Institute.  http://www.johnroloff.com.

Jake Seniuk has been both director and curator at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center since 1989. During that time he has brought to the Olympic Peninsula more than 100 exhibitions by contemporary Northwest masters including Leo Kenney, Charles Stokes, Gayle Bard, Dennis Evans, Nancy Mee, Richard Cook, Dale Chihuly, Nöle Giulini, William Morris and Trimpin. Thematic exhibitions such as Wood, Utopian Visions, HomeLand and the ongoing Strait Art series have showcased both well-established and emerging artists from the Peninsula and the greater Pacific Northwest. Since 2000 he has curated Art Outside, an ongoing exhibition of sculpture and site works that now number over 100 spread over the five acres of the former Webster estate.

Saadi Shapiro started repairing kilns at Merritt College, where he has been the Art Department Tech for the last twenty-two years. As the Service Manager at Clay People, in Richmond, California for the last 14 years, he has provided equipment repair throughout most of Central and Northern California.

I specialize in electric kiln service, repair, and sales for most ceramic and pottery making equipment manufacturers. I am a consultant for private, commercial, educational studio designs for safe set up and equipment operation.

Daniel Bare is a ceramic artist who's works focus on reorganizing ubiquitous post consumer ceramic detritus into fused glazed sculptures. His teaching appointments include Clemson University, SC, Grand Valley State University, MI, and Interlochen Center for the Arts, MI. Daniel has participated in several artist residency programs including Green Arts, Kanazawa, Japan, Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, MT, the Pottery Workshop Shanghai, China Shanghai University, China and The Yueji Kiln International Contemporary Ceramic Art Center, Dehua, China. Daniel received his MFA in Ceramic Art from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Alfred, NY, and his BFA in Crafts/Ceramics from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA.

John Baymore is adjunct professor of ceramics at New Hampshire Institute of Art and noborigama firing studio ceramist. John has taught at Massachusetts College of Art, Boston University’s Program in Artisanry, and the Danforth Museum School. He is President of the Potters Council of the American Ceramic Society, and former member of the Leadership Advisory Team for the N.H. Department of Education. John served on NHIA’s Curriculum Committee, NASAD Accreditation Committee, and chaired the Health and Safety Committee. His work is in numerous public collections in Japan. John has presented at NCECA in 2006, 1999, and 1984.

Susannah Biondo-Gemmell currently holds the position of Assistant Professor of Art at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, IA.  She teaches courses in 3-D Studio Basics, Ceramics, Sculpture, Casting, Installation, and Drawing.  Recent exhibitions include shows at the Sinclair Galleries (Coe College), Eastern Washington University, Janalyn Hanson White Gallery (Mt. Mercy University), the Archie Bray Foundation, and the San Diego Museum of the Living Artist. She received her M.F.A. in Ceramic Art from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2006 and her B.F.A. in Ceramics from Washington University in St. Louis in 2002. 

David Binns is Reader in Contemporary Ceramics at the University of Central Lancashire, in the UK.  His research and art practice explores issues of sustainability within contemporary ceramic practice - using recycled ceramic, glass and mineral waste.  He is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics.

Gerard Blaauw studied ceramic art/design at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, taught at the Design Academy in Eindhoven for 28 years, and founded Blaauw Products in the Netherlands more than 35 years ago. He has designed and built hundreds of custom, energy-efficient, computerized kilns for artists, universities, and industries throughout Europe, the United States, and Asia.

Andy Brayman is a potter who established and directs The Matter Factory and Easy Ceramic Decals in Kansas City, Kansas. The Matter Factory is a collaborative artist laboratory that facilitates projects with the aid of industrial processes.

Benjamin Carter received a BFA in ceramics and painting from Appalachian State University and a MFA in ceramics from the University of Florida. He has been a resident artist at the Canton Clay Works in Canton, CT, Odyssey Center for Ceramic Arts in Asheville, NC, and Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, CO. He currently serves as the Educational Director of the Pottery Workshop Shanghai.

Cynthia Consentino received her MFA from University of Massachusetts, Amherst and her BFA from The Cooper Union College of Arts and Sciences.  She is a studio artist in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where she also teaches at the community college. A recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, American Craft Council, The Society of Arts and Crafts, and The Blanche E. Colman Artist Awards, Consentino has exhibited widely.  She has also been a resident artist at the John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry Program, Oregon College of Arts and Crafts, La Napoule Foundation, France, and Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Japan.  In 2005 Cynthia completed a tile commission for the John M. Kohler Art Center in Wisconsin. Her artist designed washroom has over 2000 relief and hand painted tile.

Dave Finkelnburg is a studio potter, engineer, ceramic consultant and clay maker. He earned an MS in Ceramic Engineering from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. He is currently technical editor of Ceramics Monthly and a partner in Matt and Dave's Clays, LLC.

Amy Gogarty taught art history, ceramics history and contemporary theory for sixteen years at the Alberta College of Art & Design in Calgary, Alberta, prior to relocating to Vancouver, where she presently lives and works. She has published over 80 reviews, essays and critical writings about contemporary art and craft practice, and she co-edited two anthologies, Utopic Impulses: Contemporary Ceramics Practice and Craft Perception and Practice vol 3 (both Ronsdale Press, 2007).

Sin-ying Ho received a diploma with honors from Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, a BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and an MFA from Louisiana State University in 2001. Ho is associate professor at Queens College, City University of New York teaching ceramics art. She has taught ceramics art at Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver, Alberta College of Art & Design, Calgary and Concordia University, Montreal. Ho has been a Visiting Artist for the Office of the Arts at Harvard University, Boston, the Hong Kong Art School, Hong Kong, and Princeton University, New Jersey. She has exhibited in the United States, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Germany. Her works are in several museum collections including Korea, Taiwan, China and Canada. 

Priscilla Hollingsworth is an artist who works primarily in clay; her output includes sculpture, installations, and vessels.  She has shown her work in numerous individual and group exhibitions across the United States from 1985 to the present. 

Ayumi Horie is a studio potter in the Hudson Valley of New York who has developed a distinctive online community utilizing social networks to support her studio practice. She was recently named Ceramic Monthly's first recipient of the "Ceramic Artist of the Year" award. Horie makes work in earthenware and porcelain that draw inspiration from folk traditions and comics in the U.S. and Japan.

Currently a professor at Marlboro College, Martina Lantin has worked as apprentice and production potter in 4 countries. A former resident artist at Arrowmont School of Art and Craft and Baltimore Clayworks, she is a potter interested in our relationship with the functional objects that fill our lives.

Alleghany Meadows is a studio potter inCarbondale, Colorado, received his BA from Pitzer College, Claremont, CA,and his MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. He studied with Takashi Nakazato, Karatsu, Japan, received a Watson Fellowship for field study of potters in Nepal, and was anartist-in-residence at Anderson Ranch Arts Center. Alleghany has presentedlectures, workshops and been a visiting artist at Penland, Alfred, Anderson Ranch, Archie Bray,Arrowmont and Haystack. He exhibits nationally and is thefounder of Artstream Nomadic Gallery, co-founder of Harvey/Meadows Gallery, and co-founder of Studio for Arts and Works (SAW), Carbondale,Colorado. He serves on the board of Haystack. His work was recently acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,and the Huntington Museum of Art, WV, where he was honored with the WalterGropius Master Award.

Jen Mills creates ceramic sculptures and installations that combine video, fabric, and other mixed media that alter the sense of time by blurring the line between function and memory and giving clues for an undetermined or mysterious use. Mills has an MFA in Ceramics from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and a BA in Religion and Art History from the University of Puget Sound. She is a recipient of an Artist Support Grant from Jack Straw Productions, and has been a visiting artist and lecturer at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI and Wichita State University.

Jill Oberman is currently the Executive Director of the Clay Studio of Missoula in Missoula, Montana.  She previously worked as the Director of Programs and Administration at the Archie Bray Foundation, and the studio manager of the ceramics program at Anderson Ranch. She has been a resident artist at numerous art institutions, notably the Anderson Ranch, the Archie Bray Foundation, and Arrowmont School for Arts and Crafts.

Sonya M. PauKune was born in Colorado, but spent the first 25 years of her life traveling and living around the globe, from Germany to Morocco.  She received her BA in Ceramics at the University of Northern Colorado under Professor Dick Luster and her MFA in Ceramics from Kansas State University studying under Professor Yoshiro Ikeka with Anna Callouri Holcombe on her graduate committee. While at K-State she was elected to the NCECA board as the Student director-at-large, happily serving for 2 years.  PauKune is an Associate Professor of Art and Design at Aims Community College and the Gallery Director/Curator of the Ed Beatty Campus Gallery. She is also a practicing artist who exhibits her “clayage” sculptural and functional ceramics regionally and nationally.

Shana Salaff is originally from Toronto. She currently teaches at both Aims Community College and Front Range Community College in Colorado. She received her MFA from California State University, Fullerton, her BFA from NSCAD University, and Diploma from Sheridan College’s School of Crafts and Design. When not teaching, she makes ceramic vessels that are designed for aesthetic pleasure as well as utility.

Beth Sellars is the curator of Suyama Space, a site-specific installation space she co-founded with George Suyama in Seattle in 1998. As a longtime curator, she has worked for several Northwest museums and galleries since 1975, as well as for the City of Seattle. She has served on numerous regional and national jury panels, museum and art organization boards and committees, and has lectured internationally.

Nancy Selvage¹s sculpture has been exhibited and reviewed internationally and supported by grants and awards. As Director of the Ceramics Program at Harvard University she has convened artists and scholars for culturally focused symposia, workshops, lectures, and museum collection tours. As an honorary professor at Tohoku University, Japan she has contributed an art/science perspective to a variety of interdisciplinary, international conferences.

Peter Beasecker joined the faculty of Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts in 2009 as an Associate Professor. Prior to this appointment, Beasecker was a Professor of Art at the Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University, since 1992. He has exhibited extensively in national and international venues, and his work is included in the collections of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, The Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Mint Museum in North Carolina. He has been a visiting artist and workshop leader at over sixty institutions, including Anderson Ranch, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and the Penland School of Crafts. Beasecker maintains a studio in Cazenovia, New York.

Linda Swanson's interests are rooted in the metamorphic nature of ceramic materials and processes. She is particularly interested in how matter takes form and our perception of material over time. Within the framework of installation and sculpture, she sets up situations in which matter can act according to its own tendencies. Using processes inherent to fire, water, clay and glaze such as precipitation, evaporation, and dissolution, she explores how matter transforms as it changes states. Her work engages the enigmatic properties of matter on an elemental level and the capacity of wonder to question how and what we know.

Lynn Zetzman has 25 years experience teaching art from kindergarten through university level students. She currently teaches Art Methods for Lawrence University and is the Fine Arts Chair at Xavier High School. Lynn had 3 stints teaching cross curricular art/science projects to secondary students in Japan.

Valerie Zimany is an Assistant Professor of Art, Ceramics, at Clemson University, SC. She was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Grant to study contemporary Kutani ceramics as a visiting researcher at the Institute of Art and Design, Kanazawa College of Art, during Summer and Fall 2011. Zimany completed her MFA at Kanazawa College of Art in Kanazawa, Japan, as a Japanese Government Scholar and Fulbright Fellow, and was a resident artist for three years at the Utatsuyama Craft Workshop. Her work is published and exhibited both nationally and internationally.

Richard Notkin is a full-time studio artist who lives and works in Helena, Montana. He received a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1970, and an MFA from the University of California, Davis in 1973. Mr. Notkin has worked mainly in ceramics for more than thirty-nine years, averaging over one solo exhibition per year. His series of Yixing (China) inspired teapots and ceramic sculptures have been exhibited internationally and are in numerous public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Japan. He has held visiting artist positions and conducted over 250 workshops throughout the world.

A Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award and National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship recipient, Toland received an MFA in ceramics from Montana State University in 1981 and a BFA in ceramics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1975. She has taught extensively nationally and locally at schools including Louisiana State University, University of Montana, Montana State University, University of Washington and Seward Park Clay Studio. She exhibits nationally and is represented by Nancy Margolis Gallery, NY and Pacini Lubel. Her work is in many prestigious collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Patti Warashina was born in 1940 in Spokane, Washington.  She earned both her BFA and MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle (1962 and 1964).  After 30 years of teaching art in the Midwest and Seattle, she retired as a Professor Emeritus from the University of Washington where she taught for 25 years.  She has received numerous awards and honors for her work, and her work is in international and national collections.

Nicholas Kripal is Professor of Art and Chair of the Crafts Department, Tyler School of Art, of Temple University. He received his M.F.A. degree from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, and his B.F.A. degree from the University of Nebraska, Kearney. His awards and grants include a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, 1999, Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Fellowships 1987,1992,1997.

Matt Nolen is a studio artist living and working in New York City. His work is included in numerous public and private collections including: Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Houston Museum of Art, DeYoung Museum, Everson Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.

He is Adjunct Associate Professor of Art at Pratt Institute, New York University and Queens College.

Jae Won Lee is a Korean American ceramic artist living and working in Michigan in the United States. She received her Master of Fine Arts from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1995 and is currently an Associate Professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing, where she teaches Foundation Courses and Senior Seminar. She hand-builds porcelain and uses other materials such as paper and hair. Much of Lee's work is derived from an isolation that is created by her trans-cultural identity of both Korea and the United States.

Debra Chronister

Debra Chronister, ceramic artist and Associate Professor of Fine Art at Victoria College, began practicing yoga as a teenager in the 1970s.  Yoga has greatly enhanced her ability to teach ceramics as well as to practice her art.  The nature of clay and the rhythm of working it have helped to shape her daily yoga practice.