Artists – Ceramics Now https://www.ceramicsnow.org Contemporary Ceramic Art Magazine Wed, 19 Nov 2025 11:09:20 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.9.12 https://www.ceramicsnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/cropped-cn-1-32x32.jpg Contemporary ceramic artists featured in Ceramics Now https://www.ceramicsnow.org 32 32 Laura Dirksen https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/laura-dirksen/ https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/laura-dirksen/#respond Wed, 19 Nov 2025 11:09:18 +0000 https://www.ceramicsnow.org/?p=42193 Laura Dirksen

Laura Dirksen is an artist born and raised in Maria Stein, Ohio. Laura has always led a life in the dirt, playing in the mud and with the clay she harvested in the fields behind the farm she grew up on. She received her BFA in Studio Arts in 2019 from Bowling Green State University specializing in ceramics and painting, where she began her journey building predominantly large-scale sculpture. Afterward, she went on to complete a two-year Post Baccalaureate Program at Kent State University in 2021. Two years later, Laura would obtain an MFA from Penn State University in 2023. She has exhibited her work in both group and solo exhibitions across Ohio, as well as in California, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Washington.

Dirksen’s work is currently exhibited in the Archie Bray Galleries, and her work is in several private collections around the west coast, among others. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a CURS Research Grant, the Graham Endowed Fellowship, as well the Bray and Speyer Fellowships. Laura’s works were recently featured in Ceramics monthly. She is a Long Term Artist-in-Residence at the renowned Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, in Helena, Montana. Laura leads a practice in which she continually strives to develop her work, through material exploration and her mixing of media is crucial to the longevity of her practice. Laura has made works that range from the large scale sculptural and fabric installation to intimate functional wares found within the home.

Laura is an instructor, and has given lectures and workshops. Throughout the years, Laura’s work has begun to evolve around her feeling of longing for home, and her affinity for the farmland where she was raised. After years of moving and academia, Laura plans to build a studio there in the foreseeable future.

Visit Laura Dirksen’s Instagram page.

Featured work

While at Archie Bray, 2024-2025

Laura Dirksen ceramics

Strictly Bovine Series, 2021-2023

Laura Dirksen ceramics
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Javaria Ahmad https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/javaria-ahmad/ https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/javaria-ahmad/#respond Fri, 14 Nov 2025 13:35:54 +0000 https://www.ceramicsnow.org/?p=42077 Javaria Ahmad

Javaria Ahmad is a Pakistani ceramic artist and educator at the National College of Arts, where she has been teaching since 2018. She holds an MFA in Ceramic Arts from Alfred University, New York (2023), and an MA from Beaconhouse National University (2016). Her practice explores the lives, labor, and resilience of South Asian women through a cross-cultural lens shaped by her experiences in Pakistan and abroad. Using ceramics as a language of storytelling, she reinterprets everyday objects as metaphors for devotion, endurance, and identity. Ahmad’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at NCECA (USA), the Lahore Museum, Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park (Japan), the Taiwan Ceramic Biennale, and Budapest. In 2021, she was a Visiting Artist Fellow at Harvard University and was recently inducted as one of two members from Pakistan into the International Academy of Ceramics (IAC) in Geneva.

“The discourse surrounding women’s everyday lives, cultural stereotypes, and traditions has deeply shaped both my life and my work. Growing up in Pakistan and briefly living abroad for educational and professional purposes, I bring a cross-cultural perspective that enables me to ethnographically examine gender roles and domestic spaces from multiple angles. My work explores stereotypical gendered domesticity and traditions in the lives of South Asian women, focusing on the layered meanings of middle-class women as conventional homemakers. Storytelling through everyday, mundane objects, architectural elements, and specific colors is a recurring aspect of my practice. By weaving together my sense of place and identity, my work conveys cultural meanings that may seem surreal in one context but resonate deeply in another.”

Visit Javaria Ahmad’s Instagram page.

Featured work

Selected works, 2021-2024

Javaria Ahmad ceramics
Javaria Ahmad ceramic art
Javaria Ahmad ceramics
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Anca Vintilă Dragu https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/anca-vintila-dragu/ https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/anca-vintila-dragu/#respond Wed, 29 Oct 2025 10:30:05 +0000 https://www.ceramicsnow.org/?p=41844 Anca Vintilă Dragu

Based in Bucharest, Romania, Anca Vintilă Dragu is a ceramic artist working mainly with porcelain and stoneware. She holds a BA and MA in Decorative Arts from the National University of Arts Bucharest (UNArte) and has been a member of the Union of Artists Bucharest since 2017.

Her practice focuses on the relationship between inner experience and external form. Anca works intuitively, allowing ideas to develop through making. She experiments with a mix of techniques and materials, from hand-building and casting to ceramic painting and small mixed-media elements. Some of her projects also involve collaborations with other disciplines such as music and video.

Since 2016, Anca has participated in exhibitions in Romania and across Europe, including Spain, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Germany, Finland, Poland, Denmark, and Portugal. In 2024, she took part in the Blanc de Chine international art residency and the European Ceramic Context in Bornholm, Denmark. She received an Honorable Mention at the International Ceramic Biennial of Manises in Spain.

Anca is part of the curatorial team at Galateea Contemporary Art in Bucharest, a gallery dedicated to contemporary ceramics run by the Union of Artists. Alongside her studio work, she founded Una ca Luna, a small design brand focused on porcelain objects. These pieces are functional yet playful, bringing her interest in material and form into everyday use. The brand has been shown at various design events in Romania.

Across all of her work, Anca values a balance between idea and material. “I trust the things I am attracted to,” she says, aiming to create pieces that reflect personal sensations and thoughts while leaving space for viewers to connect in their own way.

Visit Anca Vintilă Dragu’s website and Instagram page.

Featured work

Selected works, 2019-2025

Anca Vintila Dragu ceramic art
Anca Vintila Dragu ceramics
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Danielle O’Malley https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/danielle-omalley/ https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/danielle-omalley/#respond Tue, 28 Oct 2025 15:38:45 +0000 https://www.ceramicsnow.org/?p=41798 Danielle O’Malley

Danielle O’Malley is a Montana-based sculptor whose hand-built, large-scale ceramic work increase people’s environmental awareness. O’Malley received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth in May 2021. In addition to an active studio practice; O’Malley teaches, exhibits nationally, and serves her community as Executive Director for the Art Mobile of Montana and Director for Montana Clay.

O’Malley’s work is monumental in both scale and symbolic message, and inventive in supportive materials (crocheted plastic bags; up-cycled fabric; natural dyes). Her surprising combinations of scavenged materials, re-contextualized via textile processes, in concert with her earthen forms are startling in scale so viewers feel an urgency about the eco-crisis. O’Malley’s forms are influenced by landscapes (exemplifying nature’s magnitude) and industrial objects (indicative of warning) she observes daily: traps, grids; smoke stacks; rolling prairie-scapes, endless water-scapes, vast mountain-scapes. The confrontational feeling of larger-than-life work in one’s space is unavoidable and instrumental in underscoring concepts of environmental concern and warning. Exaggerated scale increases artwork’s significance though unexpected surprise and challenges the viewer as they experience altered scales of familiar forms.

Most recently, O’Malley was juried into two NCECA Annual exhibitions (exhibited at the Crocker Museum of Art and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art) and is a part of the Montana Museum of Modern Art and Culture’s inaugural 19 under 39 emerging artist exhibition. She was interviewed on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler; Not Real Art Podcast; recognized and chosen for publication by: Ceramics Monthly; The Surface Design Association Quarterly Journal; The NCECA Annual Journal; and The Studio Potter Journal. She has received multiple local; state; and national grants. Her work is in permanent collections at the Northwest Art Gallery, the Taoxichuan Art Center, and numerous private collections.

Visit Danielle O’Malley’s website and Instagram page.

Featured work

Selected works, 2021-2024

Danielle O’Malley ceramics
Danielle O’Malley ceramic art
Danielle O’Malley ceramic artist
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Florence Corbi https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/florence-corbi/ https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/florence-corbi/#respond Wed, 22 Oct 2025 05:06:00 +0000 https://www.ceramicsnow.org/?p=41709 Florence Corbi

Florence Corbi is a French ceramicist, sculptor and porcelain artist. She lives and works in the south of France in the small village of Sabran. After studying drawing and painting at the Louvre School in Paris and ceramics and enameling techniques with masters from the Sèvres manufacture, she decided to devote herself to the art of sculpture. Since 2013, she mainly works with porcelain, creating unique sculptures.

Her works have been shown in multiple international exhibitions such as ICAA Lyon (2017), Beijing (2019), Cluj-Napoca (2019), Sèvres (2020), M&O Paris (2022), and Meissen (2024). She has been invited as an artist-in-residence in China: Dehua (2023) and Shangyu (2024). Her works have been acquired by major international institutions, including the Winland collection (Xiamen), the Shangyu ceramics museum, the French national collection (embassies in Tallinn and Beijing), and private collections. Winner of the Charles Malfray Grand Prix for Sculpture (Paris 2022), her work is part of, and revisits, the artistic tradition of porcelain sculpture developed in France since the 18th century.

“Inspired by Mediterranean mythologies and the interactions between the industry and nature, my creations are often built up from raw forms that evoke industrial production. Boxes, knotted fabrics, cardboard, cubes, etc. are reused in an upcycling process. These raw structures are fully wrapped in porcelain, over which I create a myriad of handmade, delicate motifs, freely inspired by plants, flowers, or corals. With their profusion, they express the energy of nature and the hope of its triumph, like so many precious stones of life set in the raw magma of forgotten abandoned objects.”

Visit Florence Corbi’s website and Instagram page.

Featured work

Selected works, 2020-2024

Florence Corbi ceramics
Florence Corbi ceramic art
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Studio FraJas https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/studio-frajas/ https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/studio-frajas/#respond Tue, 21 Oct 2025 05:09:00 +0000 https://www.ceramicsnow.org/?p=41630 Studio FraJas

Studio FraJas is a collaboration between artists Francisco Rocha Salazar and Jasper Isaac Johns. Their work marries bold, geometric forms with vibrant glaze patterns, synthesizing the artists’ respective heritages into a colorful vision for the future. The design and disruption of structure is a central concern in their collaboration. What is achieved by methodical hand-painting contrasts with the unpredictable behavior of glaze when fired. Working from a broad repertoire of glaze recipes developed over years of experimentation, they select combinations that complement Jasper’s forms and Francisco’s patterns. They favor glazes that drip, pool, or react with slips, introducing variable textures to otherwise organized surfaces. While the result unleashes organic irregularity upon geometric ideals, the two paradigms meet in conversation rather than conflict. Underlying pattern guides glaze “flaws” at the same time as being disrupted by them. The finished work reflects the nature of the artists’ collaboration: a dialogue between structure and spontaneity, independence and exchange.

Francisco and Jasper come from different backgrounds, and met at the Rhode Island School of Design. Francisco grew up in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, and trained as a painter. Jasper grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and studied ceramics. Before collaborating, both artists spent years developing their individual practices through fabrication work, teaching, and independent studio work. Shared interests in form, pattern, and the relationship between function and ornament laid the foundation for their ongoing collaboration.

In the studio, their roles follow the two stages inherent to the ceramic process, merging sculpture and painting to create lyrical vessels. First, Jasper sculpts the form in clay and fires it. He throws geometric shapes such as domes, cylinders, and spheres, assembling them into graceful vessels. Then, Francisco draws patterns on the bisqueware surface and paints them with glaze. The patterns start as small motifs inspired by the vessel’s architecture and are multiplied, interlocked, and often distorted. While these stages are distinct enough that the two artists often work independently, there’s constant communication between them. As Francisco sketches in colored pencil and watercolor, Jasper refines glaze formulas, adjusting them to achieve just the right effect. They collaborate most closely when choosing glazes. At this point, they come together to evaluate the overall composition and its impact. Patterns are often revised like editing a paragraph—shifting a line, trimming a flourish, starting over.

Their work has been featured in group exhibitions within New York City, including Gathering Pieces, curated by Jane Yang-D’Haene for Hudson Wilder in 2023. In 2024 and 2025, they participated in NYCxDesign through exhibitions curated by Sculpture Space NYC, and took part in satellite events hosted by Erria XYZ and Sample House. Their works have found homes in private collections across North America.

Visit Studio FraJass website and their Instagram page.

Featured work

Waterfall series, 2024-2025

Studio FraJas
Studio FraJas ceramics
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John Rainey https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/john-rainey/ https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/john-rainey/#respond Mon, 20 Oct 2025 12:17:02 +0000 https://www.ceramicsnow.org/?p=41599 John Rainey

John Rainey is an artist born in Omagh, Northern Ireland. He currently lives and works between Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Dublin, Ireland. He received an MA in Ceramics and Glass from the Royal College of Art (London, 2012), and a BA in Contemporary Crafts from Manchester Metropolitan University (Manchester, 2009). Rainey’s work has had solo presentations at Marsden Woo Gallery (London, 2013), Golden Thread Gallery (Belfast, 2016, 2025) Naughton Gallery at Queen’s University Belfast (Belfast, 2021) and Berg Gallery (Stockholm, 2019, 2022). His work has also featured in group exhibitions including AWARD at the British Ceramics Biennial (2019). Rainey’s sculptures appear in notable public collections including the UK Government Art Collection, London; Irish National Collection/Crawford Art Gallery, Cork; OPW Irish State Art Collection, Dublin; Ulster Museum, Belfast; the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin; Arts Council of Northern Ireland Collection, Belfast.

Rainey has completed residencies at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design (Stockholm, 2013); The British School at Rome (Rome, 2018); The Digital Stone Project (Gramolazzo, 2023); Eton College Drawing Schools (Windsor, 2023-24). In 2023 he was awarded the Rosemary James Memorial Trust Award – a major award administered by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, directed at makers steeped in material practice.

Rainey’s work involves acts of sculptural remixing, re-working forms from the history of sculpture to explore themes of bodily ideals, gendered expectations and strangeness. Combining digital fabrication with traditional casting techniques, Rainey works with a large archive of plaster moulds to create composite casts in Parian porcelain, introducing errors, variation and proposed alternatives into familiar forms to explore how history, identity, and perception can be disrupted and reimagined.

Through forms that shift, fragment, and mutate, Rainey’s work pushes against certainty as a way of making space for complexity. His sculptures emerge as if from another dimension: a space where bodies explore new possibilities, where history may have unfolded differently, and where transformation is a form of liberation.

Visit John Rainey’s website and Instagram page.

Featured work

Selected works, 2021-2025

John Rainey ceramics
John Rainey ceramic artist
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Anaïs Lelièvre https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/anais-lelievre/ https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/anais-lelievre/#respond Wed, 01 Oct 2025 12:32:59 +0000 https://www.ceramicsnow.org/?p=41272 Anaïs Lelièvre

Anaïs Lelièvre is an artist who works at the intersection of ceramics, installation, and drawing, unfolding between meticulous detail and monumental expansion. With a spatial approach to drawing and a strong interest in geology, her creative work has developed through residencies since the end of 2015, both in France and internationally (Iceland, Brazil, Switzerland, Greece, Canada, Portugal).

Lelièvre holds a DNSEP (Diplôme National Supérieur d’Études Professionnelles) in Fine Arts from the École Supérieure d’Art et de Design de Rouen and a doctorate from Université Paris 1. She collaborates with the Capazza Gallery in Nançay, and her studio is based in Aubervilliers.

In 2023, a solo exhibition dedicated entirely to her ceramic works was held at L’Espace Jacques Villeglé in Saint-Gratien, followed by the co-organization of a study day at Paris 1 University titled “Ceramic Approaches: Artists and Accidents” (proceedings published in the Plastik journal). In 2024, she completed two year-long residencies—at the Lyon Observatory and the Ceramics Museum in Lezoux—where she collaborated with geologists, astrophysicists, paleontologists, and archaeologists. The ENSAD School in Limoges also hosted her for the production of a ceramic piece nearly two meters tall.

In 2025, Anaïs Lelièvre presented a solo exhibition at CCCLB La Borne, an installation in the reflecting pool of the Château de Rentilly, and a solo show at Art Paris with Galerie Capazza. She will also show her work in group exhibitions at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles in Paris and the Musée Adrien Dubouché in Limoges.

Visit Anaïs Lelièvre’s website and Instagram page.

Featured work

Selected works – Porcelain, 2017-2024

Anaïs Lelièvre ceramics

Selected works – Glazes, 2020-2025

Anaïs Lelièvre ceramic

Poros – Iceland, 2016-2024

Anaïs Lelièvre ceramic art

Terramoto – Lisbon, 2022

Anaïs Lelièvre ceramic artist
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Luke Huling https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/luke-huling/ https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/luke-huling/#respond Fri, 26 Sep 2025 11:09:16 +0000 https://www.ceramicsnow.org/?p=41119 Luke Huling

Luke Huling is a ceramic figure sculptor from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He currently resides in North Carolina and is an Associate Professor and Coordinator at Sandhills Community College. He received his BFA from Edinboro University and his MFA from Indiana University. He is a past resident at The LUX Center for the Arts and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. He is a scholarship recipient from the National Society of Arts and Letters and the inaugural recipient of the Chris Boger Memorial Award. He actively presents his work in group and solo shows across the country at venues such as NCECA Conferences, The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, and the American Museum of Ceramic Art.

“Like all crustaceans, lobsters grow inside their shell and eventually become too confined and must molt; a process where lobsters swim to the ocean floor and cast off their old shell to then grow one that is new. With this work, I am inspired by this regenerative process and pair it with the human form to ponder the question if mental strife can be intrinsic to mental growth. If so, what do these new “shells” resemble in human form and how can we learn from the ones we have casted away?”

Visit Luke Huling’s website and Instagram page.

Featured work

Molted Mindset, 2023-2025

Luke Huling ceramics
Luke Huling ceramic art
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Isys Hennigar https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/isys-hennigar/ https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/isys-hennigar/#respond Mon, 22 Sep 2025 05:07:00 +0000 https://www.ceramicsnow.org/?p=41022 Isys Hennigar

Isys Hennigar is an artist working in ceramics and metal. Her work invokes real and reimagined ecological encounters that underscore transformation, hybridity, and play as tools of renewal. Braiding forms and imagery from agriculture, mythology, and medicine, her work considers systems of sustenance and healing and the cultural and ecological legacies of land cultivation. Grounded in the landscape of the southeastern United States— a site of fantasy, precarity, and symbolic abundance—the work presents chimeric objects in which allegories of sustenance, danger, and purification merge.

Hennigar’s sculptural vessels are hand-built and adorned with relief carvings and cast details of vernacular objects such as deer hooves, peach pits, puzzle pieces, electric fencing insulators, tools, and toys. Animals are often rendered in ambiguous states of metamorphosis, hunt, or performance. The work’s layered surfaces are built through multiple firings and often incorporate metal components. In two-dimensional works, the carved porcelain imagery is mounted on metal. Employing jeweler’s techniques on a large scale, these works resemble engraved charms. Referencing objects of protection and historical depictions of infernal and sublime landscapes, they imagine possibilities of connection between wild and domestic realms, between chaos and play, and hybridity as an emblem of resiliency.

Isys received her MFA from the University of Georgia and BFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the 2024 recipient of the South Arts North Carolina State Fellowship, and recent exhibitions of her work include the American Museum of Ceramic Art (Pomona, CA), Sow & Tailor Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Signature Contemporary (Atlanta, GA), Ferrara Showman Gallery (New Orleans, LA), and the North Carolina Museum of Art. She is currently in residence at Anchorlight in Raleigh, NC as the 2025 Brightwork Fellow.

Visit Isys Hennigar’s website and Instagram page.

Featured work

Selected works, 2020-2024

Isys Hennigar ceramics
Isys Hennigar ceramic art
Isys Hennigar ceramic artist
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Adam Chau https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/adam-chau/ https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/adam-chau/#comments Wed, 17 Sep 2025 10:30:23 +0000 https://www.ceramicsnow.org/?p=40943 Adam Chau

Adam Chau is an artist that works between Connecticut and New York, USA. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute’s Designed Objects program, his research into digital manufacturing in ceramics has been published widely. Solo exhibitions have included The Clay Studio, Northern Clay Center, and Harvard Ceramics. In 2018, Adam was awarded the NCECA Emerging Artist Fellowship and in 2019 he became a member of the International Academy of Ceramics. Adam is currently the Director of Exhibitions for one of New York State’s largest Arts Councils and is also the Director of Exhibitions for NCECA.

“With a background in both craft and design, I research the evolution of craft technology from analog handwork to digital manufacturing in ceramics. I am interested in digital culture and how new rituals are being developed through selfies, emojis, and text messages.

As an Asian American artist, my concepts revolve around the rich history of blue-and-white porcelain aesthetics, deeply rooted in Asian culture. Fueled by a desire to bridge the past with the future, I try to breathe new life into this medium to ensure that tradition evolves rather than fades. Also drawing inspiration from the evolving culture online such as social media and dating apps, I explore the nuances of contemporary self-portraiture as well as queer culture. In the pursuit of cultural commentary, my work serves as an example of when heritage meets the digital frontier.

My newest body of work includes the use of Artificial Intelligence where large image datasets are referenced to collage new imagery – the content of this work has looked at imagined histories of queer couples. Put on found porcelain blanks, I reference the 1960’s work of Howard Kottler who utilized commercially available decals to talk about queer culture in a time where it was taboo.”

Visit Adam Chau’s website and Instagram page.

Featured work

Selected works, 2019-2024

Adam Chau ceramics
Adam Chau ceramic artist
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Michelle Solorzano https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/michelle-solorzano/ https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/michelle-solorzano/#respond Mon, 18 Aug 2025 05:09:00 +0000 https://www.ceramicsnow.org/?p=40598 Michelle Solorzano

Michelle Solorzano is a figurative ceramic sculptor whose work explores themes of immigration, identity, and culture, interweaving personal narrative with broader historical and ancestral influences. Originally from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, she moved to New York with her family at the age of fifteen. Her art practice is deeply rooted in the complexities of bicultural identity and the layered legacies of colonization, shaped by Dominican heritage—Taíno, African, and Spanish.

Solorzano holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Ceramics from the State University of New York at Potsdam and a Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics from Indiana University’s Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design. Though she has been making art since childhood—using discarded materials, paper mâché, and drawing to bring her ideas to life—it wasn’t until her second year of undergraduate studies that she touched clay for the first time. That first ceramics course prompted her to switch majors from Art Education to Fine Arts, solidifying her commitment to ceramics. She was immediately drawn to the malleability, versatility, and forgiving nature of clay, which remains central to her sculptural practice.

Now based in California, Solorzano is a long-term Artist in Residence at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA), where she also shares her passion for ceramics through teaching. Her work has been recognized nationally, most recently as a 2025 NCECA Emerging Artist and a recipient of the Helen Zucker Seeman Writing and Research Fellowship for Women. She was named a 2024 Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist, and has also received the Bloomington Arts Commission Emerging Artist Grant, the Christyl Ann Boger Memorial Award, and the Nelda Christ Memorial Award.

Visit Michelle Solorzano’s website and Instagram page.

Featured work

Selected works, 2022-2025

Michelle Solorzano ceramics
Michelle Solorzano ceramic art
Michelle Solorzano ceramic artist
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Carolein Smit https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/carolein-smit/ https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/carolein-smit/#respond Fri, 15 Aug 2025 13:05:42 +0000 https://www.ceramicsnow.org/?p=40554 Carolein Smit

Carolein Smit is a Dutch artist based in Riemst, Belgium, internationally recognized for her detailed and symbolically rich ceramic sculptures. Born in Amersfoort in 1960, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Sint Joost in Breda, the Netherlands (1979–1984), specializing in graphics and lithography. Originally trained as a lithographer, she began working with clay in 1996 during a three-month residency at the European Ceramics Work Centre in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands.

Working outside the conventions of traditional ceramic training, Smit approaches the medium without technical boundaries, combining hand-building with press-moulded details. Her intricate glazing process involves multiple firings, layering glazes and lustres to achieve complex surfaces and colour effects.

Since the early 2000s, Smit has exhibited widely in museums, galleries, and art fairs across Europe and beyond. Her major solo exhibitions include Myth and Mortality: The Fairytale World of Carolein Smit at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2018); L’Amour Fou at the Grassi Museum, Leipzig (2018); Secret Garden at the Stedelijk Museum Kampen (2022); and Dents! Crocs! Griffes! at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris (2022). Her work has also been presented at the Kunsthal Rotterdam, Drents Museum, and numerous galleries in Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, and beyond. She is a regular participant in international art fairs such as TEFAF Maastricht, PAD Paris, Art Paris, and Collect London.

Her sculptures are held in prominent public collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (Paris), Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam), Grassi Museum (Leipzig), Drents Museum (Assen), Museum MORE (Gorssel), Badisches Landesmuseum (Karlsruhe), Museum Beelden aan Zee (Scheveningen), and the FLICAM International Museum (Fuping, China), as well as numerous corporate and private collections worldwide.

Visit Carolein Smit’s website and Instagram page.

Featured work

Selected works, 2021-2025

Carolein Smit ceramic art
Carolein Smit ceramic work
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Arina Antonova https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/arina-antonova/ https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/arina-antonova/#respond Thu, 14 Aug 2025 10:04:49 +0000 https://www.ceramicsnow.org/?p=40520 Arina Antonova

Arina Antonova (b. 1980, Sevastopol) is an artist working between Spain and Switzerland. Her practice focuses on sculpture and installation, using clay as her primary material. Through her work, she explores the body—especially the female—as something lived, remembered, and shaped by power, control, and daily rituals. Food and craft traditions are key in her work, connecting personal memory with broader cultural histories. Antonova’s sculptures often become wearable or body-related objects, inviting intimate connection and physical engagement.

Antonova studied art history and archaeology in St. Petersburg and Hamburg. After moving to Spain, she began working with clay, shifting from two-dimensional media to a more physical, tactile process. In 2016, she opened her studio in Palma de Mallorca, where she continued developing her sculptural language.

Her work has been shown internationally in exhibitions across Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, and the United States. She received second prize in the Traditional Ceramics category in La Rambla, Spain (2022), and was nominated for the Martinson’s Award at the 4th Latvia Ceramics Biennale (2023). In 2024, she was invited as a panel member for Crafting Change at the Royal Danish Academy, a European initiative on innovation and sustainability in ceramics.

In 2023, she founded AAA Studio, an artist-run space in Palma’s Old Town. More than just her workplace, the studio has grown into a platform for exhibitions, conversations, and collaboration. Focusing on sculpture and contemporary ceramics, AAA Studio showcases work by women artists. It’s a space for visibility and exchange—supporting emerging voices, nurturing community, and opening up dialogue between local and international perspectives.

Visit Arina Antonova’s website and Instagram page.

Featured work

Selected works, 2021-2024

Arina Antonova ceramics
Arina Antonova ceramic artist
Arina Antonova ceramics
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Joon Hee Kim https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/joon-hee-kim/ https://www.ceramicsnow.org/artists/joon-hee-kim/#respond Mon, 21 Jul 2025 05:07:00 +0000 https://www.ceramicsnow.org/?p=40237 Joon Hee Kim

Joon Hee Kim is a Korean-Canadian ceramic artist whose work explores themes of identity, memory, and belonging. She began her career as a graphic designer and art director in South Korea, later studying patisserie at Le Cordon Bleu in Ottawa before shifting her focus to ceramics.

Kim holds an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts in London, where she received the Cecil Lewis Sculpture Scholarship. She also earned an advanced diploma in ceramics from Sheridan College, graduating with high honors and a silver medal. Her ceramic sculptures have been exhibited widely in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy. Notable solo exhibitions include “The Colours’ Colour” at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto, “You, Me, Us” at Kouri + Corrao Gallery in Santa Fe and “The Eye of the Beholder” at The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery in Waterloo. She has participated in international residencies at the Archie Bray Foundation (USA), Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park (Japan), and Künstlerhaus Stadttöpferei (Germany), among others.

Kim is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. In 2020, she won the Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramics, Canada’s leading national prize for emerging ceramic artists. Her work is held in many public and private collections, including the Archie Bray Foundation, The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery, and the Dan Lawrie International Sculpture Collection.

Visit Joon Hee Kim’s website and Instagram page.

Featured work

Selected works, 2024-2025

Joon Hee Kim ceramics
Joon Hee Kim ceramics
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