Bridges: The Annual Red Star Resident Exhibition

About the RED STAR RESIDENCY Red Star Residency provides ceramic artists the opportunity to expand their body of work or create a special project that may be outside the scope of their routine studio practice. The residency program gives driven, self-directed artists opportunities for rigorous professional development and enhanced self-sufficiency practices. Within the Belger Crane Yard Studios community, resident artists engage in constructive dialogue and immerse themselves in their work. Residents foster the development of the studio’s creative environment and create outreach opportunities within the local community. Outreach opportunities include teaching classes or workshops, giving public presentations, and critiques. Through community involvement, residents create educational opportunities for the appreciation and critical understanding of ceramics, thus employing and evolving Belger Crane Yard Studios as an innovative, artistic resource.

My work explores the nature of intimacy by layering memories of the past with the present. Inspired by architectural elements, flora, and fauna, my work investigates relationships and the passage of time through the layered use of imagery, pattern, and texture.

- Kelly Lynn Daniels Artist Statement

Kelly Lynn Daniels, a native of California, received a Master of Fine Arts

in ceramics at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in 2016. In 2011, she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics from California State University Chico. She has exhibited her work in numerous shows and has work in many private collections. In 2015 she was the summer artist in residence at Arch Contemporary Ceramics in Tiverton, RI. Kelly has received a number of scholarships, fellowships and assistantships for her studies which have included those at Penland School of Crafts, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. When Kelly isn’t working in clay she can be found playing with her cats, strolling along the beach, hiking through the woods, or knee deep in her vegetable and flower garden.

Artist Wen-Dan Lin explores the effects that water has on clay. In his piece “Rinse & Repeat”, Wen-Dan applies water to stoneware then allows it to air dry. This process is repeated one through one hundred times. The piece titled “Again & Again”, he freezes porcelain clay in stoneware dishes, then heats them up. The process is repeated one through fifty times.

Wen-Dan Lin was born and raised in Taiwan. He received his BFA from Kansas City Art Institute in 2011 and received his MFA in Ceramics from Arizona State University in 2015. He had won many awards including the Zahner Art and Sculpture Competition where he had has sculpture enlarged and fabricated by architecture firm Zahner. He has exhibited nationally.

The mysticisms I experienced as a child at Catholic school still hold a great power over me, influencing my art. Using a found vade mecum, or a book of reference (encyclopedia, Bible, dictionary), I cover it, page-by-page, in slip. Firing the book in a kiln transforms it into a reliquary shell, containing the ashes of the book within. Ensuring stability for the delicate book I encase it with chalky plaster. I then use a masonry-saw to cut the piece, revealing the cross section of the ceramic pages.

- Emily Connell Artist Statement

Emily Connell’s unique background informs her work, which walks a line between two spiritual extremes. She has had the opportunity to work on her artwork at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snow Mass, Colorado and the International Ceramics Studio in Kecskemet, Hungary. She has been published in numerous local papers as well as Ceramics Monthly, and exhibited nationally including the Houston Center for Contemporary Crafts. In 2012, Connell was awarded the Regina Brown Fellowship to research Catholic processions in Italy during the spring of 2013. She has served as a Ceramics Instructional Assistant to George Timock at the Kansas City Art Institute and a 2012-2013 Charlotte Street Foundation Urban Culture Project Studio Resident. Emily Connell received her BFA degree in ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute.

Hiromi Iyoda was born in a small town in Japan. Growing up with a modest background, a sketchbook and coloring pencils were the best toys to play with. Soon she became inventive and fashioned her own toys out of mundane material. Eventually, Hiromi traveled to America to further her education. She holds an Associate Degree in Art and a Fashion Design Certificate from the Saddleback Community College. She began studying ceramics at the California State University of Long Beach and finished her BFA in 2011. She finished her MFA in Ceramics from the University of Nebraska Lincoln in 2015. Hiromi is currently an artist in resident at Red Star Studio in Kansas City and an adjunct professor at the University of Missouri Kansas City. Hiromi makes figurative and narrative clay sculptures.

Her work is based mostly on her past and current life experiences.

My work stems from my Mexican heritage and family traditions. My interest in creating these objects arises from my fear of these processes being lost and forgotten. Through the use of various objects I hope to render a narrative that seeks to embrace and celebrate these rituals of a new generation. I enjoy seeing these objects evolve through the use of clay just as a story of an event can change over time in the ways of telling it. Ceramics as a material has permanence; it is one of the ways we were able to learn about ancient cultures.

There is beauty in these traditions and my aim is to make a mark in my time that will be preserved in the history of ceramic objects.

- Christina Erives Artist Statement

Christina Erives was born in 1989 in Los Angeles, California. She received her Bachelor of

Arts and Master of Arts in Studio Art from California State University of Northridge and her Master of Fine Arts from Pennsylvania State University. Recent Exhibitions include: Resident Artist Exhibition at the Archie Bray in Helena, Montana, Visiting Artist Exhibition at NMSU in New Mexico, The 11th annual MBK exhibition at the clay studio in Philadelphia, Digital hand at gallery 709 in Pittsburgh, Novis Oculi at Crane Arts in Philadelphia, KilnOpening at the American Museum of Ceramic art in Pomona California, and To go at Mendocino Art Center in California.

Erives' work focuses on her memories of growing up as one of twelve children in Los Angeles, California.

I am a potter with a design aesthetic. Through thoughtful craftsmanship, I intend to communicate the importance, permanence, and necessity of my pots. I use porcelain to throw and hand build shapes that are informed by facets of design, historical ornamentation, and Modernism. Practical beauty is conveyed through the articulation of curves and edges that create the forms and adorn their surfaces. I am drawn to the dynamic form change that occurs when a graceful curve moves around a pot and into an edge.

- Sarah Jewell Olsen Artist Statement

Sarah Jewell Olsen is a working artist and art educator in Kansas City. She received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of Alaska Anchorage, where she was born and raised. She has completed ceramic residencies at The Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland as well as in Jingdezhen, China and Upstate New York. She earned her Masters of Fine Art in Ceramics from West Virginia University and became the ceramic studio technician for Marshall University before coming to Kansas City.

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CRANE YARD STUDIOS www.CraneYardStudios.org