Marcelino Puig-Pastrana
Brad Menninga
Andrea Leila Denecke
Rebecca Chappell
Pattie Chalmers
JULY 2 – AUGUST 22, 2O21 Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Essays by Jill Foote-Hutton
© 2021 Northern Clay Center. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, write to: Northern Clay Center 2424 Franklin Avenue East Minneapolis, MN 55406 www.northernclaycenter.org Manufactured in the United States First edition, 2021 International Standard Book Number 978-1-932706-59-3 Unless otherwise noted, all dimensions in inches: height precedes width precedes depth.
About McKnight Program
Northern Clay Center
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McKnight Artist Fellowships and Residencies for Ceramic Artists programs are designed to strengthen and enhance Minnesota’s artistic community, as well as significantly advance the work of Minnesota ceramic artists whose work is of exceptional artistic merit, who have already proven their abilities, and are at a career stage that is beyond emerging. The programs provide two forms of direct financial support to ceramic artists: two fellowships are awarded annually to outstanding mid-career Minnesota ceramic artists; four residency awards are granted each year to artists from outside Minnesota, for a three-month stay at Northern Clay Center. Three individuals comprised the panel and selected the 2020 Fellows: Winnie Owens-Hart, a highly-regarded educator, artist, author, and advocate in various arenas including those of ceramics, art, and culture; Virgil Ortiz, a ceramicist working simultaneously in décor, fashion, video, and film; and Marcelino Puig-Pastrana, an internationally-renowned ceramic artist working in the disciplines of dance, drawing, painting, printmaking, lighting, and graphic design. The 2021 exhibition catalog features work by two 2020 McKnight Artist Fellows and three 2019 McKnight Artist Residents. The fellowship artists used the grants to defray studio and living expenses, experiment with new materials and techniques, and build upon ideas within their current and past work. The McKnight Artist Fellowships and Residencies for Ceramic Artists program and this exhibition are made possible by generous financial support from the McKnight Foundation, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Pattie Chalmers
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Northern Clay Center
It’s not that Pattie Chalmers is a Luddite—unequivocally, she is not. She is, however, skeptical about the speed and accessibility of the ever-expanding digital world. When she embraces the mainframe—and, rest assured, she does embrace it, including the vacuum that is social media—she wields it with intention, wit, and compassion. She is aware that, gone unchecked, the ephemeral, yet infinitely re-playable realm of digital space can consume the tangible—the aspects, associations, and interactions of life that encompass and represent our humanity. The digital world as we know it in the twenty-first century is not even remotely central to her thesis, but it looms large in our current collective existence. It is a tool Chalmers considers seriously, and her approach to the digital world, her caution and purposeful use of it, provides contrasting illumination to her bodies of work. She is a champion of the labor, manual and cerebral, required of participating in a genuine interaction with a person, place, or thing. Her practice is at once an act of remembrance, an assessment of the current moment, and a hope for the future. The physicality of making an object is how she communicates tacit knowledge of her life experience and how she connects with a viewer’s tacit knowledge in return. The objects rendered are sometimes fragmented, removed from their original context, as in
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What Remains, Every Day I Think of You, or Objects—all introduced to her audience on Instagram as they were crafted in her studio. This digital space is where she began to realize the power a singular object, removed from context, could exert on memory. In her catalog of tableaux, the viewer will encounter figures and objects frozen mid-interaction, like an improv scene one would step into. Chalmers gives the viewer a set-up—a world presented on a tilted plane—a mixture of figures and objects interacting in specific dynamics that, to some degree, pre-determine how we perceive the relationships between them. With her utilitarian wares, she plays most aggressively with two and three dimensions, framing devices, and visual textures. Upon the surface of every vessel, a small window, a focal point, invites us to enter a scene and imagine the space and the world beyond what can be seen. Whatever the context, or lack thereof, her work is born in connection to an idea, memory, or a story that has significance to her. The importance of how deeply a viewer grasps her story has shifted, “It used to be that I had a boat for someone to take a trip in. I took them on a ride in the boat, out to the middle of a lake. From there, it was up to them to decide where to go. And now, I just say to the viewer, ‘Here’s a boat.’” In doing so, she infinitely expands the semiotics of her objects. She is conscious of the importance and preciousness of the singular
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moment. Her work is an act of stewardship to those moments, a mixture of melancholy and hope. She is resolutely cautious that a replay button can drown individual, singular moments, lost to the cacophony of the moment we are living in, homogenized with every other moment that has been.
What Remains, 2021 Terra cotta 5'-6" x 5' x 3.5"
Rebecca Chappell
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Northern Clay Center
Experiencing Rebecca Chappell’s ceramic objects through spoken language is a little bit like trying to understand the delicate textures of a pastry by standing on it. You will absorb fragments of information and understand something about the fragile alchemy of butter, sugar, and flour, but you will also destroy the thing you are hoping to know better before your comprehension has reached satiety. Certainly, words can help convey the specific starting points of her research, the inspired foundation she builds from. Let’s start there. We open the cabinet of curiosity inside Chappell’s mind and find a compendium of purposeful objects. They are made for such specific functions that we may have overlooked or misunderstood their utility in a more casual interaction. An elaborate hot chocolate service towering with gold adornment— elevated elevation. There is a meticulously detailed Della Robbia framing device. It glistens with texture and symbolic significance, communicating moral values and the beauteous bounty of nature without words. There are Colonial Williamsburg door toppers, inspired by Della Robbia framing devices. Each one persists as an aesthetic indulgence, a curiously mutated habit with near-forgotten origins. A pedestal wine cup from the Song Dynasty sits on a shelf in her mind, the beginning of rigorous attention to presentation and the quiet perfection of form unadorned. Equally simple in adornment, but
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with a lesser-known purpose, and one that is definitively more odd to the modern mind, is a glirarium. This vessel is used to house and fatten the dormouse, who, once lured to the perfect hibernation hole, is plumped up for the Roman palate and plate. Chappell’s cabinet of curiosity abounds. Before you leave, note the examples of disruptive patterning she has gathered from nature. Note also her humor in collecting the human attempt to learn from nature known as Dazzle Camouflage. Each example has a historical narrative, but once the function of an object has been named she is voraciously more interested in experiencing the layers of purpose, extravagance, and absurdity through the intelligences of body, material, and spatial organization. We will know her work better if we forego speaking about it altogether and, instead, emulate her model of employing nonverbal intelligences to experience mass, volume, color, and pattern. The epitome of reserved observer, she is paying attention with eyes attuned to occurrences of form and purpose that make the rhythm of her heart change. She watches the world through the lens of a gardener who has learned to be in service to the world of pollinators. She then reconnoiters how to translate that into an ability to tempt, if not outright manipulate, human behavior. Can an object made by her hand coerce a specific engagement? “Use me like this. Observe me like that. Know me because of my
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elevated planes, perforations, and volumes.” Or don’t. She is paying attention, and she has the patience to allow an observation to be explored. She tested color by creating a kiln load of blue wares, then a kiln load of yellows—one color after another until knowledge was absorbed by doing. She builds full-size sketches to fully grasp the spatial reality of surface and form—firing and firing and firing and firing the form until it breaks or she understands the visual vocabulary required. Chappell’s objects are confident. They will wait until we are prepared to absorb their purpose and vibrancy.
Bowl, 2021 Terra cotta, majolica 8x6
Andrea Leila Denecke
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Unremitting, the water of the St. Croix River patiently defines boundaries and habitats. Ever present, the river goes unnoticed, yet it cannot be denied. Its strength is measured in volumes and velocity. Sand and silt and mud aggregate only to be separated again. Layers of sediment define the form of the landscape with specific density and texture. Andrea Leila Denecke has spent her life absorbing the quality and natural wildness of this watershed as it nourishes the surrounding fields. She has made note of the contraposition and knows that the geometry of agriculture does not equal dominion over nature. Wildness does not yield a harvest, does not succumb to external pressures without retribution, unless there is respect, empathy, and compromise. Working in porcelain, rather than carving designs into leatherhard clay, she would sandblast bisqueware. By removing small particles with slightly larger particles backed by just enough force to degrade the homogeneity of the surface, she acted on tacit knowledge to devise a process that mimicked erosion. She became the wild thing changing the landscape of a form, when no one else knew how to be a river in the same forcefully quiet way. Her process evolved from being erosive to compressing sediment, bits of granite, into the dense clay body. Now the surfaces of her vessels recall layers of geologic strata where materials settle densely into each other over time.
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Her travels in Japan served to underscore her affinity for the dance between the natural and the unnatural, the wild and the tame. The Japanese aesthetic and their appreciation of nature resonated with her. She responded to the simple wooden structures, the tea houses, the storehouses or kura. She was deeply familiar with the spirit of the Japanese aesthetic. Something from the summers of her childhood along the St. Croix made her first impressions of Japan like a memory. And so her life has loyally followed her heart’s call with one footstep falling in the East and one foot falling in the West, regardless of where both her feet were actually planted. She related an experience from one of her journeys, a visit to a Japanese garden where she contemplated a mixture of loneliness, joy, and longing. “I got off the path, and there was this beautiful, big rock. I sat down on it and enjoyed the water and the plants. I sat there for a really long time. It struck me that the garden itself is beautiful, supremely well-tended, but unnatural. If I go outside and step into the woods behind my house, that’s natural—it’s not manipulated by humans, certainly not by my hand. It just grew up naturally. Well, that Japanese garden looked really natural, but I knew just sitting there that it was unnatural. That did not diminish my appreciation of it.” In every form she produces, viewers witness the stalwart integrity of simplicity. She can invoke that
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sense of integrity because she has spent a lifetime in conversation with a specific set of materials while consistently communing with the violent peace that is nature. Denecke knows how to yield to wildness, she knows how to convey the essence of dignity, and she knows the struggle to maintain intention through the fight.
Arched Ikebana Vessel, 2019 Soda-fired stoneware, granite inlay 7.5 x 22 x 6
Brad Menninga
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As the viewer approaches the object sitting atop a decorative corbel shelf, their mind will immediately set to work pulling references from their life experiences in an attempt to deduce, categorize, and assimilate the visual data. Brad Menninga isn’t particularly precious about the viewer aligning their experience with his intentions. He is much more interested in the viewer having agency over their own interpretation of the visual cues he has provided. Low-relief porcelain ornamentation and archetypal forms will likely set upon the ceramist’s mind with specific connotations, knowingly placing the origin points—Jasperware, canopic jar, neoclassical architecture. A viewer with no experience of ceramic processes or history may wonder and marvel at the skill and attention to detail, but they will quickly move on to processing the images rendered: stars, botanical elements, fauna, or perhaps something more specific to our current human experience. Regardless of the entry point, there will be discordant and harmonious levels of interpretation. Stepping toward a mirror framed in clay imitating bronze and actual bronze—what is real, what is facsimile—the viewer will be confronted with themselves, and the comprehensive analysis will be simultaneously visceral and cerebral. There is no right answer. Informed by Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (although not exclusively), Menninga believes
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in the intelligence, insight, and compassion one can glean from being in dialogue. Under Boal’s explorative strategy, dialogue manifests when spectators become active participants in a scene, or become spect-ACTORS. New perspectives are freely proposed and examined post-performance. Put into the realm of social justice, this technique can shepherd communities through turmoil, arriving at solutions by illuminating action plans that may have been overlooked in favor of more conventional methods. Put into the realm of an exhibition space, Menninga hopes to empower the viewer. When he says he wants the viewer to have agency over their experience, he is not putting on a façade of the elusive and obtuse artist. Raised in a Calvinist home where he became unafraid to tackle hard work and problemsolving, academia was respected. His parents entrusted him to do his own research and arrive at his own conclusions about life and life’s purpose. It’s little wonder that he became a craftsman, a student of philosophy, and believes firmly in every individual’s right to personal agency. Menninga has worked as a labor organizer and has used giant puppets as tools of social engagement. He is at once an optimist and perhaps more than a little disappointed that the revelations of the Enlightenment are so easily forgotten—and yet he persists. His practice is informed by, and his conversation is intently peppered with, references to Friedrich Schiller, Claire Bishop,
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Bertolt Brecht, Edward Said, and Jürgen Habermas. With an in-depth, working knowledge of philosophy, he sees the human dilemma in all of its beautifully complicated and frustrating layers. After taking time for an uninterrupted viewing, Menninga would like to have a conversation, “I’ve taken this posture of refusing that my authority is at all essential in your perception of the work, but I’m available to discuss the work after you’ve seen it and played with possible meanings. I’m trying to start dialogue, not enforce my interpretation.”
Reflections from my Covid Year, 2021 Mid-range stoneware, mirror 11 x 11 x 2 Photo by Lark Gilmer
Marcelino Puig-Pastrana
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Puerto Rico comprises over thirty-five hundred square miles of Caribbean landscape. Lush foliage grows atop geological sediment that dates to the Jurassic Period—190 million years ago.1 The Taíno, a rich, indigenous culture, settled and populated this region of the world and thrived for over a thousand years before they were nearly wiped out by the scourge of “civilization.”2 Taíno petroglyphs can still be found on cave walls— underground, where life began.
sees the transformation of energy from one material state to another material state as an infinite cycle. “We are always connected by memory. In material, there are echoes of the memories of what it was before. If you work with it, you understand the material and you can evoke some of that life memory and make it manifest so people can see it or feel it.”
The petroglyphs persist, appearing on the surfaces of contemporary pottery. The Taíno civilization persists, quantified in a 2003 study by Juan C. Martínez-Cruzado, a biologist at the University of Puerto Rico. He confirmed that 61.1 percent of the 800 randomly-selected subjects had mitochondrial DNA of indigenous origin.3 The persistence of Puerto Rico, the land, and the Taíno people, is significant in this context because it is foundational to Marcelino Puig-Pastrana’s creative output. He sees the island and the ancestral memory of the indigenous population that he carries within his being in the same light that he sees his art. It is in the same light that he sees clay, which is a living material worn down and made plastic through the alluvial process. It is in the same light that he sees charcoal, which carries the energy of the living tree that it once was into a mark made on paper. All are an unequivocal affirmation of the persistence of life.
He moves between charcoal drawings and clay to engage the figure, examining the heaviness and pain of his people who “haven’t been themselves since 2015,” through volume and shape. More aggressive than past bodies of work, these articulated human forms convey the grief and pain of the climate crisis. A central figure bursts forward propelled by the force of two hurricanes while others curl in on themselves, crumbling like Punta Ventana, an iconic natural wonder situated along the southern coast of Puerto Rico, felled by a 5.8 magnitude earthquake.
Pastrana believes our connection to this force, that is the energy of life, is more than physical. He
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This is renewal. This is the cycle of memory. The healing continues in Puerto Rico.
The memories he is concerned with now are more recent.
He conveys the nature of the clay, and in doing so he conveys the temperamental beauty of history and nature. Our eye moves around the curving textures of his vessels and we understand the precariousness of being on the fragile edge of life. We can understand and believe him when he says, “We are constantly battling with oblivion. By making, we are keeping things alive.”
NOTES 1 “Puerto Rico Geography.” Welcome to Puerto Rico!, welcome.topuertorico .org/geogra.shtml.
2 Poole, Robert M. “What Became of the Taíno?” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, Oct. 1, 2011, www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/what -became-of-the-taino-73824867/.
3 ibid
Grand Exploit...after Goya's The Disasters of War (Grande hazaña...en diálogo con Los desastres de la guerra de Goya), 2019 Stoneware, oxide wash, engobe 12 x 12 x .75
Pattie Chalmers Born: March 23, 1965 (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada)
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EDUCATION 2001 MFA, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 1996 BFA, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Museum of Fine Arts, TX 2017 Zanesville Prize for Contemporary Ceramics, OH • Politics of the figure: ideologies of failure, Archer Gallery, Portland, OR
SELECTED RECENT SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2021 Every Thing and More, Craft Alliance, St. Louis, MO 2019 Every Day I Think of You, Red Lodge Clay Center, Red Lodge, MT 2018 The Thing of It, Hunter Project Room, Hunter College, NY 2015 Mudmaid Museum, Practice Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 2009 Mississippi Mudmaid Museum, Creative Electric Studios: Art Boat, Mississippi River, Minneapolis, MN
SELECTED AWARDS 2020 McKnight Artist Residency for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN 2020 Illinois Arts Council, Artist Fellowship Award Finalist • Illinois Arts Council, Professional Development Grant 2018 Merit Award, San Angelo National Ceramic Competition, San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, TX 2014 Finalist, Elizabeth R. Raphael Founder’s Prize, Pittsburgh, PA
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2021 Layers of Being Ceramic Invitational, Bill Ford Gallery, Paducah School of Art and Design, KY 2020 Radius 1, Bradbury Art Museum, Jonesboro, AR • Yunomi, Clay AKAR Gallery, Iowa City, IA • 100 Years 100 Women, The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA • Critical Function II, Visual Arts Center of Richmond, VA • American Pottery Festival, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN • Material Mugs V: Underglaze, Companion Gallery, Humboldt, TN 2019 Suburbia, Clay and Glass Gallery, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada • Clay Currents: the Wichita National Ceramics Invitational Exhibition, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, KS • Domestic Matters: The Uncommon Apron, Sally D. Francisco Gallery, Peters Valley School of Craft, Layton, NJ • American Pottery Festival, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN • Bonspiel, Hennepin Made, Minneapolis, MN 2018 Raise a Glass—A Contemporary Response to Animal Shaped Vessels from the Ancient World, Gallery 224, Harvard Ceramic Center, Cambridge, MA • Ceramic Invitational, Blue Spiral 1, Ashville, NC • Bling, Plough Gallery, Tifton, GA • The Incongruous Body, American Museum of Ceramic Arts, Los Angeles, CA • San Angelo National Ceramic Competition, San Angelo
GALLERY REPRESENTATION Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN • Red Lodge Clay Center, Red Lodge, MT • Craft Alliance, Minneapolis, MN SELECTED COLLECTIONS San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, TX • The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA • The Sonny Kamm Foundation, Statesville, NC • St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE 2006-present Professor—Southern Illinois University, Carbondale 2020 Visiting Artist Workshop, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Peck School of Art 2019 Visiting Artist, Advanced Student Project Network, (ASPN), Red Lodge, MT • Visiting Artist Lecture, Workshop and Panelist, Wichita State University, KS • Visiting Artist Workshop, Pitzer College, Claremont, CA
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2014 Rebecca Chappell: New Work, Saratoga Clay Arts Center, Port Chester, NY 2011 Red Carpet: Evelyn Shapiro Foundation Solo Exhibition, The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA SELECTED AWARDS 2020 McKnight Artist Residency for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN 2015 Independence Foundation Arts Fellowship Award Research Grant, Philadelphia, PA 2010-2011 The Evelyn Shapiro Foundation Fellowship, The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA 2008-2009 Fogelberg Studio Fellowship, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN
SELECTED COLLECTIONS Robert Pfannebecker personal collection, Lancaster, PA • Gail Brown personal collection, Oakland, CA • Paolo Vincent Lim personal collection, Philadelphia, PA SELECTED PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE 2012-present Adjunct Professor, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore 2020 Visiting Artist, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis • Visiting Artist, University of Wisconsin, River Falls 2019 Visiting Artist, San Diego State University, CA • Visiting Artist, RIT College of Art and Design, Rochester, NY
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Rebecca Chappell
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2020 Chromatherapy, Red Lodge Clay Center, Red Lodge, MT • Eight Fluid Ounces, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge 2019 Domestic Matters: The Uncommon Apron, Peters Valley School of Craft, Layton, NJ 2018 Red Handed Invitational, Our Lady’s Clay Campus, Nashville, TN 2017 State of the Art: National Biennial Invitational, Giertz Gallery, Champaign, IL 2016 Utilitarian Clay VII: Celebrate the Object, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, TN • Accessibility by Design, NCECA, Kansas City, MO • The Clay Studio: 100 Cups, NCECA, Kansas City, MO 2015 Form Beyond Function, The Arts Council of Princeton, NJ • Calibrating Colors, Cohen Gallery at Alfred University, NY
GALLERY REPRESENTATION The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA
Born: December 29, 1978 (Anderson, Indiana)
EDUCATION 2008 MFA, New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University 2003 BFA, Cleveland Institute of Art, OH
Andrea Leila Denecke Born: July 13, 1950 (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
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EDUCATION 1998 Institute for Public Art and Design, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, MN 1989 MFA, Studio Arts, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge 1986 Diploma with Honors, Tekisui Museum of Art, Ceramic Art Research Institute, Ashiya, Japan 1972 BA with Distinction, Art and German, Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, IA PUBLIC ART COMMISSIONS 1991 Mississippi for the Municipal Central Library, Ibaraki City, Japan 1991 Fountain for United Hospital, St. Paul, MN SELECTED INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS 2015 Traditional Chasuble Festival Invitational, Mungyeong, South Korea 2011 Jukisei Reunion Exhibition, Tekisui Museum of Art, Ashiya, Japan 2011 International Ceramic & Glass Art in the 21st Century, Seto Museum of Art, Japan 2007 International Ceramic & Glass Exhibition, Higashi Sakura Kaikan, Nagoya, Japan 2002 Works from Artist-in-Residence in Seto, Seto City Cultural Center, Japan • Seto Ceramics Residency Artists Exhibition, Japan 1993 Chiyoharu Garo Invitational, Tokyo, Japan 1992 Message from Minneapolis, Ibaraki City Library Gallery, Japan 1987 Jukisei Exhibition, Seibu Gallery Invitational, Osaka, Japan 1986 Interiart Gallery Solo Show, Osaka, Japan • Incidence/Reflection, solo show, Interno Kitamura Gallery, Kobe, Japan 1985 Tekisui Museum of Art Juried Exhibition, Second Prize, Ashiya, Japan SELECTED NATIONAL AND REGIONAL EXHIBITIONS 2019 Women Who Teach, University of St. Catherine, St. Paul, MN 2017 Current Visions, duo show, Raymond Avenue Gallery, St. Paul, MN 2016 Yunomi Invitational, Raymond Avenue Gallery, St. Paul, MN 2015 Minnesota Views, Grand Hand Gallery, St. Paul, MN 2014 Red River Reciprocity, group invitational, Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND • MinneSoda Clay, group invitational, Edina Art Center, MN 2013 Maquettes and Small Sculptures,
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Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, MN 2012 It’s Only Clay, national competition, Bemidji Community Art Center, MN SELECTED AWARDS AND HONORS 2020 McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN 2015 Nominated for the Janet Mansfield Award, International Ceramic Magazine Editors Association • Mungyeong Chasabal Festival, invited international artist, Honorable Mention, South Korea 2013 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant 2008 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant • McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN 2006 Concordia Continental Ceramics Competition, Honorable Mention 2004 McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN 2003 Jerome Residency Fellowship, Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, MN 2001 Seto City Ceramic Artist Residency, Japan 1998 McKnight Ceramic Artist Residency Grant, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN 1984 Rotary Foundation International Vocational Fellowship for study in Japan COLLECTIONS Bridgewater Condominium Art Collection, Minneapolis, MN • Ibaraki City Municipal Central Library, Japan • Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN • Minnesota History Center Museum, St. Paul • Mungyeong Traditional Tea Bowl Festival, South Korea • Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN • Seto City Museum of Art, Aichi, Japan • The Harlow Collection, Bemidji State University, MN • United Hospital, St. Paul, MN PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE St Croix Valley Pottery Tour, Minnesota, Invited by Jeff Oestreich 2015 Commissioned to create the SAGE Awards for Dance, Cowles Center, Minneapolis, MN 2013 It’s Only Clay, Juror for a national exhibition, Bemidji, MN • Artist in Residence, Ceramic & Glass Art Center, Seto, Aichi, Japan
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE 2014-2021 Studio Artist, St. Paul, MN 2017-2019 Schmidt Holiday Market, Coordinator, St. Paul, MN 2011-2013 Ceramics Program, Coordinator, Holden Village, Chelan, WA 2009-2010 Teaching Assistant, Kiln Technician; California College of the Arts, San Francisco 2007 Ceramics Program, Coordinator, Holden Village, Chelan, WA 1999-2008 Studio Potter, Portland, OR 1990-1992 Pottery Studio, Operations Manager, Oberlin College, OH
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Brad Menninga
SELECTED SOLO AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2020 The Life and Legacy of Gijsbert van Engelenhoven, solo show, St. Paul, MN 2019 Full Circle: Decay, Dread and Déjà Vu after Wedgwood, solo show, NCECA, St. Paul, MN 2017 Stark Past & Present, group show, Stark Street Studios, Portland, OR 2016 What do we Want? installation for “Made Here MN,” Mall of America, Bloomington, MN 2013 Terra Cotta Parade, participatory craft exhibit, Holden Village, Chelan, WA 2012 Dancing Servant Project, organizing artist, Chelan and Everett, WA • Holden Bound, co-curator and artist, East-West Gallery, Stehekin, WA 2011 Holden Gift Bowls Project, organizing artist, Holden Village, Chelan, WA • S. Syjuco’s Shadowshop, SF MOMA, CA 2010 A. Smith’s ARTS & SKILLS Service, SF MOMA, CA • MFA Thesis Exhibition, California College of the Arts, San Francisco 2009 Super Pop-up Shop, Alameda Towne Center, CA • About Place, [AC]2 Gallery, Albuquerque, NM 2008 Price, an art intervention at a craft show, Oregon Convention Center, Portland 2006 Sanctification of Place, with Richard Rowland, Walters Cultural Arts Center, Hillsboro, OR • About Place, group wood fire invitational show, Mt. Hood Community College, Gresham, OR • Membership has its Benefits, Skutt Kilns, Portland, OR 2005 One Stop Art Show, Manzanita, OR
MERIT AWARDS / GRANTS / RESIDENCIES 2020 McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN • Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant 2012 Artist Residency in Community, Ecology and Spirituality, founder, Holden Village, Chelan, WA 2008-2010 Dorothy and George Saxe Scholarship, California College of the Arts, San Francisco 2007 Creative Resources Resident, Holden Village, Chelan, WA
Born: September 26, 1969 (Seattle, Washington)
EDUCATION 2010 MFA, Fine Arts, California College of the Arts, San Francisco 1992 BA, Politics, Oberlin College, OH
Marcelino Puig-Pastrana Born: December 11, 1965 (Río Piedras, Puerto Rico)
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EDUCATION 2000 BFA/BA, Art History, Fordham University, NY
GALLERY REPRESENTATION Galería Botello, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2019 Han sonado las horas dormidas, Ceramics and Drawings, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez 2018 Todo quema en la hora feroz, Ceramics and Drawings, Museum of the Americas, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico • Han sonado las horas dormidas, Ceramics and Drawings, Casa Escuté Museum, Carolina, Puerto Rico
SELECTED COLLECTIONS Polo Museale, Gualdo Tadino, Perugia, Italy • MUSA Museo de Arte, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico • Fundación Arana, San Juan, Puerto Rico • Mr. and Mrs. David Nolan, New York • Mr. Jon Ander Azaola, Madrid, Spain • Atty. Dennis Simonpietri, San Juan, Puerto Rico • Dr. Luis Nieves Rosa, Rincón, Puerto Rico • Dr. Baruch Vergara, San Germán, Puerto Rico • Dr. Ann Oliver, San Juan, Puerto Rico
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2020 Flotilla para Ballets de San Juan, Puerto Rico • Barro soy, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico 2019 Los 50 años de la Liga, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico • Fragata para Ballets de San Juan, Puerto Rico • Benefit Auction Noemí Ruiz Gallery, UIPR, San Juan, Puerto Rico • Galería Macaón Group Show, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico 2018 National Arts Showcase 2018, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico • Regata para Ballets de San Juan, Santurce, Puerto Rico 2016 Benefit Auction Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santurce, Puerto Rico SELECTED AWARDS 2020 McKnight Artist Residency for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN 2017 Finalist, Honorary Mention, 39th International Competition of Ceramic Art, Gualdo Tadino, Perugia, Italy 1992 Young artist, choreography, National Endowment for the Arts
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE 2021 Professor, Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, San Juan, Puerto Rico 2013-present Instructor, Department of Fine Arts, UPR, Río Piedras, Puerto Rico 2004–present Actor-Mime-Dancer, Producer, Choreographer, Producciones Aleph, San Juan, Puerto Rico
About McKnight Foundation
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The McKnight Foundation, a Minnesota-based family foundation, advances a more just, creative, and abundant future where people and planet thrive. Established in 1953, the McKnight Foundation is deeply committed to advancing climate solutions in the Midwest; building an equitable and inclusive Minnesota; and supporting the arts in Minnesota, neuroscience, and international crop research. Program Goal: As creators, innovators, and leaders, Minnesota’s working artists are the primary drivers of our heralded arts and culture community. Artists nurture our cultural identities, imagine solutions, and catalyze social change. Founded on the belief that Minnesota thrives when its artists thrive, the McKnight Foundation’s arts program is one of the oldest and largest of its kind in the country. Support for individual working Minnesota artists has been a cornerstone of the program since it began in 1982. The McKnight Artist Fellowships Program provides annual, unrestricted cash awards to outstanding mid-career Minnesota artists in 14 different creative disciplines. Program partner organizations administer the fellowships and structure them to respond to the unique challenges of different disciplines. Currently the foundation contributes about $2.8 million per year to its statewide fellowships. For more information, visit mcknight.org/artistfellowships.
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Past Recipients 1997 F Linda Christianson F Matthew Metz R Marina Kuchinski R George Pearlman 1998 F Judith Meyers Altobell F Jeffrey Oestreich R Andrea Leila Denecke R Eiko Kishi R Deborah Sigel 1999 F Gary Erickson F Will Swanson R Joe Batt R Kelly Connole 2000 F Sarah Heimann F Joseph Kress R Arina Ailincai R Mika Negishi R Mary Selvig R Megan Sweeney 2001 F Margaret Bohls F Robert Briscoe R Vineet Kacker R Davie Reneau R Patrick Taddy R Janet Williams
McKnight Artist Fellowships and Residencies for Ceramic Artists program and this exhibition are made possible by generous financial support from McKnight Foundation, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
2002 F Maren Kloppmann F Keisuke Mizuno R William Brouillard R Kirk Mangus R Tom Towater R Sandra Westley
2007 F Mike Norman F Joseph Kress R Greg Crowe R John Lambert R Lee Love R Alyssa Wood
2012 F Brian Boldon F Ursula Hargens R Pattie Chalmers R Haejung Lee R Ann-Charlotte Ohlsson R Nick Renshaw
2017 F Xilam Balam Ybarra F Mic Stowell R Derek Au R Linda Cordell R Bryan Czibesz R Ian Meares
2003 F Chuck Aydlett F Mary Roettger R Miriam Bloom R David S. East R Ting-Ju Shao R Kurt Webb
2008 F Andrea Leila Denecke F Marko Fields R Ilena Finocchi R Margaret O’Rorke R Yoko Sekino-Bové R Elizabeth Smith
2013 F Keisuke Mizuno F Kimberlee Joy Roth R Claudia Alvarez R Tom Bartel R Sanam Emami R Sarah Heimann
2018 F Brett Freund F Donovan Palmquist R Ted Adler R Alessandro Gallo R Hidemi Tokutake R Leandra Urrutia
2004 F Andrea Leila Denecke F Matthew Metz R Eileen Cohen R Satoru Hoshino R Paul McMullan R Anita Powell
2009 F Ursula Hargens F Maren Kloppmann R Jonas Arčikauskas R Cary Esser R Alexandra Hibbitt R Ryan Mitchell
2014 F Kelly Connole F Kip O’Krongly R Jessica Brandl R Jae Won Lee R Amy Santoferraro R Andy Shaw
2019 F Kelly Connole F Guillermo Guardia R Pattie Chalmers R Rebecca Chappell R Hyang Jin Cho R Marcelino Puig-Pastrana
2005 F Maren Kloppmann F Tetsuya Yamada R Edith Garcia R Audrius Janušonis R Yonghee Joo R Hide Sadohara
2010 F Linda Christianson F Heather Nameth Bren R William Cravis R Rina Hongo R Naoto Nakada R Kevin Snipes
2015 F Ursula Hargens F Mika Negishi Laidlaw R Kathryn Finnerty R Lung-Chieh Lin R Helen Otterson R Joseph Pintz
2020 F Andrea Leila Denecke F Brad Menninga R Ashwini Bhat R Edith Garcia R Tom Hubbard R Roberta Massuch
2006 F Robert Briscoe F Mika Negishi Laidlaw R Lisa Marie Barber R Junko Nomura R Nick Renshaw R John Utgaard
2011 F Gerard Justin Ferrari F Mika Negishi Laidlaw R David Allyn R Edith Garcia R Peter Masters R Janet Williams
2016 F Nicolas Darcourt F Sheryl McRoberts R Eva Kwong R Forrest Lesch-Middelton R Anthony Stellaccio R Kosmas Ballis
F = Fellowship Recipient
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R = Residency Recipient
About Northern Clay Center
Northern Clay Center
Five McKnight Artists
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Northern Clay Center’s mission is to advance the ceramic arts for artists, learners, and the community, through education, exhibitions, and artist services. Its goals are to create and promote high-quality, relevant, and participatory ceramic arts educational experiences; cultivate and challenge ceramic arts audiences through extraordinary exhibitions and programming; support ceramic artists in the expansion of their artistic and professional skills; embrace makers from diverse cultures and traditions in order to create a more inclusive clay community; and excel as a non-profit arts organization. Staff Tippy Maurant, Deputy Director/Director of Galleries & Exhibitions Kyle Rudy-Kohlhepp, Executive Director Jordan Bongaarts, Exhibition Associate Board of Directors Amanda Kay Anderson Bryan Anderson Mary K. Baumann Craig Bishop Heather Nameth Bren Evelyn Weil Browne Nettie Colón Sydney Crowder Haweya Farah
Patrick Kennedy Mark Lellman Kate Maury Brad Meier Philip Mische Debbie Schumer Rick Scott Cristin McKnight Sethi Paul Vahle
Photographs of ceramic works by Peter Lee unless otherwise noted. Design and portraits by Joseph D.R. OLeary (vetodesign.com)
Honorary Director Kay Erickson Legacy Directors Andy Boss Warren MacKenzie Joan Mondale
2424 Franklin Avenue East Minneapolis, Minnesota 55406 612.339.8007 www.northernclaycenter.org