Northern Clay Center: Six McKnight Artists 2015

Northern Clay Center presents

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six mcknight artists 2014 McKnight Fellowship Recipients: Kelly Connole, Kip O’Krongly 2013 McKnight Residency Recipients: Claudia Alvarez, Sanam Emami, Sarah Heimann 2014 McKnight Residency Recipient: Jae Won Lee

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July 11 – August 30, 2015 Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota

2014 McKnight Fellowship Recipients: Kelly Connole, Kip O’Krongly 2013 McKnight Residency Recipients: Claudia Alvarez, Sanam Emami, Sarah Heimann 2014 McKnight Residency Recipient: Jae Won Lee

Essays by Janet Koplos Edited by Elizabeth Coleman

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Foreword

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Sarah Millfelt, Director

Six McKnight Artists

© 2015 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. http://www.northernclaycenter.org Manufactured in the United States

Northern Clay Center

First edition, 2015 International Standard Book Number 978-1-932706-35-6

Unless otherwise noted, all dimensions: height precedes width precedes depth.

The 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 2014 selection panel: Mary Barringer, studio potter from Sherburne Falls, MA, and director emerita of Studio Potter magazine; Jeff Guido, independent critic and curator, and former artistic director of the Clay Studio in Philadelphia, PA; and Tim Berg, participating artist in NCC’s spring 2014 exhibition, A Gilded Age, partner in the MyersBerg Studios, sculptor, and assistant professor at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA.

The 2015 exhibition features work by the two 2014 McKnight Fellowship recipients, three 2013 McKnight Residency Artists, and one 2014 McKnight Residency Artist. 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.

The 2014 round of the program marked NCC’s 17th year of NCC’s re-granting of funds from the McKnight Foundation. This program has remained crucial in NCC’s ability to serve ceramic artists (from Minnesota and beyond), while strengthening the richness of NCC’s studio program and the greater Minnesota clay community. We are honored to retain support from the Foundation into 2015 and beyond!

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Kelly connole

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McKnight Fellowship Recipient

Northern Clay Center

Six McKnight Artists

Animals Kelly Connole is known for making nearly life-size and life-like rabbits with scarred or polished surfaces that recall earth more than rabbit fur. Ears raised alertly, they seem to be listening like any cautious animal, but they are distinguished by their human hands and eyes and their sometimes quite human actions.

Connole points out that rabbits have a wonderful cultural history; that anything with erect ears reads as a rabbit; that in folklore they are sly or devious; that in life they are silent but have a terrible high-pitched scream, like a child’s. She kept them as pets when she was young, but they were not the only animals in her life. She grew up in rural Montana (“incredibly rural,” she says), where she had to ride a horse from her backcountry home to the school-bus stop. She was around animals all the time and thought she would be a veterinarian or a surgeon.

In preparation, she attended the University of Montana, in Missoula, studying biology. But in the fall of her junior year, she took a drawing class and was surprised that it made her think about things differently. Then she took a ceramics class to make useful objects, such as cups, for her apartment. She was amazed by the sculpture of her teacher, Beth Lo, who made work about her family, communicating her ideas visually. Connole fell in love with the material and the physical labor, and the chemistry of ceramics came easy to her. To the dismay of her family, she changed her major to art. Rudy Autio, just ending his teaching career, was very kind to her. She also benefitted from visits by major ceramic artists who came to the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in nearby Helena.

After graduation she stayed on, managing the gallery, and taking art history classes as she developed a portfolio. She wanted to go to the Bay Area, so she chose the affordable San Francisco State, and was a graduate assistant. She began to teach and found great satisfaction in it. She taught at community colleges and the like, but eventually realized there was no future in that considering the California economy. She came to Minnesota in 1997 simply because a friend was coming back here; a series of welcoming opportunities and a rapidly expanding community of peers confirmed that this was a great place for her. She taught at Minneapolis Community and Technical College and Rochester

Community College and for three years was a visiting professor at Hamline University. Hamline was a new experience, since she had attended only large state schools, and it prepared her for teaching at Carleton College, where she has been since 2004.

When she left Montana in the early ’90s, she was doing life-scale figures, which were less common then than now.

In graduate school she continued to work very large. But in Minnesota she needed something small and fast. She began creating environments in which visitors could move rather than just look. She also gave up her ceramic “purism”— a change of attitude augmented by her teaching duties at Carleton (one-third metalsmithing) and her sabbatical, working in a Seattle factory casting bronze. Now she may add glass, metal, wood, or found objects to her basic ceramic material, including furniture that she repurposes.

Connole’s earlier work had specific content, referring to the gun culture she grew up in — which occurred in a place of beauty — and the context of violence her students knew in the East Bay Area. The rabbits she created in Minnesota were expressive but less specific. They were popular, although some people described them as “unsettling,” and she could have gone on making them. She also made crows, a scarier creature reinforced by the fact that a flock of crows is called a murder.

Today her work is motivated and shaped by beauty, love, and kindness; the reconciliation of male and female energy; and the death of her mother and the growth of her children. She is conscious of the tension between good and evil, and tries to find beauty in the hardest moments. For her McKnight show she returns to the idea of multipart installations, able to take on the project because the McKnight fellowship buys time to concentrate on the work, with a reduced teaching obligation. Viewers will see multitudes of pure white porcelain butterflies suspended above a dead zebra on the floor, provoking thoughts of death, life cycles, new beginnings, and the consolation of beauty.

Kelly Connole, From Here to There, 2015, porcelain, thread, stainless steel, stoneware, 9' x 18' x 10'.

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KIP O’Krongly McKnight Fellowship Recipient

Northern Clay Center

Six McKnight Artists

Environments Kip O’Krongly’s daily-use pottery features environmental themes that arise naturally from her life experiences. First off, she lives in Northfield, so farm fields, tractors, wind turbines, and bicycles (it’s a college town) are things she sees constantly. Sensitivity to landscape may derive from her somewhat peripatetic childhood.

She was born in Anchorage and lived there for three spans of years but also in Seattle, Portland, and Chicago before college.

Supporting her interest is the fact that her husband is an environmental economist.

Her pathway was indirect, literally and figuratively. She started college (at Carleton College in Northfield, as it happens) as a chemistry major, switched to a double major in economics and studio art, and dropped economics her senior year. Although she’d done craft projects and taken art classes when she was young, her first exposure to ceramics was in her sophomore year.

She was attracted to functional things, simple shapes. When her husband went to Berkeley for grad school, she couldn’t afford to set up a studio, but 2 ½ years later she saw an ad in Ceramics Monthly magazine for an apprenticeship in Whitefish, Montana.

There she began to develop her own ideas, in a production setting of repetitive work. During a brief period in Seattle, her studio was in a garage; she participated in an art tour and took workshops at Pottery Northwest. There she did a lot of altering, throwing tightly and cutting into the works. She thought of the pieces as having a conversation. Her husband accepted a teaching position in Pittsburgh. Over the summer before, they drove to Alaska, her first visit since 1997. She could see that glaciers were retreating, and it was shocking to see change happening so fast.

And not coincidentally, she had seen the results of an environmental disaster as a schoolgirl in Alaska. She began thinking about making pots political. She could express ideas by drawing on the pots. She also wanted the pottery process to reflect her ecological concerns, so she changed from cone 10 to lower-temperature earthenware and began single-firing her pots in an electric kiln, saving energy. It took 2 ½ years to perfect her format of red clay, white slip, and clear glaze.

In Pittsburgh, where she worked in a basement studio, she ran the ceramics program for the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.

In general, O’Krongly and her husband loved Pittsburgh’s “grit and opportunity,” as she puts it, but they left in 2008 for a promising situation in Northfield. At first they lived in the Twin Cities and her husband commuted. She took classes at Northern Clay Center and less than six months after her arrival, a studio spaced opened up so she could work at NCC as well. She describes it as being like grad school, with great energy, enlightening visitors, a congenial and knowledgeable staff. Soon she was part of the staff, managing firings and materials. Now that she’s living in Northfield, her studio is a “bonus room” over the garage of her home.

These favorable conditions enabled her work to develop.

She employs sgraffito, scratching through the layer of slip on the pot surface. She has searched for other line qualities and other means of getting imagery. She began cutting paper stencils, but at 4 ½ hours for each, it was inefficient. She looked for a plastic material. Most were too rigid to adapt to pottery curves but a plastic tablecloth from a dollar store could be cut in four to six layers. That was still time-consuming. She began to use a digital paper cutter made for scrapbookers, which was a big improvement, although she had to go back to paper and singleuse stencils. It takes more planning, and the machine works slowly, but it works.

O’Krongly (the name, by the way, is probably Polish) hopes that the drawings on her pots will start a dialogue with the user.

She pictures tractors to allude to agriculture with oil-based fertilizers. Oil rigs are self-explanatory. Wind turbines and power lines raise questions of energy alternatives. The message shouldn’t be so strident that people wouldn’t want it in their homes. If nothing else, the mere fact of her dishes being used in the sharing of a meal satisfies her. She teases at consciousness by putting animals on dishes from which people might eat meat.

And cows are not just rural charmers: they also produce methane.

Her McKnight show touches on meat consumption, methane emissions from abundant livestock, and antibiotics. O’Krongly’s well-made, useful, and attractive objects carry much more than their weight.

Kip O’Krongly, (L to R) Methane Pig Platter, Methane Cow Platter, and Methane Chicken Platter, 2015, earthenware, slips, underglaze, terra sigillata. Each 16" x 16" x 2.5".

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claudia alvarez McKnight Residency Recipient

Northern Clay Center

Six McKnight Artists

Figures The child figures that Claudia Alvarez constructs of clay have the shortness, thick proportions, and large heads of toddlers. But their actions, gestures, and facial expressions are more mature. The figures have a soft imprecision, as if they are not quite in focus, or as if they are slightly smeary paintings, somehow moving into three-dimensionality. The children are pudgy and soft-skinned, and often they seem to look at us, the viewers, very directly.

When they do not, the reason may be sexual — a child fondling himself or two seen in very adult foreplay — or they may seem to be engrossed in dreaming or in prayer. The figures are very immediate and subtly — or emphatically — disturbing.

Alvarez was born in Mexico and her family emigrated to the U.S. to join her father in Chicago when she was three years old.

She has five brothers and three sisters, and she’s the youngest girl. They soon moved to Lodi, California. Although she made art as a child, she wanted to get into health care as a career. She got a job at a hospital, took a training program, and stayed there 12 ½ years, working in various capacities including ambulance driver. She took art classes and thought nursing would support her art. Eventually she tried clay instead of drawing and painting. She speaks with wonder of touching clay, and of how it allows you to make something from nothing.

Finally, in 1997, she went to art school, attending the University of California–Davis, where she studied ceramics with Annabeth Rosen and painting with Wayne Thiebaud. After that, she applied to graduate school at California College of the Arts.

At that point she took a two-year leave of absence from her job — so that she could return to it and keep her retirement — but she never went back. The first residency after grad school was at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, and she stayed on in Nebraska for several years. She now lives in New York City.

As an undergraduate, she made body parts, which grew out of her personal experiences in the hospital. A viewer might think of ex votos — the devotional objects placed in churches by worshippers, which often take a representative form such as a healed body part — but that was not what she was thinking of.

She loved the hospital work and it remains an important influence.

She does not really think of herself as a figurative artist, just an artist who instigates questions, who leads toward a narrative.

Among artists, she counts Velázquez as important for illusion and transformation of scale. Life, death, and transition are important to her expression. The appearance of the work probably derives from watercolor painting; she is trying to express change over time in the surface of her paintings as well as her sculptures, and she sees the genres as intermixed: the physical reality of sculpture but the space of painting. She further mixes by sometimes using glaze surfaces on her work but other times gesso, oil paint, or graphite.

Some recent pieces incorporate fabric.

Also mixed are her uses of language. She gives the works titles in Spanish or English, as they communicate to her. She went to Mexico City this year on a grant from Art Matters to study pre-Columbian ceramics and research women writers, many of whom mix nationalities and languages.

While resident at Northern Clay Center, Alvarez explored interlocking sculptures, experimented with increased scale, looked for more body gesture, and worked with different materials. She’s thinking of outdoor installations and incorporating elements of furniture with figures in the future. But here, within the first month of her residency, she made large standing pieces. The figures are coil built without an armature, and the standing ones are balanced by weight. Typically she makes them in sections — 20 legs might be drying at once. What takes a long time, she says, are the hands and the expression on the face. She likes to leave some parts unfinished or at least more vague. She typically shows multiple figures, each standing in isolation but establishing a dynamic interrelation with their compelling presences.

Claudia Alvarez, Orators of the Night, 2014, ceramic, installation view.

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Sanam emami

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McKnight Residency Recipient

Northern Clay Center

Six McKnight Artists

Garniture Sanam Emami was already fascinated with the decorative and with patterns before she knew the word garniture, which is defined as a set of decorative accessories, in particular vases, or sometimes more generally, as embellishment, or trimming.

The specific meaning traveled from China to Holland, where two jars and a vase were made to be seen together in the home. The Dutch placed the ensemble on a mantle or on top of a cupboard.

In this application, these objects made for use became part of domestic architectural space.

Emami, who was born in Iran but immigrated to the U.S. with her family as a child (first to Las Vegas, then Washington, D.C.), came to her NCC residency wanting to use the Dutch approach but, as she puts it, “using the organizing logic of the Middle Eastern mihrab, or niche.” Her residency came to involve research more than making as she utilized the NCC library and her own resources to study Islamic space and to develop a set of geometric hybrids of Middle Eastern florals. She aims for both tiles and pots — the latter to be dimensional and so clearly capable of use although her intention is something else. Among the ideas that emerged is for shapes and patterns to read across the group. While at NCC, she concurrently made tableware as a “canvas” on which she could work out pattern placement and the relationship of parts. The plan is that her wall pieces will involve overlapping patterns or objects superimposed upon pattern. She jokingly calls her small research pieces “cup garniture”; although the scale is different, the pieces still feature motifs in spatial relationships. In combining geometric and organic, she seeks fluidity and softness in the same work.

She also used her time away from her teaching job at Colorado State University to work on color possibilities. She cut shapes from paper and applied ceramic underglaze color, which transfers to the surface of a pot when both pot and paper are wet. She puts the paper stencil on a pot, brushes slip over it, and then pulls off the paper. Dutch garniture was blue and white, but Islamic pottery has had a great range of colors, including some enamels that might be described as over the top. Some of her explorations consisted of blue and white with the addition of yellow. In addition, she has applied the same motifs and colors

to bowls, working out a different placement on those different contours.

Another issue she addresses is the balance between crispness and a greater warmth. She has employed sgraffito (scratching) with the idea of using a glaze that would pool in the incised lines to soften them a little. She says she doesn’t need a signature handprint on her work, but at the same time doesn’t want the works to be so perfected that they seem machined rather than human-made.

Emami’s deep background in decorative concerns, comes not just from the traditions of her birthplace, but also from Chinese ceramics that her mother collected. But her route from childhood exposure to the present day was in no way efficiently direct. Besides experiencing the long displacement of an immigrant family, she started college (at James Madison University in Virginia) without a specific goal, and although she took classes in ceramics and was seriously motivated, she majored in history and women’s studies. There followed several years of exploring various interests in the Bay Area of California.

The visit of a college friend exposed her to clay again, and she briefly apprenticed with Mary Law, a utilitarian potter in Berkeley, before accepting the mentorship of her undergraduate teacher, Brook Levan, then teaching in Southern California. He helped her qualify for post-baccalaureate study at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and then graduate school at the esteemed ceramics program of the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. She then spent time in New York, went back to Alfred to teach, and accepted the job at Colorado State, where she is now tenured.

For this exhibition, she will activate space by playing flat against corresponding three-dimensional work, using both the wall and a pedestal or other display surface. Patterns may read most clearly across a flat surface, where nothing competes for the viewer’s attention. But, of course, pattern is also an age-old treatment on the pottery surface, where it articulates form and where the viewer fully engages with it through multiple views that require movement and time.

Sanam Emami, Garniture of Vases, 2015, stoneware. Each form 10" high. Photo credit: E.G. Schempf

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Sarah heimann McKnight Residency Recipient

Northern Clay Center

Six McKnight Artists

Carving Sarah Heimann is a fast talker and a slow worker. Her enthusiasm bubbles over in any conversation about her work, but that fervor is not continued in expressionistic gestures or quickly thrown forms.

She makes coil-built (or press-molded) vessels with painstakingly carved surfaces.

The same contrast might be seen in the development of her career: she is one of the rare ceramists who discovered the medium as early as high school, yet her account of her creative life is a litany of taking time to discover options. She was thrilled to be able to take an electric potter’s wheel home from school for the summer — she spent the time, she jokes, making ashtrays — and she was among the high school students selected for a four-day workshop at Haystack, the famed craft school in Maine, her home state. She continued with ceramics as an undergraduate at Swarthmore, although there was no fine arts major. She was a history/women’s studies major.

Then she spent two years as a Core Student (a work/study program) at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, where she was able to take courses with such noted potters as Linda Christianson, Michael Simon, and Jeff Oestreich. She subsequently was a special student at University of the Arts in Philadelphia, experiencing an art-school milieu. Next was two years as a resident artist at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Maine, where she worked with local clay. At each stage of this itinerary, she found models and mentors as she tried different clays, different firing methods, wondering where she fit in. The final step was graduate work with Mark Pharis at the University of Minnesota, an enriching period when both her study and her day job (at the Center for Arts Criticism) expanded her knowledge of art precedents.

She recognized her interest in mark-making and that she loved children’s books with woodcut illustrations and strongly linear paintings such as Ludwig Kirchner’s. The printmaking studio was helpful as she moved into relief surfaces; she still uses printmaking tools to carve the clay. Her Minnesota experience extended into a McKnight Fellowship, a Jerome grant, a show, and teaching at Hamline University.

Heimann was using porcelain, throwing things an inch thick and then carving. Her mature work began to make more of a picture, and she colored with glaze rather than slip. In 1999, she had another Watershed residency and spent two weeks making just two carved boxes. She was also doing deeply carved teapots and plates. Usually the motif was foliage. The pieces were of generous size, and with that space in which to work, her ideas grew more refined. In 2001, she made the decision to move back to her New England home turf, where she set up home and studio in a red barn in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and began firing at cone 6 in an electric kiln. Six plants from her window boxes became her models for carving. She sold her work at the local farmer’s market, the Boston craft show, holiday exhibitions, not so much in the gallery context. She enjoyed the opportunity to talk to people. But she faced the dilemma of asking a reasonable price for her extended labor.

She remains loyal to the forms of functional pottery, enjoying the “rigor” of that making, as she puts it, and the opportunity for her surfaces to move through three-dimensional space. Yet whether the pieces actually function has become less important to her. In her NCC residency, she made larger vessels, allowing more room to create reliefs, so she now faces the need for a larger kiln. She envisions forms as tall as five feet, although they would be cut apart for firing. Foliage remains important but she is particularly engaged with the contrast of geometric and organic, and with illusionistic or actual layering. She uses geometry as a background — a checkerboard, for example, or short parallel arcs that resemble the wave patterns of Japanese textiles — with more aggressive relief in the botanical motifs.

She carves ladder-like or grid-like rectangles of exaggerated length that she refers to as buildings, which, like the geometric backgrounds, are in tension with the plant motifs. She limits her colors to avoid pictorially illustrating. She cuts round moon shapes into the surfaces at varying depths, and notches the rims with such motifs. In a gift to the users of her pots, she continues her carving on the backs and bottoms of the pieces, saying she wants every aspect to reflect her attention and hoping that people can follow her passion.

Sarah Heimann, Tall Oval with Pierced Moon, 2014, stoneware, 21" x 9" x 5".

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JAE won lee

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McKnight Residency Recipient

Northern Clay Center

Six McKnight Artists

Loss Jae Won Lee came to the U.S. from her native Korea for her college education, and has lived in America most of her adult life.

Yet she finds herself looking back and thinking about a homeland without a home in it. Not only did her family move several times when she was a child, both for her father’s work and because of intense political and social turmoil in the country in the decades following World War II and the Korean War, but the family home was then sold to help pay for American educations for the four children, and her father joined the diplomatic corps so her parents have mostly lived abroad. Thus she might ask: where is “home”?

And, consequently, what is my identity? Such reflection is also affected by her relationship with her parents, which of course shifts as the years pass.

Lee’s work encompasses such questions in a very open way, so that viewers wouldn’t grasp a particular statement so much as they would sense suppressed emotions, secret feelings, tenuousness, change, nostalgia, loss. Those qualities have come through in different ways. The first body of work that brought her attention was boxes (using the term loosely). What could be inside them was anybody’s guess, for they were sealed, entombing any contents. Mostly rectangular, they often reflect the proportions of books, she points out. That’s significant to her, because both of her parents studied literature and she grew up reading the great literature of the world (in translation). Her forms, however, are not simply objects of suppression, for they are also formally beautiful. The edges are rounded; they may have gently inflated, pillowy tops and whispery glazes, vaguely floral or purely atmospheric. They attract the fingers, and occasionally even look lickable. Significantly, they sit flat, stable, grounded.

And also significantly, they usually are not single objects.

Relationships are implied: they nudge up against each other or a smaller one rests companionably on a larger partner.

Lee’s childhood environment was creative: her mother had an interest in art and also wrote poetry; a sister took design classes; a grandmother masterfully embroidered flowers on traditional Korean garments and wrapping cloths. Lee wanted to study art, but perhaps because she was a very good student, her father had different goals for her and saw law school as the target. She

started her college studies in America as a psychology major. But one drawing class revived her art attraction, and a second one convinced her to change her major to graphic design. She loved everything she tried. After she earned her BFA from California State University, Long Beach, she thought about going into architecture, so she returned to CSULB but encountered a pottery class that changed her life. She would stay in the pottery studio day and night until teachers insisted that she go home to rest. She applied to the prestigious ceramic program at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and was accepted.

In that challenging but also supportive environment she found her own voice, and the change of seasons there in upstate New York was also pivotal. She thinks that seeing cherry blossoms for the first time in years probably planted the idea of the petal works she is doing now. But that’s where the boxes began, and they were well received, leading her to successes, including residencies at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and the European Ceramics Work Centre, and teaching at the University of Washington and other schools before her present, tenured position at Michigan State University.

The look of her work has changed drastically, from masses to fragments, one might say. More than a decade ago, Lee began to use multiple small elements and to suspend accumulations of them. A period of working in paper, puncturing or embroidering, also contributed to this expression. What’s striking about her current work is the vast quantity of tiny elements, hand formed — pinched, or shaped with cookie cutters — that she strings together and suspends, or related work cast from twigs and arranged like vertical writing on tiles, or work derived from underglaze decals that she cuts into bits and composes loosely on small strips or tabs of clay, which in one interpretation suggest flowers and branches and from another point of view recall the semi-abstraction of Asian ink painting. While the recent works imply landscape, it’s an ethereal one: arrangements define a mountain topography that has nothing to do with Michigan but emerges from her memories of her childhood. Asia stays with her emotionally.

Jae Won Lee, Stacked Memory, 2015, porcelain, glass beads, mono filament, metal shelf, 4.5" x 13" x 4.5".

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Kelly connole

Kip O’krongly

Northfield, Minnesota Born: 1969, Sacramento, California

Northfield, Minnesota Born: 1979, Anchorage, Alaska

EDUCATION 1996: MFA, San Francisco State University, California 1991: BFA, University of Montana, Missoula

EDUCATION 2001: BA (cum laude), Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2013: Flights of Fancy, Paramount Visual Arts Center, Saint Cloud, Minnesota • 2008: Where the Sky Meets the Earth, Augsburg College, Minneapolis, Minnesota • 2005: Under the Big Tent, Red House Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Northern Clay Center

Six McKnight Artists

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2014: Red River Reciprocity: Contemporary Ceramics in Minnesota and North Dakota, The Plains Art Museum, Fargo, North Dakota • 2012: Ibid: Artists Respond to Collections, Perlman Teaching Museum, Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota • Minnesota Funk, Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis • Push Play, NCECA Invitational, Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, Washington • What is a Rabbit? John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, California • 2011: Clay Dwelling: Six Ceramic Artists, Macalester College Art Gallery, Saint Paul, Minnesota • Minnesota Nice, Lillstreet Art Center, Chicago, Illinois • 2010: 20th Anniversary Exhibition, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota • Water Street Artists — Watershed Artists, Stable Gallery, Damariscotta, Maine • 2009: In Between: Kelly Connole and Beth Lo, Carleton College Art Gallery, Northfield, Minnesota • Firing a Legacy, Pence Gallery, Davis, California • 30 Ceramic Sculptors, CCACA, John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, California • Beasts and Botanicals, Clark College, Vancouver, Washington • Starting a Hare in Ceramics, Pewabic Pottery, Detroit, Michigan • 2008: Cats Invitational, Santa Fe Clay, Santa Fe, New Mexico • 2007: NCECA Clay National Biennial Exhibition, Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville, Kentucky • Ceramics Today, Flaten Art Museum, Saint Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota • The Big Muddy, Quigley Gallery, Clark College, Dubuque, Iowa • 2006: Materials: Hard and Soft, Greater Denton Arts Council, Denton, Texas • Good Bird/Bad Bird, Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, Oregon • 2005: Red Heat, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma • The Art of Fine Craft, Elder Gallery, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln, Nebraska

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 2015: Seeing Red, Red Lodge Clay Center, Red Lodge, Montana • Scratching the Surface, Red Lodge Clay Center, Red Lodge, Montana • Eat, Drink, And… Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota • Objective Clay NCECA Expo Exhibition, Providence, Rhode Island • Ware Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, Pewabic Pottery, Detroit, Michigan • 2014: Crafting the Cocktail, Craft in America, Los Angeles, California • A Feast of Pottery, Saint John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada • Kip O’Krongly Solo Exhibition, 18 Hands Gallery, Houston, Texas • From Away, Dow Studio Gallery, Deer Isle, Maine • Arrowmont Instructor Exhibition, Arrowmont Gallery, Gatlinburg, Tennessee • Northern Clay Center NCECA Expo Exhibition, Milwaukee, Wisconsin • Food: A Sustainable Table, (Curator and Exhibitor), NCECA Selected Exhibition, Milwaukee, Wisconsin • AKAR Yunomi Invitational, Iowa City, Iowa • 2013: Disaster, Relief, Resilience, Crimson Laurel Gallery, Bakersville, North Carolina • 20/20 Vision, Dow Studio, Deer Isle, Maine • AKAR Yunomi Invitational, Iowa City, Iowa • Dallas Pottery Invitational, Craft Guild of Dallas, Dallas, Texas • Anonymous Potter Studio Fellowship Exhibition, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota • 2012: American Pottery Festival, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota • Utilitarian Clay VI Exhibition, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, Tennessee • Layered Meanings Solo Exhibition, Ferrin Gallery, Pittsfield, Massachusetts • Teapots Invitational, Ferrin Gallery, Pittsfield, Massachusetts • Contemporary Landscapes, Artisan Gallery, Paoli, Wisconsin • New Paths: 9 Emerging Ceramic Artists, 18 Hands Gallery, Houston, Texas AWARDS 2014: McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota • 2011: Anonymous Potter

Studio Fellowship, Northern Clay Center • Best in Show, Strictly Functional Pottery National, Market House Craft Center, East Petersburg, Pennsylvania • Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist • 2010: Fogelberg Studio Fellowship, Northern Clay Center • 2009: Juror’s Choice Award, Objects of Virtue, Bedford Gallery at the Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek, California • 2008: First Place, It’s Only Clay, Watermark Art Center, Bemidji, Minnesota

SELECTED AWARDS 2014: McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota • 2007: Artist Initiative Grant, Minnesota State Arts Board • 1999: McKnight Artist Residency for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center • 1998: Jerome Ceramic Artist Project Grant, Northern Clay Center

GALLERY REPRESENTATION 18 Hands Gallery, Houston, Texas • Dow Studio, Deer Isle, Maine • Objective Clay, Online Gallery • Penland Gallery, Penland, North Carolina

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE 2004 – present: Associate Professor of Art, Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota • 2010: Panel Moderator, Exquisite Pots: Six Degrees of Collaboration, NCECA Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • 2010: Organizer, Artists Invite Artists, Watershed Center for the Ceramics Arts, Newcastle, Maine • 2009: Demonstrator, California Conference for the Advancement of Ceramic Art, John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, California • 2007: Panelist, Ceramic Centers, International Ceramics Festival, Aberystwyth, Wales, United Kingdom • 2001–2004: Full-time, visiting assistant professor, Hamline University, Saint Paul, Minnesota

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE 2015: Instructor, “Exploration Earthenware,” workshop at Penland School of Arts and Crafts, Penland, North Carolina • Resident, Arrowmont Surface Forum, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, Tennessee • 2014: Instructor, “Earthenware: Slab to Surface,” workshop at 18 Hands, Houston, Texas • Instructor, “Exploration Earthenware: Function, Form, Surface,” workshop at Arrowmont School of Crafts, Gatlinburg, Tennessee • 2012: Presenter, “Utilitarian Clay VI: Celebrate the Object Symposium,” Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, Tennessee

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claudia alvarez

Sanam emami

New York, New York Born: 1969, Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico

Fort Collins, Colorado Born: 1971, Tehran, Iran

EDUCATION 2003: MFA, California College of Arts, San Francisco, California 1999: BA, University of California, Davis, California

EDUCATION 2002: MFA, New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University, Alfred, New York 1996–1997: Post-Baccalaureate Program, Ceramics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 1993: BA, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2014: Claudia Alvarez, Acercate, CENART, Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico City, Mexico • 2012: Girls with Guns, Scott White Contemporary Art, San Diego, California • History of Immigration, Metropolitan Community College, Omaha, Nebraska • 2011: Close Your Eyes, White Space, The Mordes Collection, West Palm Beach, Florida (2 person show) • American Heroes, Blue Leaf Gallery, Dublin, Ireland • Claudia Alvarez, Falling, Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearney, Nebraska • 2009: Corn Eaters, RNG Gallery, Omaha, Nebraska • Dirty Water, Tugboat Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska • Quemando Recuerdos, Da Burn Gallery, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico • 2008: La Tormenta, La Clinica Arte Contemporaneo, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico • El Silencio Del Agua, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Ateneo de Yucatan, Merida, Mexico SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2015: New Ways of Seeing: Beyond Culture, Dorsky Gallery, Long Island City, New York • 2014: Migrantes: Claudia Alvarez,

Six McKnight Artists

Jose Bedia, Ilya y Emilia Kabakov, Nina Menocal, Mexico City, Mexico • ENOUGH Violence: Artists Speak Out, Ohio Craft Museum, Columbus, Ohio • 2013: Its Surreal Thing: The Temptation of Objects, Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, Nebraska • Enough Violence: Artists Speak Out, Society for Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • The Figure, Keramik Museum, Westerwald, Höhr-Grenzhausen, Germany • Stump, Hunter College Project Space, New York, New York • 2012: Separation Anxiety, Pelham Art Center, Pelham, New York • So Moving, Saint Joseph’s College, Brooklyn, New York • Domestic Disobedience, San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery, San Diego, California • 2010: Better Half, Better Twelfth: Women Artists in the Collection, Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, Nebraska • Provisions, Nathan Cummings Foundation, New York, New York • Separation Anxiety, Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art, Chaffey College, Rancho Cucamonga, California • Vida Breve, National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, Illinois SELECTED AWARDS AND RESIDENCIES 2014: Art Matters Foundation, New York, New York • McKnight Artist Residency for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota • Artist in Residence, SOMA, Mexico City, Mexico • 2011: Artist in Residence, Art Students League of New York, New York • 2005: Artist in Residence, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska • 2002: Artist in Residence, FUTUR, Rapperswil, Switzerland MUSEUM COLLECTIONS National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, Illinois • Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, Nebraska • Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Ateneo de Yucatan, Merida, Mexico • El Museo Latino, Omaha, Nebraska

Northern Clay Center

GALLERY REPRESENTATION Galeria Omar Alonso, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 2015: Ceramic Color: The Endless Pursuit, Carbondale Clay Center, Carbondale, Colorado • An Architecture of Touch: Del Harrow,

Andy Brayman, and Sanam Emami, Haw Contemporary, Kansas City, Missouri • Yunomi Invitational, Akar Gallery, Iowa City, Iowa • 2014: Pour, The Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art, Alfred University, Alfred, New York • Lineage: The Art of Mentorship, Curated by Gail Kendall, Clay Art Center, Port Chester, New York • Matthew Metz, Linda Sikora, and Sanam Emami, The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Sanam Emami: New Work, Solo Exhibition, Crimson Laurel Gallery, Bakersville, North Carolina • 2013: Clay Prints: Image, Surface and Narrative in Contemporary Ceramics, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, Indiana • The Dinnerware Museum: Three Courses, Ann Arbor, Michigan • The Feast: Art for the Table, Harvey Meadows Gallery, Aspen, Colorado • Garnitures and Tableware, Solo Exhibition, Esther and John Clay Fine Arts Gallery, Laramie County Community College, Cheyenne, Wyoming • Art-Stream Nomadic Gallery, NCECA, Houston, Texas • 2012: Our Cups Runneth Over: Functional & Sculptural Ceramic Cups, The Society of Arts & Crafts, Boston, Massachusetts • Sources and Influences: Clay Artists, Mentors and Students, Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, West Virginia • 2011: Year of Turkey, Ceramics Material and Material Culture, Flushing Town Hall, Flushing, New York • Arabesques, Belger Art Center, Kansas City, Missouri • Islamic Influences, 2-person Exhibition, Crossroads Gallery, St. Petersburg College, Clearwater, Florida • 2010: American Pottery Festival, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota • Decalcomania, Santa Fe Clay, Santa Fe, New Mexico • Conversations, Coincidences and Motivations, The Snyderman-Works Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania SELECTED AWARDS 2015: Lilla B. Morgan Grant Recipient, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado • 2013: McKnight Artist Residency for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota • 2004: Purchase Award, ANEW Financial Services, Debbie Denning, Feats of Clay XVII, Lincoln Arts, Lincoln, California • 2003: Grant Recipient for the Crafts, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, New York, New York • 2001: Lancaster Designer Craftsmen Award for Second Place, 9th Annual Strictly Functional

Pottery National, Market House Craft Center, East Petersburg, Pennsylvania GALLERY REPRESENTATION Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota SELECTED COLLECTIONS Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art, Alfred, New York • The Dinnerware Museum, Ann Arbor, Michigan • Robert Pfannebecker, Lancaster, Pennsylvania • David and Louise Rosenfield, Dallas, Texas PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE 2013–Present: Associate Professor, Department of Art and Art History, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado • 2013: Instructor, Summer Workshop, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine • 2012: Visiting Artist, Invited Lecture, Central Academy of Fine Art, City Design School, Beijing, China • 2007–2013: Assistant Professor, Department of Art and Art History, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado • 2007: Symposia, Invited Lecture & Demonstration, National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, Louisville, Kentucky • 1998–2000: Resident Artist, Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, Helena, Montana

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sarah heimann

JAE won lee

Lebanon, New Hampshire Born: 1966, Pittsfield, Massachusetts

East Lansing, Michigan

EDUCATION 1997: MFA, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 1989–1990: Core Student, Penland School of Crafts, Penland, North Carolina 1988: BA, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania

EDUCATION 1995: MFA, New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Alfred, New York 1991: BFA, California State University, Long Beach, California

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 2015: Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail, Arts and Industry Building, Florence, Massachusetts • 82 nd Annual Craftsmen’s Fair, League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, Newbury, New Hampshire • 2014: National Teapot Show IX, Cedar Creek Gallery, Creedmoor, North Carolina • 81st Annual Craftsmen’s Fair, League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, Newbury, New Hampshire • The Teapot Redefined, Mobilia Gallery, Cambridge, Massachusetts • 2013: CraftBoston Holiday, Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston, Massachusetts • 80 th Annual Craftsmen’s Fair, League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, Newbury, New Hampshire • 28 th Annual Benefit Auction, Penland, North Carolina • 2012: Ceramics Biennial 2012, New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire • CraftBoston Holiday, Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston, Massachusetts • Paper Plate, Plastic Plate, White Plate, Artist Plate, Penland School of Crafts, Penland, North Carolina • Salad Days, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Newcastle, Maine • Watershed 25 th Anniversary Silent Auction, Watershed, Newcastle, Maine • 27 th Annual Benefit Auction, Penland, North Carolina • 2011: Gifted, The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • 26 th Annual Benefit Auction, Penland School of Crafts, Penland, North Carolina • Penland Show, 18 Hands Gallery, Houston, Texas • National Teapot Show VII , Cedar Creek Gallery, Creedmoor, North Carolina • 2010: La Mesa, Santa Fe Clay, Santa Fe, NM • Surface Embraces Shape, George Mason Gallery, Nobleboro, Maine • A Frosty Journey: A Look at Past Watershed Winter Resident Potters, The Worcester Center for Crafts, Worcester, Massachusetts

2013: Threshold/Blue Mountain, Bonovitz Space, The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • In Search of Streams and Mountains, Thomas Hunter Project Space, Hunter College of New York, New York • 2012: Somewhere, G2 Gallery, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington • 2010: Beyond Mountains, C2 Gallery PWS, Jingdezhen, China • 2009: Internal Distance(s), Oakland University Art Gallery, Rochester, Michigan • 2008: In the Shadow of the Moon, Paul Kotula Projects, Detroit, Michigan • 2007: Of a Moon Garden, Korean Craft Promotion Foundation, Seoul, Korea • 2006: Of a Moon Garden, Harrison Gallery,

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Of a Moon Garden, Chung Nam National University Museum, Daejeon, Korea • 2005: A Homing Instinct, Tomado Gallery, Seoul, Korea • 2004: Accrescere, Revolution Gallery, Detroit, Michigan SELECTED 2-PERSON EXHIBITIONS 2011: Another Genealogy, Vit Gallery, Seoul, Korea • 2009: re-Collection II, two-person on-site installation, Pottery Workshop Gallery, Shanghai, China • 2008: Re-Collection, NCECA two-person Collaboration, Project Gallery, Standard Ceramics Inc., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • 2005: Yih-Wen Kuo & Jae Won Lee, Lillstreet Gallery, Chicago, Illinois SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2012: To Wander Out of Place: Artists and Asia, NCECA Concurrent Exhibition, Seattle, Washington • Lincoln Gallery Series,

Northern Clay Center

Six McKnight Artists

AWARDS 2014: McKnight Artist Residency for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota • 2005: Award of Excellence, National Teapot Show IV, Cedar Creek Gallery, Creedmoor, North Carolina • 2000: McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center • 1999: Barry Thurman Endowed Residency, Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, Newcastle, Maine • 1998: Jerome Ceramic Artist Project Grant, Northern Clay Center

Detroit Auto Show, Cobo Center, Michigan • SEVEN (re)Thinking Ceramics, Schneider Museum of Art, Southern Oregon University, Ashley, Oregon • 2011: Jardin Zen, Espace Saint-Francois, Lausanne, Switzerland • Sculpture Today: New Forces, New Forms, Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan • 2010: Ten Years of Contemporary Art at the Oakland University Art Gallery: Directors’ Selection, Rochester, Michigan • Earth Matters, NCECA 2010, Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Of This Century, NCECA Concurrent Exhibition, The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Visual Translation, NCECA Concurrent Exhibition, Salt Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

PUBLICATIONS 2013: 500 Teapots, Lawton, James, ed., (Lark Books, New York, New York): 222. • 2010: Surfaces, Glazes, & Firing, Pozo, Angelica,

SELECTED AWARDS

(Lark Books, New York, New York): 52. • 500 Vases, Hemachandra, Ray, sr. ed., (Lark Books, New York, New York): 35, 139, 321.

• 2007: Clay Times, “Botanical,” (September/October): 21. • 2004: Studio Potter, “Starting Out,” (December, 33/1): 12–13.

• 500 Cups, Tourtillott, Suzanne J. E., ed., (Lark Books, New York, New York): 188. • 2002: Ceramics Review, “Pots Presented,” Gallery, (March/April, Issue #194): 16. • 2001: Northern Clay Center, “Sarah Heimann,” Six McKnight Artists (catalogue) • 2000: Ceramics Monthly, “Sarah Heimann,” Up Front, (September): 24–25. • 1999: Minnesota Monthly, “Art in Releaf,” Showcase, (January): 94. • Contact: Ceramics A Canadian Perspective, “Jerome Artists,” News/Views, (Spring, no.116): 46–48. • Ceramics Monthly, “Minnesota Annual,” Up Front, (September): 12.

2015: Fulbright Research Scholarship, Jingdezhen, China • McKnight Artist Residency for Ceramic Artists, Northern Clay Center,

Minneapolis, Minnesota COLLECTIONS Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Art, Helena, Montana • Danmarks Keramikmuseum, Museum of International Ceramics Art, Skaelskor, Denmark • Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan • Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, California • State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Honolulu, Hawaii

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

2012–present: Assistant Instructor, Davidson Ceramic Studio, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire • 2002–2014: Instructor, New Hampshire League of Craftsmen, Hanover, New Hampshire • 2008: Visiting Artist and Instructor, New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire • 1998–2000: Adjunct Assistant Professor of Ceramics, Hamline University, Saint Paul, Minnesota • 1992–94: Artist-in-Residence, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Newcastle, Maine

2004–Present: Professor, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan • 2012: Visiting Artist, Tainan National University of the Arts, Tainan, Taiwan • 2010: Visiting Scholar, Beijing University, Guweihui, Beijing, China • 2006: Visiting Professor, Chung Nam National University, Daejeon, Korea • 2003–2004: Assistant Professor, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey • 2000: Visiting Professor/Artist, Camberwell College of Arts, The London Institute, London, England, United Kingdom

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The mcknight foundation

1997 F Linda Christianson F Matthew Metz R Marina Kuchinski R George Pearlman

Arts Program Goal

1998 F Judith Meyers Altobell F Jeffrey Oestreich R Andrea Leila Denecke R Eiko Kishi R Deborah Sigel

Program Strategies

We fund organizations that are mission-driven to support working artists, with capacity and systems in place to develop and share their work.

We support select programs and projects to fuel exceptional and diverse artistic practice.

We leverage local and national collaborations, knowledge, and policies that maximize the value of artists' work in their communities.

Six McKnight Artists

F Fellowship Recipient R Residency Recipient

The McKnight Foundation, a Minnesota-based family foundation, seeks to improve the quality of life for present and future generations. Through grantmaking, collaboration, and strategic policy reform, we use our resources to attend, unite, and empower those we serve.

Minnesota thrives when its artists thrive. The McKnight Foundation supports working artists to create and contribute to vibrant communities.

Northern Clay Center

PAST RECIPIENTS

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

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

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

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 Arcˇikauskas 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 Joseph Pintz R Amy Santoferrarro R Andy Shaw

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

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

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northern clay center

Northern Clay Center’s mission is the advancement of the ceramic arts. Its goals are to promote excellence in the work of clay artists, to provide educational opportunities for artists and the community, and to encourage the public’s appreciation and understanding of the ceramic arts.

Northern Clay Center

Six McKnight Artists

Staff Sarah Millfelt, Director Michael Arnold, Exhibitions Manager Dustin Yager, Head of Education and Artist Services Programs Board of Directors Lynne Alpert Bryan Anderson Nan Arundel Mary K. Baumann Craig Bishop, Chair Heather Nameth Bren Robert Briscoe Phil Burke Linda Coffey Debra Cohen Nancy Hanily-Dolan Bonita Hill Sally Wheaton Hushcha Christopher Jozwiak Mark Lellman, Vice Chair Brad Meier Alan Naylor Rick Scott, Secretary and Treasurer T Cody Turnquist Ellen Watters, Immediate Past Chair

Honorary Directors Kay Erickson Warren MacKenzie Legacy Directors Andy Boss Joan Mondale

Director Emerita Emily Galusha

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs of ceramics are by Peter Lee Design by vetodesign.com Portraits by Joseph D.R. OLeary

2424 Franklin Avenue East Minneapolis, Minnesota 55406 612.339.8007 www.northernclaycenter.org