Demonstration Title: By Hand: Throwing Large Vases on the Wheel: Wheels of Change

Demonstration Description: Blanding will demonstrate his process for creating large wheel-thrown vases. In addition, he will discuss his non-traditional path into ceramics and his ongoing social advocacy through his small business, Scrap Soils. 

Speaker Bio: Paul Briggs was reared in New York’s Hudson Valley, beginning ceramics in 9th grade. Ceramics was the one place where his attention was not disturbed. His thinking about art objects as material shapes began as an undergraduate at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Briggs has studied and taught education, ceramics, and theology, earning his PhD at Penn State and his MFA at MassArt. He teaches Ceramic Art at Alfred University.

Briggs shares "My interest in clay began as a means to fulfill a class requirement, but the ceramics studio quickly became my sanctuary. It was the place I would go to hide from my other classes and ponder my life and future while elbows deep in mud. In college, I majored in ceramics and minored in entrepreneurship while building my business on the side. I had the opportunity to sell hundreds of pieces internationally and decided to take a real stab at making this a sustainable career after graduation. After graduation I attended a residency in upstate New York to hone my skills, and in 2020 leased a beautiful pottery studio in Berkley, Michigan, and have been happily playing in mud in my very first personal studio ever since!"

He goes on to explain the motivation for his work as follows: "My relationship to creativity is central to my work. Where do I connect to clay and other media? What kind of aptitudes give me access to the energy and curiosity needed to make bodies of inquiries in clay, drawing, fiber, and music? I use pottery as a way to observe the principles of these questions. My sculptural and more conceptual works put these principles to use in more dynamic ways."

Speaker Bio: Shay Church is a studio artist based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Church received an MFA in spatial arts from San Jose State University, was a Joan Mitchell MFA award recipient, a resident at the Archie Bray Ceramic Foundation in Helena, Montana, head of ceramics at Virginia Commonwealth University, and served as adjunct art faculty at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo College, and University of the Arts Philadelphia. His temporary clay installations have included life-size whales and elephants left to fall apart in abandoned buildings, parking lots, outdoor spaces, and galleries such as The Cue Foundation in New York, New York, Foster/White Gallery in Seattle, Washington, and the Ceramic Research Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Shay and his wife, Maura, own Grayling Ceramics, which specializes in making handmade ceramic products for the home and restaurants.

Presentation Title: Installations and Disruptions

Presentation Description: Church will offer a presentation focused on his larger-than-life clay and wood installation work. 

Speaker Bio: Israel Davis is an artist whose work plays between the boundaries of object and image. He has taught numerous workshops and exhibited nationally and internationally. Davis’s work ranges in content from personal narratives, observations, particulars, and fun. He is a professor and head of ceramics at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, Michigan.

Davis has been a clay lover and maker for 50 years, having taught ceramics at Aquinas College for 22 of those years. He has given numerous workshops, sold work small and large, been collected and collected work all over the country and internationally for just as many years, and is fascinated by what will happen next!

Presentation Title: The Ancient Future: Clay and Sound

Presentation Description: Music and clay are two of the most malleable, elastic, enduring, widely utilized, and shared materials. Davis will present his ceramic practice that delves into the making of percussion instruments with clay and rawhides. In addition, he will demonstrate the sounds and shapes that support his connection to past ceramic histories of instrument making and the communities they unite.

Speaker Bio: Jacky Denaway is an instructor of ceramics and M.F.A. candidate at Western Michigan University's Gwen Frostic School of Art in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Prior to joining the Frostic School of Art in 2022, Denaway taught visual arts in public schools for K-12 youth. Her current work focuses on production and reiteration of artifacts of service. Within these artifacts she explores feminine histories and contemporary structures surrounding the concept of motherhood.

Demonstration Title: Technical Jigger / Jollying for Vessel Consistency

Demonstration Description: For potters interested in reproduction, the jigger arm is a wonderful time saving tool. Participants will learn how to create profile forms that can be utilized to make plaster molds. Denaway will then demonstrate the process of plaster mold-making with the jigger arm, and the methods she uses to make bowls and plates from her molds. 

Speaker Bio: Julie Devers is the Chair of the Ceramics Department in the Kirk Newman Art School at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Devers began teaching at the KIA in 2001 and has been responsible for their successful anagama program. Her life as a studio potter has taken her to juried art shows across the Midwest for more than 30 years. Devers’s ceramic work has also been exhibited in many national juried shows. She has her B.F.A. from the University of Notre Dame and received her M.F.A. from the University of Montana.

Presentation Title: Art Education, Community, and Collaboration: The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts

Presentation Description: Devers will provide a lecture on the topic of community and clay at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts’ Kirk Newman Art School. This community-based art center, housed within a prestigious Midwestern museum, offers a wide range of courses, strong student-instructor relationships, and a space for community, friendship, and artistic expression. In addition, Devers will discuss the school’s exceptional anagama kiln, which draws students from near and far. 

Speaker Bio: Heidi Fahrenbacher is an artist and educator from Plainwell, Michigan. She graduated in 2002 with a Bachelor of Arts in fine art and art history from Kalamazoo College. Her work is sold nationwide in galleries and gift shops and has been featured on the Today Show, the Museum of Art and Design, 500 Ceramics Sculptures, and 500 Ceramic Vases. She has written for Pottery Making Illustrated, presented at the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), and Michigan Mud.

Presentation Title: Business Models: The Unconventional

Demonstration Description: Traditionally, the path to becoming a full-time ceramic artist has been likened to chasing rainbows–the closer you get, the more distant you might feel you are. As Fahrenbacher demonstrates her process for producing her wares using screen printing and slip casting, she will also share her journey as a maker and the creation of her small business, Bella Joy Pottery.

Speaker Bio: Nathan Goddard was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has lived all around the country, and has traveled widely throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. He received his BFA in Studio Art and Land Art from the University of New Mexico. It was in the American Southwest that Goddard began to see the greater potential of earth and materials in his paintings and installations. His investigation of alternative materials and ceramics has continued beyond his MFA work at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 2007, the State of Michigan commissioned him to design and develop the Governor’s Award for Arts and Culture. Goddard won first prize in painting at the 2009 Festival for the Arts in Grand Rapids. He has taught numerous ceramic courses and workshops to adults, college students, and youth, and was Adjunct Professor of Studio Art Ceramics at Wofford College, and Lander University in South Carolina. He has served as Programs Coordinator at Red Lodge Clay Center, and worked in Skælskør, Denmark at Guldagergaard as the Kiln Yard Technician in 2015-16. Goddard has made Red Lodge, Montana his new home, where he enjoys mountain skiing, hiking, and land exploring. You can find him conducting workshops, along with exhibiting his work regionally and nationally.

Presentation Title: Painter’s Palette: Mono-Print Transfers on Clay

Demonstration Description: Goddard will demonstrate how to create mono-print transfers and quick draw screen printing using Speedball underglazes. Wheel throwing and altering techniques will also be demonstrated.

Speaker Bio: Benjie Heu was born in Panama and has lived in Hawaii, Alabama, Massachusetts, Ohio, Mississippi, California, and currently resides in Missouri. He enjoys walking his dog, live music, strong espresso, soup dumplings, and top shelf cocktails.

Demonstration Title: The Figure: Hollow Construction

Demonstration Description: Heu will demonstrate how to make a hollow hand-built head, figure, or animal/creature. He’ll also discuss and demonstrate how he uses underglazes to decorate his surfaces. 

Speaker Bio: Lauren Kalman is a visual artist based in Detroit, Michigan, whose practice is rooted in craft, sculpture, video, photography, and performance. Kalman completed her PhD in practice-led research from the School of Art and Design at the Australian National University. She earned an MFA in Art and Technology from the Ohio State University and a BFA with a focus in Metals from Massachusetts College of Art. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Françoise van den Bosch Foundation at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Renwick Gallery at Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Detroit Institute of Art, Museum of Arts and Design, and the Korean Ceramics Foundation. She received the Françoise van den Bosch Award in 2020 for her career’s impact on the jewelry field. In 2022 she received the Raphael Founders Prize in Glass from Contemporary for Craft, and in 2023 she was named a Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellow. She is currently a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Art, Art History, and Design at Wayne State University in Detroit.

Presentation Title: Identity and Performance: Clay Utilized as a Time-Based Material

Presentation Description: During this discussion of artistic practice in ceramics and pottery, Kalman will discuss her multimedia practice focused on performance and identity utilizing ceramics and pottery. Her conceptual work manifests as performance, video, vessels, garments, images, collaborative curatorial projects, and functional objects. The expansive opportunities for ceramic thinking are largely related to the connections between clay and the body. Kalman uses her body in both making and performing, with her body literally embedded in the ceramic object. She will discuss art works that reframe and complicate historic interweavings of craft and the feminine body. 

Demonstration Description: Kaczmarczyk will demonstrate how she incorporates glass on post-fired ceramic pieces. Utilizing 3-D modeled stamps and forms based on original drawings, Kaczmarczyk will begin by creating surface texture on a clay piece. She will then demonstrate how she attaches the glass beads to a finished piece post-firing. A discussion of Kaczmarczyk’s inspirations and ideas can translate to anyone’s body of work. 

Speaker Bio: Susan McHenry is a studio potter, writer, and educator living in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She makes hand built functional red earthenware pots for everyday use, and believes pottery crafted by hand with thoughtfulness and care can elevate simple, everyday moments. Born and raised in upstate New York, Susan received her MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College in 1999. She teaches ceramics at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts in Kalamazoo, Michigan, offers workshops, and is a regular contributor to Ceramics Monthly. Her work is represented in both national and regional galleries, including the Charlie Cummings Gallery in Gainesville, Florida, Plough Gallery in Tifton, Georgia, and Pewabic Pottery in Detroit, Michigan. She is a member of Artaxis, a peer-reviewed network of international contemporary artists in ceramics and sculpture.

Demonstration Title: Creating Personalized Templates for Slab Building

Demonstration Description: Customized templates for soft slab building can be mixed and matched in endless ways, allowing room for play and experimentation, and resulting in more personalized pots. McHenry will demonstrate how to make custom templates that can be used to build either simple forms or more complex stacked and darted pieces. She’ll then construct a form to illustrate how the templates can be modified during the building process. Finishing details like feet, lugs, and handles will also be discussed. Participants will come away from this presentation with inspiration and practical ideas for how to start using templates in their own practice or with students.

Speaker Bio: Kyungmin Park is a South Korean-born ceramic artist. Her work explores themes of introspection, diversity, societal expectations, and illuminating human connections across cultures and languages. After two decades in South Korea, she moved to the United States, seeking greater creative opportunities. Experiencing a new language and culture and the many challenges she faced as an immigrant made her realize that figurative sculpture is more than a personal passion. It is a powerful tool to communicate emotions, experiences, and ideas without the limitations that words and customs can impose.

Kyungmin earned her BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2008 and her MFA in Ceramics from the University of Georgia in 2012. She currently lives and works in Boston, MA, and is an Associate Professor at Endicott College in Beverly, MA. She has taught and conducted over 40 workshops, demonstrations, and lectures at various art institutions. 

Kyungmin was awarded the 2016 Emerging Artist of the Year from the National Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts, the 2015 Emerging Artist Award by Ceramics Monthly Magazine, and the Matsutani (2014-2015) and Windgate (2015-2016) Fellowships while at the Archie Bray Foundation in MT. She has also participated in artist residencies at AIR Vallauris in France (2011 & 2022), Jingdezhen International Studio in Taoxichuan Ceramic Park, China (2017), Red Lodge Clay Center in Montana (2018), and Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts (2016) in Maine.

Park’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, most notably at the Aqua Art Miami Basel, SOFA Chicago, The Clay Studio in Pennsylvania, Scripps College Ceramic Annual, Claremont, California, Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, Arrowmont School of Arts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Fuller Craft Museum in Massachusetts, Museum of Arts and Science in Macon, Georgia, The Museum of Contemporary of Georgia, Canton Museum of Art in Ohio, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art in Auburn, Alabama, along with a multitude of galleries including Abel Contemporary, Abmeyer + Wood, Belger Arts Center, Cerbera, Companion, Duane Reed, Eutectic, Kolva-Sulivan, Lacoste, Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, Lillstreet Art Center, Morean Art Center, and Signature.

Demonstration Description: Park will demonstrate a handbuilding technique for sculpting a human head. After beginning with the slab-building method to construct the basic structure, she will refine the work using coiling, pinching, and carving techniques to shape detailed facial features. Throughout the process, she’ll discuss how figurative sculptures can effectively convey narratives, and the significant role facial expressions play in storytelling through these forms.

Speaker Bio: Amy Santoferraro, born in Akron, Ohio, is the progeny of a carpenter and retailer. She received her M.F.A in Ceramic Art from The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, in Alfred, New York, in 2012. Amy earned her B.A.E (Art Education) and her B.F.A (Ceramics) from The Ohio State University in 2004. While at Ohio State, Santoferraro was an apprentice and Undergraduate Research Scholar. She has been a Summer Resident and Studio Manager at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine, and now serves on their advisory board. Santoferraro was a Resident Artist at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, in Gatlinburg Tennessee, and a four-year Resident Artist at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was awarded a McKnight Residency Grant for Ceramic Artists in a partnership through the McKnight Foundation and The Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Santoferraro was the Ceramics Area Coordinator and an Assistant Professor of Art at Kansas State University. She was Spring 2017 Visiting Instructor in Residence at Oregon College of Arts and Craft in Portland, Oregon and the Program Manager for the MFA Applied Craft and Design (OCAC/PNCA) in Portland, Oregon. Santoferraro is currently the Joan and David Lincoln Visiting Professor at Scripps College and Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California.

Presentation Title: Artist's Path and Process Utilizing Ceramic Materials and Popular Cultural Components

Speaker Bio: Micah Sweezie is a sculptor and ceramic mold maker from Kalamazoo, Michigan. Having grown up in both Vietnam and America, they are shaped and influenced by dichotomous elements of culture and craft. They received their BFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in the spring of 2022.

Presentation Title: Vietnamese Ceramic Craft Culture

Presentation Description: Vietnamese ceramic production has persisted for over a millennium in Southeast Asia, withstanding numerous colonization and occupancies upon the land. Sweezie will provide an in-depth survey of Vietnamese ceramics highlighting history, culture, craft villages, and various production methods from this under-recognized community.

Speaker Bio: Claire Thibodeau is a ceramic artist and designer based in Detroit, Michigan, and currently serves as visiting assistant professor and section lead of ceramics at the College for Creative Studies (CCS). Her work spans both sculptural and functional ceramics, merging form and function through techniques like slip-casting, handbuilding, and wheel throwing. Thibodeau’s practice includes large-scale vessels, intricate cast wall installations, and functional wares. She holds an MFA in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art (2022), where she specialized in sculptural ceramics, and a BFA in Ceramics from Alfred University (2015).

Presentation Title: Intricate Forms and Surface

Demonstration Description: Dive into an array of surface design techniques, concentrating on both wheel-thrown and slip-cast forms. Thibodeau will explore intricate surface treatments, sharing her methods and the diverse materials she employs to develop rich, layered imagery.

Speaker Bio: Blake J. Williams is a ceramic artist and associate professor in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. Williams discovered her love of clay in high school at Michigan's Cranbrook Kingswood, and her passion for teaching at Pottery Northwest in Seattle. She earned her BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and her MFA from Louisiana State University. She has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her pieces are in private collections, including the Michigan State University Spartan Stadium and the Jingdezhen Ceramics Museum. Williams’s work has appeared in publications including American Craft, Ceramics Monthly, and Hyperallergic. Her current conceptual focus examines the relationships between the tangible and intangible aspects of objects and mortality, represented in the fragility and permanence of porcelain bones and flowers.

Presentation Title: Petals of porcelain: Simple mold making for multiples

Demonstration Description: During this demonstration of small-scale mold making, Williams will discuss the process of creating one- and two-part molds, and technical aspects of producing unique floral designs in porcelain.

Speaker Bio: Hedy Yang’s interest in clay began as a means to fulfill a class requirement, but the ceramics studio quickly became her sanctuary. It was the place she would go to hide from her other classes and ponder her life and future while elbows deep in mud. In college, Yang majored in ceramics and minored in entrepreneurship while building her business on the side. She had the opportunity to sell hundreds of pieces internationally and decided to take a real stab at making her art a sustainable career after graduation. Yang was artist-in-residence on a farm in the Adirondack mountains of New York for a year, focusing on making work that she truly enjoyed and felt inspired by. Afterwards, she attended a post-baccalaureate year at Syracuse University where she assisted in teaching, focused on honing her skills, and tried new firing techniques. In 2020, she leased a beautiful pottery studio in Berkley, Michigan, and has been happily playing in mud in her very first personal studio ever since. Yang’s work has been featured at Charlie Cummings Gallery, Guy Hepner Gallery, and Louis Buhl Gallery, among many others.

Demonstration Title: Design in the Clouds: Slip Casting and Production Methods

Demonstration Description: Yang will demonstrate her signature designed cloud vases. In addition to creating and decorating the form, she will discuss how she markets her work.

Speaker Bio: Steven C. Johnson is General Manager at Rovin Ceramics in Ann Arbor. A graduate of CCS/ Tom Phardel, Johnson has been working in clay for almost 20 years, having a dinnerware production company in his early years. With a deep love for clay, either native/raw or refined then bagged, he looks forward to upgrading the performance and material understanding of the clay community at large. In recent years, Johnson has taught workshops in native and raw clays sourced in Michigan through Still Life Studios in Ferndale.

Presentation Description: This 120min lecture and panel will discuss topics that include material changes due to supply chains, clay composition and cost, the difference between foodsafe vs dinnersafe, etc. Johnson will open with the changes in the ceramic raw material market over the past two years (particularly with regard to gerstley borate, custer feldspar, EPK, wollastonite, plaster/gypsym, ferro frit, copper carbonate, and other metal oxides. He will then speak on how Rovin & Motawi have handled the changes in that time, and will share substitutions that can be used and the changing costs associated with them. Finally, Johnson will talk through clay compositions and ratios of clay/ silica/ flux using ceramic material workshop profiles of Rovin clays, concluding with the goals functional ceramic artists should aim for with regard to food safety and dinner safety absorption percentages. Following the presentation, Johnson will be available for 45+ minutes of Q&A from the attendees.