2020 jurors for NCECA emerging artist: Kevin Snipes, Julia Galloway, Sequoia Miller
“How do you map a field?
The six recipients of NCECA’s 2020 Emerging Artist award embody, in our eyes, the most compelling directions in contemporary studio ceramics. From a pool of sixty-eight applicants, these artists individually represent creative excellence while also suggesting something larger about how we make, look at, and think about ceramics today.
The richness of the visual and material encounter stands at the center of our admiration for this work. Each artist handles the medium with deftness and complexity, extending forward histories of figurative sculpture, abstraction, drawing, migration, and other idioms to open unfamiliar experiences and ways of understanding the world. How does our sense of self get rocked or expanded by experiencing and engaging with these objects? Emerging has at least two meanings in this context: as a career stage, and also as an act of becoming, of seeing and hearing one’s voice enter the world.
Diversity of approach was a second key variable in selecting this year’s artists. Neither all pots, nor installations, nor monochrome palates, but rather a balance ways of thinking about this evidently infinitely variable medium. Visually dissimilar to each other as a group, these artists also grapple with a range of concerns at the forefront today: the flattening of source material into an endless digital stream; the continued relevance of individual touch; the insanely high technical capacities of today’s artists; coming to grips with the destruction of our planet; the foregrounding of questions of identity; the dominant contributions of women artists; the integration of clay with other media; etc. These are just some of the themes at play in these works that we understand to be urgent to makers today.
We the jury, a curator, a studio artist and professor, are also all potters. We were struck by how relatively few pots were in the pool. Why would so few potters apply? What does this suggest about our community and the voices we encourage to participate? Our plea to potters: enter the fray, stand up, add your work to the stream of ideas more emphatically.
These works are of our moment, yet we hope they continue to speak to us well into the future, asking questions and egging us on to a more nuanced understanding of our own multiplicity.”
Sequoia Miller lived and worked as a full-time studio potter before earning an MA in Design History at Bard Graduate Center and a PhD in the History of Art at Yale University. He is currently Chief Curator at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art in Toronto, Canada.
Kevin Snipes is a studio artist who has works primarily in ceramics for more than thirty years. He exhibits both nationally and internationally and has participated in numerous residencies including the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana the Clay Studio in Philadelphia. Concepts of otherness are core to his work.
Julia Galloway is a potter and Professor at the University of Montana. She exhibitions and lectures nationally and internationally and is currently working on a three year project focused on endangered species and how humans are effecting the environment.
Hello, My name is Simon Levin, I am a studio potter living in Illinois, and I am honored to take over the position of NCECA Director At Large for the next three years. I am inheriting a well organized job at a troubling time. I am so thankful to Julia Galloway for creating a thoughtful infrastructure for me to step into, and I am excited to work with these emerging artists. They bring a consistant commitment to ceramics and a wide range of voices to our community. Sequoia, Kevin and Julia did a great job selecting them and it’s going to be really interesting to learn more about each emerging artist as they take over NCECA’s Instragram page in the coming months.
As DAL I am your representative on the board, I thank you for your vote and I look forward to serving you. Please reach out if you have concerns or complements or just want to share an insight.
-Simon Levin
Interesting comment Julia,”We were struck by how relatively few pots were in the pool. Why would so few potters apply?
Well, perhaps you might start out with a definition about what you refer to as pots in relation to potters. Are you referring to potter’s who make usable objects, or simply those who work with clay? What does this suggest about our community? Perhaps in today’s milieu, works in clay, as opposed to functionals objects and vessels, are what may be encouraged, or at least that may be interpreted as being encouraged by younger potters? In what way are functional potter’s encouraged to apply?
Having made pots, and having worked with clay and made ceramics of all kinds, functional and non-functional for more than seven decades, plus taught ceramics at all levels in a liberal arts college for 42 years, I have gotten the impression over the years that younger ceramists seem to travel down a road other than that of making functional pots in order to achieve success in “the art world”. In any event, I don’t see younger potter’s making pots having their work esteemed at a level equal to those making things using clay, as opposed pots and functional objects like I have observed in the past, such as they were years ago (i.e., John Glick, David Shaner, Marie Woo, Otto and Vivika Heino, etc.). Just some thoughts. Thanks for thinking about this. Regards, Roberta
This is a beautiful statement from the jurors, and one that inspires me to consider making an application next year. Thanks. For me these ARE the essential questions! It’s a rare piece of writing that leaves such an impression on me.