The Emerging artist deadline is quickly approaching.  June 15. 2016

APPLY! Why not?!!!

This is going to be a very important year as we embark on the 51st year of NCECA’s history and the beginning of the next 50, with the Portland Conference already taking shape as “Future Flux”.

The process of creating and compiling the application and submitting the materials for this wonderful opportunity is an invaluable experience.  NCECA’s Emerging Artists program recognizes and highlights exceptional early career artists working in clay before a national and international audience during the annual conference.

The intent of the award is to recognize, cultivate and amplify vital, new voices of creative endeavor in ceramics. The award enables these artists to reach broader national and international audiences and impact discourse in the field.

 

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We are excited to announce the jurors………

for NCECA Emerging Artists 2017!!

Kim Dickey

Dickey explores how we construct environments both physically and psychologically while in response to what is natural vs. cultural, interior vs. exterior. The artist’s intensely assembled, glazed terracotta and porcelain works consist of many thousands of unique, yet seemingly uniform elements. Dickey creates reflexive sculptural landscapes that refer to their own construction while beguiling us toward an elaborate reverie. Using gardens as her reference, ordered plots in the natural world, Dickey freely reinterprets decorative ceramic traditions such as bocage: the closely clustered, miniature flowers traditionally used in the Rococo. The effect of such elements viewed in resplendent multiples is further visually amplified by her shifting palette and ignited image-making. Dickey’s theatrical sensibility and historically inspired forms, position her sculpture in the in-between space of presence and absence, the real and the ideal while mirroring past cultures and the natural world.

Artist and Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Kim Dickey received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from Alfred University. She has exhibited her work in museums such as: MASS MoCA (MA), the Everson Museum of Art (NY), the Museum of Arts and Design (NY), and the Contemporary Art Museum, Honolulu (HI), among others.

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Tony Marsh

Long Beach, California-based potter Tony Marsh carefully creates and then deconstructs his ceramic vessels. Whether perforated or covered with protrusions, they are seldom without structural ornament. Early in his career, Marsh apprenticed in Mashiko, Japan with Tatsuzo Shimaoka, a potter known for his revival of ancient ceramic practices. Marsh’s training left him with an appreciation for formal technique and craft tradition, which he translates into his own creations that often resemble cellular structures, organisms, or other biomorphic forms.

“I am not really a potter although I admire them deeply in many ways. I understand pots as occupying what is for me a profound position between nature and culture. What I make is homage to my curiosity about the history of ceramic vessels and what they have always been called on to do: to preserve, to offer, to contain, to commemorate and to beautify.”

Tony Marsh earned a bachelor of fine arts in 1978 from California State University in Long Beach. He later traveled to Mashiko, Japan, to study at Shimaoka Pottery with Tatsuzo Shimaoka, whom Japan named a Living National Treasure in 1996. For three years, from 1978 to 1981, Marsh worked under the direction of Shimaoka as a worker, student, and apprentice. Marsh also worked with Shimaoka’s shokunin, or craftsmen, on a daily basis and was notably influenced by the traditional culture of the community.

Marsh was director of the Mendocino Art Center ceramics program from 1983 to 1985, and then lectured at California State University in Long Beach. He earned a master of fine arts in 1988 from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. In 1989 Marsh accepted a teaching position at California State University in Long Beach and is currently the chair of ceramics, a tenured appointment.

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Jane Shellenbarger

My work with clay is mainly focused on utilitarian objects with deep and varied surface treatments, often including drawings and images that create a dialogue. The work considers the tipping point between elegance and awkwardness, questioning conventional beauty within historical forms, and where the familiar object becomes artifact.  My research embraces multiple histories and the nuanced and complex relationship we have with objects in our everyday lives.

Jane received her B.F.A. degree from the Kansas City Art Institute, and her M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville.  Currently, she is an Assistant Professor at Rochester Institute of Technology in the School for American Crafts.

Jane has exhibited her work in several galleries around the country including; Leslie Ferrin Gallery, Lacoste Gallery, Lill Street, AKAR Gallery, Sante Fe Clay, Philadelphia Clay Studio, Red Lodge Clay Center and Baltimore Clayworks among others. Her work is in the public collections of the Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., The Ohi Museum, Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan, The Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, San Angelo Museum of Fine Art.

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As one of NCECA’s Directors-at-Large, I am charged with the wonderful opportunity to create a jury to select six emerging artists. I always try to balance the jury with sculptors, vessel makers, as I am a utilitarian potter and act as the 3rd juror.  I try to reach out to exceptional artists that have a broad perspective on the field.