I am thrilled to introduce you to this year’s six NCECA Emerging Artists. The artists that submitted work created an incredibly strong pool of talent. The jurors deliberated over their applications. Ultimately, we selected artists that had found a very personal direction with their work and had achieved a technical conceptual voice that has the potential to add a significant contribution to the field. Read on to get acquainted and enjoy the images of their work, then make plans to get to know them better at the conference! You can connect with them:
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• on Wednesday at their individual artist talks in the Emerging Artist are, adjacent to the Gallery Expo,
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• during the Topical Discussion session, “Maintaining an Authentic Voice” on Thursday at 5:15pm in room 555/556
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• on Saturday morning at 9:00am during the Emerging Artists presentation, immediately preceding the Closing Lecture.
My creative process is cultivated through identity exploration and self-discovery. My practice is a combination of risk taking and experimentation. It includes both the artistic process and a constantly shifting personal narrative. In the studio, critical thinking and problem solving are directly linked to the exploration of individuality. Places inhabited, people encountered, and investigations of materials and process influence content, giving form to the concepts of my creative identity.
-David Bogus, www.davidbogus.com, artist talk 12:00-12:20 Wednesday
My current body of work follows an autobiographical inquiry into the formal relationships that personally significant objects and relics undergo when subjected to the downward pull of gravity. Gravity in this context serves as a metaphor for individual responsibility and the stress we encounter in present society.
Beginning with this premise, I embrace the deconstruction of objects familiar to my history as a ceramic artist. Components are created and then bonded through an accumulation of porcelain casting slip, texturing work, underglaze, glaze, and luster applications in multiple firings. The resulting compositions are often combined with mixed media additions to complement conceptual methodology.
-Andrew Casto, www.andrewcasto.com, artist talk 12:20-12:40 Wednesday
As a mold maker, I design and construct a form, make a mold from it, and predictably repeat that form, harnessing the power of the multiple. As a slip caster, I use porcelain to cast these objects and then collaborate with the kiln. As a print maker, I utilize the interior surface of the mold as my block, building layers of information with colored slip. As a story teller, I draw inspiration from my environments and my own personal history. I arrange multiple components into a single piece—placing these objects in space allowing the viewers a moment of pause in the quiet environments that I create or asking them to consider an element in the landscape that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.
-Rachel K. Garceau, rachelkgarceau.com, artist talk 12:40-1:00 Wednesday
My experiences as an indigent minority inform my version of Puerto Rican American history. With my education in critical theory, art education, art history, and studio art I have developed a studio practice that fluidly communicates with diverse audiences. I bring art to those that do not believe they need to see it and engage in deeper ways of knowing, learning and thinking.
-Roberto Lugo, robertolugostudio.wordpress.com, artist talk 4:00-4:20 Wednesday
The process of coiling and pinching clay gives volume and mass to my thoughts. The marks left in the surface are the indelible record of this method. Through its material affordances, porcelain has an uncomplicated way of encoding the marks of my hands, storing and recalling those actions to the world on its surface. Material exploration assists my constructions of perceptions of time, narrative and self through the juxtaposition of the tangible and permanent characteristics of clay with the ephemeral nature of light and shadow. I am concerned with the exploration of humanistic ideas about presence, relationships, memory and mortality
-Kelly O’Briant, www.kellyobriant.com, artist talk 4:20-4:40 Wednesday
I find beauty in my embarrassment.
I welcome the silly.
Through the arrangement of objects I set up a situation or narrative where the viewer can forget about an object’s function and call attention to its possibilities as pure matter, with its own intentions. I want to encourage questions about what is happening with the objects and the narrative being peculiar and unclear welcomes this conversation
