Lisa Belsky

Each piece begins as hand knit or crocheted fabric. The fabric is manipulated, shaped and then dipped into porcelain slip. During the firing process the original fabric burns away leaving behind a ceramic remnant or record of what was once there. The stitches, now preserved as clay, have become the structure and texture of the new object.

A natural movement occurs during the firing process that can result in collapse, split seams, folding and slumping. I embrace and welcome these changes when they occur and view them as an important part of the work.

Knitting and crocheting was passed down through generations of women in my family and has been an important part of my life since childhood. The act of knitting and crocheting provides me with a strong sense of nostalgia and a connection to family. I view this body of work as a metaphor for embracing change while preserving memories and traditions.

Barry Roal Carlsen

Recent changes have brought an expanded approach and handling of materials to the work. I'm acknowledging my formal training in printmaking and a long career in the graphic arts. Painted works might include oil paint, acrylic paint or encaustic media. Lithographic and other transfer processes often aid in the image creation. The work’s surfaces are built up in a series of applications and removals of the chosen materials. 

Above: Left: Lithography stone with final state image. Right: Studio wall with multiple versions of each print state. 

Below is documentation of the multiple states of the print "Hidden History." Each state notes an intentional and significant change to the print matrix, in this case the lithography stone, resulting in a new version of the image. Barry has created several iterations of the color within each state, resulting in a varied series if pieces based on the gradual evolution of the printed image. 

First State: Hidden History: Person of Interest

Second State: Hidden History: Awakening 

Third State: Hidden History: Revelations

Carol Chase Bjerke

Carol Chase Bjerke, a visual artist and educator who utilized various media, including photography, book arts, collage, and installation, demonstrated that art is deeply intertwined with life’s experiences and serves as a powerful tool for self-expression, communication, healing, and change.  Her work was anchored by film photography, and her love of mountains and rock walls was manifested in her photography and handmade books. She loved experimenting with darkroom processes and made unique limnographs and limnoprints, terms she coined.  We are ever thankful for Carol’s kindness and generosity to everyone who knew her.  She used artwork related to living with cancer for many years to create public awareness.  Her legacy endures through her artwork in numerous public and private collections. 

Craig Clifford

 Ultimately, my finished ceramic pieces are made from the assemblage of hundreds of slip-cast kitsch or low-art memorabilia found in commercially produced molds made for the weekend handy-crafter market.  I am very interested in building a visual density that confuses the eye and detracts from the original intention of the individual objects. I cut, graft, arrange, and rearrange forms that start as one thing and become something quite different by the time I am finished. I will generally work until what I am making is only distantly related to its origins in things that we know. 
I am often attracted to commercial molds with subject matter in one form or another that is trite or sentimental, clichéd, or simply a crass novelty item. I find that there lies the biggest challenge in re-contextualizing all of this common, if not almost irrelevant, information and moving it from recognizable to the sublime.  

Flight of Fancy 

In Plain Site

Roosted

Flow

Disruption

Tim Kowalczyk

I make stuff out of stuff that looks like other stuff.

Pathetic, absurd, antiquated, banal or even garbage are words that best describe the objects I am drawn to. These types of objects hold my attention because of the stories they can tell and what they can mean. Many times I find objects at thrift stores, yard sales or the side of the road. I am collector, picker and poet  that sculpts, forms, designs and constructs sculptures with sense of purpose, priority, and preciousness. I want people to see the beauty and narrative that is held within simple overlooked objects.

Alex Mandli

My current work seeks to perfect the very essence of making ceramics by focusing on just clay, water, and fire. The saggar firing process relies on the skill and experience I have developed over thirty years to create an environment of combustible materials that will use the fire as a painter uses a brush. Unlike raku or glazing, the coloring of a saggar-fired pot occurs from the moment the kiln is lit until the pot has completely cooled.

To accentuate this unique coloring, I use a vocabulary of forms built with a foundation from the traditions of ancient ceramics cultures and then honed with my intuitive understanding of form.

I believe that saggar firing approaches the very heart of ceramics as a medium—the fusion of clay, water, and fire. By eliminating everything that is not these three components, my work unites surface and form.

This video features pots after the firing process, and before the final layers of polish have been added. 

Saggar Process

Preparing the Pots

The white earthenware clay pots thrown on a potter’s wheel are burnished several times while drying to smooth the surface and bring up the finer particles of clay. When the pots are leather hard, 3-5 coats of terra-sigillata are applied, followed by a polishing with a chamois.

Bisque Firing

Bisque firing at a relatively low temperature allows the clay body to absorb the effects of the combustible materials in the saggar firing to follow.

Saggars

Ceramic containers called saggars are handmade from a different type of clay. Each saggar holds an individual pot packed with sawdust, hard woods, and a variety of combustible materials such as paper, straw, dry weeds, grass, iron, and ceramic colorants.

Saggar Firing

With saggars stacked in the kiln, the firing begins with a soft flame for the first hour, gradually increasing the temperature to 1500 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 4-8 hours. At this point, the burners are shut off, the openings are plugged, and the kiln remains undisturbed for 18-20 hours. The burning of the combustible materials traps carbon on the surface of the burnished forms. Hot areas produce a white or gray color and a slow burning fire creates black.

Final Cleaning and Polishing

After the firing, the pots are washed, allowed to dry for a week, and polished. No glaze is applied to the pots.

Pit Firing

Throwing the Pots

Each piece is thrown on the potter’s wheel from white earthenware clay that matures at (cone 04) 2,008 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the piece is leather hard, a polished agate to “rough burnish” the surface of the piece. This mashes down the larger particles of clay, smoothes the surface and brings up the finer particles of clay.

The piece is dried for a few hours and the final burnishing is started. This final burnishing makes the surface extremely smooth and shiny. There is no glaze applied to these pots.

Terra-Sigillata

When the piece is bone dry, three to five coats of terra-sigillata (very fine particles of clay) are sprayed on, and polished with the palm of the hand and a chamois (soft leather). The work is then bisque fired at a relatively low temperature (cone 016) 1,517 degrees Fahrenheit. Bisquing to this temperature gives the work a fair amount of durability. At this point, the pieces are bright white.

Pit Firing

The final step is a firing technique used by many ancient cultures. As they did, the work is loaded into a pit (a 3' x 4' hole in the ground), and fired in combustible materials (fuel). These materials may include burled wood shavings, a variety of sawdust, newspaper, straw, metal shavings, ceramic frits, used steel wool and sandpaper, and manure. The fuel is essentially someone else’s garbage.

The burning of these materials traps carbon on the surface of the burnished forms. Where the fire burns hot, the surface of the form will be gray to white. Where the fire burns slowly, it will be black. The firing time is between 18 to 24 hours. Once cooled, the finished pieces are cleaned and polished three more times.

Lydia Martin

Constantly chasing perfection, I strive to find the balance between complexity and simplicity. Quiet refinement at its core. In the space between my hands, a language is assembled. The language of beauty, of line, of movement, process, and technique. The jewelry created is then held in a state of tension. Individual pieces are made, unmade, and remade to capture the truth of my chosen material, sterling silver. Like the lines in the resulting work, the viewer is left with space to weave a narrative around what we see and feel. In a world of invented languages, these pieces of jewelry act as vessels for self-expression where each wearer becomes a storyteller and every observer a participant.

Rooted in tradition, my jewelry speaks to the intimate and communicative power of jewelry. The body becomes the landscape and location for personal history, the jewelry becomes the history of that landscape.

My jewelry is a record of intentions and consequences, a history of decisions made during the physical act of making. Each piece becomes a quiet investigation into time, material and belief; a tangible catalogue of actions bearing the marks of their making, seams highlighted or hidden in turn by their color and finish. Distortion reveals the limits of materiality, while skillful reconstruction seeks to make whole what was once fragmented. This methodical approach allows for new forms to be considered, a systematic approach to capture altered perspectives. Forms become suspended in motion creating new orientations both on and off the body. My jewelry is in a constant state of flux, shifting boundaries physically from my studio to the body. This shift creates a change in the emphasis; the form that was once only suspended in motion is now suspended in wearing.

As a contemporary jeweler and metalsmith, I have been evolving my current body of work since 2017. The jewelry is an investigation into ideas of beauty, materiality, and fragmentary. Manipulating silver into enlarged, exaggerated forms, creates shifting perspectives captured in the act of their reconstruction. Each piece is an embodiment of when skill meets material. Throughout my practice, I pause often while systematically categorizing the choices I have made in previous pieces. Small incremental changes occur allowing an evolution to be constant. It is a slow and iterative process, requiring patience to continue. Jewelry will forever require a methodical practice but it is one in which mistakes are generally concealed. Through the act of reconstruction and finishing, my errors are revealed and contended with. My beginning failures become interchangeable with my future successes, new translations waiting to be uncovered. This process is best depicted in my choice of hollow form construction. When utilizing this technique there is little room for error and even less so when attempting to conceal mistakes during finishing processes. Every alteration introduces a larger possibility of error. It is within those errors that the limits of materiality and distortions are made known. Each “mistake” I make, whether made during sawing and fitting techniques or in the uncovering of the hollow nature of a piece, are moments I chose to highlight.
Through my most recent research and continued evolution, I have begun to incorporate new and digital technologies into my practice in an effort to examine the gap between traditional craftsmanship and modern technology. This includes the incorporation of SLS 3d printed technology and Fusion 360. Through utilizing SLS 3D printing technology, it is possible to create highly detailed and accurate models that would be difficult to achieve by hand alone. Rather than create solely by hand, I first focus on the translation of an original drawing using Fusion 360 into a digital model which is then 3D printed using SLS technology. The resulting model is used as a template for creating handcrafted pieces that closely resemble the original design. As the work becomes more complicated to create technically, I must continue to reevaluate the methods in which I use to create them.

This new research and making process has allowed me to explore the implications of translating an original drawing into a digital model and then handcrafting it into a physical piece. Through this, a fundamental problem of competing interests between physical and digital production has also begun to be considered. While digital technologies can offer unparalleled precision and accuracy, they can also lead to a loss of the human touch that is so highly valued in traditional jewelry making. As a jeweler, my work is built upon those traditional and foundational skills. Through the integration of 3D CAD modeling, I am now able to see the full scope of my work from digital design to the final physical piece. This encourages further exploration into the ways in which digital technology can be used to preserve and innovate upon traditional techniques. I am already beginning to consider other avenues of integration with 3d printed technology. For example, what happens if the work is 3d printed in other materials such as aluminum or bronze? Can the initial model become the finished physical and wearable piece? While I have to yet to uncover the answers, this work while grounded in those foundations begins to address a core question: in my artistic practice, where does the intersection between new and traditional technologies lie?

John S. Miller

Digital Prints: 

In the late 90's I became interested in the idea of making fine art prints using inkjet printers. At the time many museums and artists were abhorred by the computer and computer controlled printer as though this represented a loss of purity in art making. It has always been the case when new technologies are introduced into the art world, a world steeped in tradition, that the new technology is viewed with some suspicion. Lithographs were considered suspect at one time but some of the finest of fine art prints were made by artist's experimenting with the tool.

A major opposition to computer prints is that an image made and completed in one medium could be manufactured as an edition using the computer. So I made myself the rule that I wouldn't reproduce anything made in whole cloth in a different medium. This first series of prints represents images created using computer vector graphics meaning that all forms were created within the computer. This then meets my standard of purity. These images are not prints of paintings or drawings scanned into the computer. They are not reproductions. They are simply prints, not prints of something else.

The second concern relates to a more traditional standard and that is that a fine art print should have a limited number of impressions. Individual printers are honor bound to meet this standard however, so this standard has always been independent of technology. Therefore, this idea is a non-issue as related to computers.

As with most all of my fine art I use subjects that please me but often focus on ideas that are wide ranging. The apparent subject of an image, the visual subject, isn't always what a picture is about. Visual art, like poetry, can appear to say one thing while actually addressing another. It isn't so much what we see, but what we think and feel about what we see that makes art. Believing this, it is then possible to address profound ideas using one's back yard as the vehicle for self expression or the exploration of the many things we think about.

In many of these prints, my focus is on creating imagery that includes the human figure but avoids establishing the figure as the sole subject or even most significant visual element. I wanted the images to be about the entire picture space. When a figure is included in an image, the figure often becomes the focus, the story. There is a visual gravity to the human figure that tends to dominate an image and I wanted to fight this. I wanted space and composition and color to be every bit as important as are the human figures within these images. This is a tough challenge and I've used several different tricks to try to ensure this.

Constructions:

I've been interested in three dimensional work since I was a child. I made some of my own toys and the material most available to me was paper. It seems natural to me to explore constructions using planar material and even when my pieces have volume, they are often made with flat stock.

These pieces present an ongoing challenge to me and I keep working to both better understand my materials and forms, but also the structure and function of the bird parts as they relate to the whole in the living beings themselves. Each of these bird sculptures will change over time as my skills and understanding evolve.

Ann Orlowski

My process begins with a graphite drawing on paper. These drawings enable me to explore compositional ideas, adding and subtracting information until the image is finalized. Once the composition is set and a color palette is determined, I paint the base layer of the painting on a claybord substrate. These first few layers are painted with flashe paint, applying layers until I am satisfied with the atmospheric effect. The drawing is then transferred to a panel using a transfer paper. Once the drawing is in place, I incise the central plot lines of the drawing into the panel with an etching needle or other sharp instrument. This outline acts as the guide for the application of color. The painting process begins by masking off the areas to be painted, followed by the application of layers of translucent casein paint. This step takes time to evolve, as I work intuitively to determine the placement, color, and amount of transparency for each layer. Once the image has taken shape, I will incise the original drawing through the layers of paint to create a crisp line drawing, which solidifies the composition. This methodical approach is influenced by my training as a printmaker, where repetition, layering, and a disciplined process served as foundational elements, and continues to inform my artistic practice. 

Liza Riddle 

Cracked lake beds in arid desert landscapes. The clean geometry of crystals. Waves crashing on the shore, and planets dancing across the night sky—these images from nature linger in my mind. They shape how I see the world and guide how I work with clay. My practice is rooted in the desire to preserve that raw beauty and quiet power, translating it into tangible forms. 

My work ranges from large wall-mounted tiles to closed vessels and geometric forms. I work primarily with porcelain—black or white—and earthenware clays. Through these materials, I aim to evoke a sense of contained energy. The clay bears the marks of natural processes: cracking, splitting, shifting. The surface of the piece may look close to breaking, but the clay is fully vitrified, and remains intact, presenting a delicate balance between fragility and strength. 

My work explores this tension the moment where surface vulnerability meets internal resilience. Through this work, 

I hope to spark reflection and curiosity. To invite people into a deeper awareness of the natural world—its rhythms, forces, and fleeting beauty—and to consider our place within it.

Technique

Each form is hand-built from porcelain or earthenware clay through a two-stage process. I begin by constructing a hollow framework that mirrors the final form. Small holes are drilled into this structure, which is then bisque-fired at a low temperature—just high enough to keep the clay porous, yet strong enough to support a second layer. Once cooled, I apply wet clay to the now bone-dry, fired framework. The thickness of this outer layer varies depending on the size and pattern of cracks I aim to create. Over the course of a week or more, the surface dries slowly. As it shrinks, it cracksa nd fissures, following the contours of the form beneath —marking the passage of time in visible patterns across the surface.

When fully dry, the piece is fired again at a higher temperature to vitrify the clay and permanently fuse the layers. In some pieces, I preserve the natural color of the clay surface. In others, I apply soluble metal salts—such as iron chloride for orange hues or cobalt chloride for blue—like watercolors. These salts soak into the surface and become permanent after the final firing. The effects vary depending on the combination of metal salts, clay bodies, and surface textures. None of the works are glazed; I intentionally leave the surface uncoated to avoid the glass-like finish that glaze produces. The final object holds evidence of each phase—construction, drying, firing, and coloring— revealing a process shaped by natural material behavior and the slow, transformative effects of time.

Andy Rubin

The Shorebirds of North America, featuring the paintings of Robert Verity Clem, serves as the starting point for these quirky paintings by Andy Rubin. The shorebirds are reimagined as feathered tourists on holiday at the coast. Rubin skillfully portrays his subjects as anthropomorphic characters, with pants rolled up, as they wade into the water, climb the cliffside with cameras in hand, or lounge at the seaside café. Painting directly on the found images, he often combines multiple pages, painting in backgrounds to create cohesive compositions. The results are clever scenes that play with our sense of nostalgia and blur the line between humans enjoying their holiday and birds living within their native environments.

Timea Tihanyi

The heavily textured surfaces recall the crisp linen my grandmother carefully washed, starched, and ironed. From one holiday to the next, preserving it for another generation and marking the passage of time with her labor. 

Porcelain, my main medium, recalls these precious fabrics of a long-gone past. Like their linen counterparts, these porcelain vessels hold their shape stubbornly, hiding their fragility. 

For me, the craft heritage of handmaking is as important as the digital technology I utilize for building my objects. Domestic textiles, decorated with traditional cross-stitch embroidery patterns from Central and Eastern Europe, from my native Hungary are my inspirations. A maternal lineage of back-breaking labor performed in textile mills and lace factories, mending, and sewing for hire connects this material domain to the social as I consider personal and community histories, economic and political contexts through the language of these two materials: cloth and clay. 

Being part of the early innovators with ceramic 3d printing, I examine, utilize, and critique the binary world of technology when I place the digital in dialogue with the material. Layering simple geometric motifs found in Hungarian embroidery, I build my surfaces meticulously and patiently in a Computer Aided Design (CAD) program until a more complex and entirely novel pattern emerges. The stiches in the cloth are translated as textures—made up by small bumps and loops in porcelain—extruded by the 3D printer. While made digitally, my work embraces the pottery tradition of the vessel. Surrounding a hollow volume, the walls in ceramics are being shaped by pressure both from the inside and the outside. Similarly, my sculptures are reshaped after the printing with gentle and patient forces during repeated firings. The precision of the digital code meets accidental slippages of the clay, balancing of intention with serendipity, precariousness with strength, and mathematical logic with beauty. 

Link to article in Ceramic Review

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