Artist Profiles & Interviews
2016 - present
I love learning about your process, considering new intersections, and putting craft in context. I work collaboratively with artists, chatting with them at various stages in their process, curating, and offering studio visits. The finished product has 100% artist approval and has looked like profiles in periodicals, essays to accompany exhibitions, and catalogs of current residents. I'm guilty of snarky coverage early in my career, but these days, I'm an advocate and ally in your artistic process and its interpretation.
Jentel Critic at The Bray
Publication forthcoming by The Bray.
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I spent a month in the summer of 2023 as the Bray Critic at Jentel, where I spent a week at the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts (The Bray) interviewing their Second Year Residents, Executive Director, and administrative staff, followed by a month at the Jentel Artist Residency in Northern Wyoming.
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These essays will be published by The Bray, and you can learn more about Jentel and the residency below.
The Last Supper: Julie Green's Lasting Contribution to Ceramics
Published in Studio Potter, 2022.
"Julie Green painted their final "Last Supper" plate in September 2021, marking the sadder conclusion of a multi-year project of the same name, which the artist had planned to end "when we abolish capital punishment, or at 1000 plates, whichever happens first." The Last Supper is a 1000 piece artwork of cobalt blue mineral paintings by Green. Each individual piece of the collective work depicts the final meal of a death row inmate in the United States, and is currently exhibited at the Bellevue Arts Museum in Washington.
Born in Yokosuka, Japan, in 1961, Green used nonbinary pronouns (they/them) and died of ovarian cancer shortly after completing the 1000th plate in October of 2021. They earned both their BFA and MFA from the University of Kansas and most recently taught at Oregon State University. Primarily a painter, Green’s most lasting impression on the ceramic community takes the unwieldy but incredibly intricate form that reflects on the practice of death row punishment in the United States."
Tools for Uncertain Times
Published in Studio Potter, 2020.
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"The IM-PLE-MENT ARCHIVE, an ongoing collaboration between visual artists ELLEN KLECKNER and LINDA TIEN, defies simple and tidy explanations. It is simultaneously a collection of objects to be used, a collaborative method of making, an interrogation of craft practices and intersections, and an ongoing contemporary artwork.
The Archive began serendipitously in 2017. Kleckner and Tien had met five years earlier at the Appalachian Center for Craft, where Kleckner was finishing her BFA while Tien was there as a resident artist. They became friends by proximity (they shared next-door cabins there), and later began graduate schools at the same time – Kleckner at Ohio University in ceramics, and Tien at Indiana University Bloomington in small metals.
A trip to see a mutual friend’s exhibition in 2016 reunited the two, as Tien was now the curator for the Columbus Museum of Art and Design. Tien visited Kleckner’s studio where she discovered Kleckner was making ceramic spoons, and offered to curate them into an exhibition at the museum.
“It was one of the first times that I gave my work to someone without controlling the curation or exhibition,” said Kleckner."
Considering Performance with Habiba El-Sayed
Published in Fusion: A Magazine for Clay and Glass, 2020.
"... As an artist who performs with craft frequently, I ask Habiba how she feels amidst a strong wave of performative craft in the wake of the pandemic. We discuss new performances that are emerging: amateur sewists performing mask-making with images and videos across multiple platforms; virtual workshops on sourdough bread on the rise. Some to share kindness with friends, neighbourhoods and communities; others to make things we thought would be provided for us as members of our public space, the commons. While well-intended, performing labour can have complicated consequences, especially when using craft practices.
What are we saying when we “perform” productivity and labour in a time of crisis? Are we associating moral values with certain kinds of work? Are we romanticising unpaid labour?
[Says Habiba] I’m not surprised it’s mostly women, but it seems like a performance of labour and values … for something we shouldn’t have to be providing [referring to the lack of available personal protective equipment during COVID-19].
These questions are never far removed from craft practices, and will be asked of us, again and again, as we navigate economic hardship and global uncertainty. For perspective, Habiba El-Sayed’s performance work is largely unpaid; requires large amounts of unseen labour in preparation; and cannot be sold as a commodity. In fact, Habiba says that one of the most challenging parts of her work is the aftermath: finding organizations that can accept a raw clay donation, wangling its transport, and cleaning up after herself. And without work or a studio, she says, “I don’t
have the privilege of performing productivity”
at the moment..."
HeavyShine
Robyn LeRoy-Evans and Dianne Lee.
Curator/Essayist for HeavyShine at The Front,
New Orleans, 2019
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"HeavyShine: Reciprocity and Spontaneity with Dianne Lee Robyn Leroy-Evans," published in Fusion: A Magazine for Clay and Glass, 2019.
"... Looking to matrilineal craft traditions, narrative vessels, and personal history, Heavy Shine reflects the rigour and vulnerability of collaborative work. The artists draw from potent craft histories: from the powerful and political Greek amphora to the traditionally “women’s work” of textiles and china painting. Far from mere replication or ironic commentary as a “feminist” response to craft, I argue that Heavy Shine both complicates and works through issues of gendered production and privilege. Heavy Shine relies on the signifiers of marginalized, feminine labour like ceramic glazing, textiles, and the human form; but Dianne and Robyn remix and complicate these signifiers by looking to one another, rather than the larger discourse. As two, ablebodied, cisgender white women, Dianne and Robyn examine their specific circumstance, rather than the universal, interrogating their positionality within craft with one another and within an established friendship.
Each piece in Heavy Shine is self-reflexive, refers back to its own making, objecthood, and authorship. In complicating their relationships to material and to one another, Lee and LeRoy-Evans seek to learn and unlearn in their making, to question the marginalization of their work in craft, and to update and change with time."
Other Publications
2016-2020
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“Looking Into the Empty Vessel,” Studio Potter, 2020. Contributor.
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“In Absentia: The Missing Makers of Canadian Cannabis,”
Fusion: A Magazine for Clay and Glass, 2019.
“At the Border,” Studio Magazine, 2019.
“I’m Done Defining Craft,” Studio Magazine, 2018.
McKnight Resident Exhibition Catalogue, Northern Clay Center, 2018-2019.
“Rehashing Modernism: Pitfalls of Popular Pottery,” Ostracon by CFile, 2016.
“Miriam Griffin’s “Vermin” Will Have You Celebrating the
Scum of the Animal World,” Ceramics Artists Now, 2016.
“Commentary: The Politics of Cute as seen at NCECA 2016,” CFile, 2016.