Studio Sessions
Expanded Ceramics?
with Nicole Seisler
July 2024
About the Studio Session
“What exactly do you mean by conceptual ceramics?” a somewhat skeptical friend recently asked me. I mention the phrase often, especially when conveying how my practice differs from that of a more traditional ceramic artist, but when it comes to a straightforward definition, I don’t have a distinct answer. Perhaps I use this term to emphasize what I believe ceramics is not—it does not revolve around utility, it is not purely about form or design, and ceramics certainly (hopefully) is not devoid of content.
Am I staking the claim that Conceptual Ceramics is (like Conceptual Art was in the 60s) a new movement? Is Ceramics in the Expanded Field a more accurate description of this notion? Is the most pertinent label Expanded Ceramics?
In this Studio Session, we consider how our individual practices embody Expanded Ceramics, how definitions of Expanded Ceramics may (or may not) differ globally, and what new vocabulary is needed in order to communicate where ceramics is situated now, and how we envision its trajectory.
About the Lead Artist
Nicole Seisler creates dialogue and perspectives around ceramics that exist in the same conditions as the material: malleable, shifting, adaptable, and enduring; existing within, between, and beyond conventional definitions.
Three interdependent, mutually-reinforcing areas comprise Nicole’s practice: making, educating, and curating. This tripod enables each aspect to support the others, thereby creating a platform for her broader, pluralistic vision for ceramics as a conceptual field.
Nicole received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She has exhibited her work at museums ranging from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Museum of Fine Arts Tallahassee to the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles. Her work was recently featured in a solo exhibition at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, CA, and the two-person exhibition In Hand: Contemporary Material Engagements with the Built World at the Kennedy Museum at Ohio University.
Nicole has taught ceramics for almost fifteen years at as many universities — from SAIC and the University of Washington, to Scripps College and UCLA — and she is currently Assistant Professor and Head of Ceramics at Lewis & Clark College.
As Founder and Director of the contemporary ceramics platform A-B Projects, Nicole has curated forty exhibitions and offers alternative educational programming that reevaluates and redefines the trajectory of contemporary ceramics.
@nicole_seisler
Logistics
This Studio Session took place in July 2024.