State of Ceramics is an ongoing series of discussions centered around evaluating the present and future of the ceramics field. Participants are encouraged to share their unique perspectives and voices during these open and inclusive dialogues. This is an opportunity for us to take responsibility for how our field is shaped.
Each State of Ceramics discussion is led by different ceramic artists and is prompted by specific, unanswered questions they have about the shifting dynamics of contemporary ceramics. These collective conversations are geared towards evaluating the current state of the field, expanding possibilities, and building community as we move through this process.
These online discussions are free and open to the public—the clay community and the clay curious—and are informal, open, and democratic spaces where participants are encouraged to share their unique perspectives and voices. State of Ceramics are not lectures or panel discussions; they are inclusive, video-on events where everyone present is an equal participant in collective criticality and research. This programming is currently globally accessible via Zoom.
All State of Ceramics contribute to an
that can be used in studios, in classrooms, at dinner tables, or anywhere folks enjoy engaging in critical dialogue about clay.
Upcoming Events
Material Culture: Revealing Obfuscated Histories
with Lauren Sandler
Saturday, March 1, 2025
10am - noon PST (that’s Los Angeles time), online.
Clay contains enormous historic, cultural, and economic content and context. What does it mean, as a discipline, to use materials embedded in a colonial, exploitative past, and ongoing practice of extraction and erasure? What do these narratives mean for our future, and what will our future narratives be?
As ceramic artists we are part of larger systems and structures. Multinational mining industries employ oppressive labor conditions and produce toxic environmental impacts. The minerals in our clays and glazes also exist in the batteries that power our cars, our cell phones, GPS navigational devices, surveillance equipment, and in military equipment used to wage wars. How do we reckon with our intimate and dependent connection to extraction and interrupt the subsequent erasure to reveal the complex and layered histories contained in the earth?
Ceramics as material culture tells stories, and through our work with clay, we unearth personal and collective stories. In this conversation, we will consider how clay can reveal, rupture, resist, and reconnect, and how we might disrupt legacies of consumption to reimagine ceramic pedagogy and practice.
Power Dynamics
Ceramics is an inherently communal field. From lifting hundreds of pounds of clay to loading kilns, firing through the night, and commiserating over shards: we need each other. And yet, much of the field continues to perpetuate embedded hierarchical structures.
Why has porcelain been historically assigned more value than terracotta? Who owns the land where our clay is sourced? What does it mean to hold mining rights? When will the history of misogyny in American studio ceramics become mainstream knowledge? How does that history persist today and what are we doing to counter it? Is contemporary ceramics education shifting towards horizontal learning formats or does it adhere to more traditional approaches? Who continues to insist upon gatekeeping? What role does the market play in entrenching such systems? Why are competitive attitudes prevalent between individual artists and what can we do to support each other as a community?
We must examine and take responsibility for how the ceramics field moves into the future amidst these structures. Conversations that tap into contemporary histories, territories, and alternative perspectives will run from Fall 2024 through Summer 2025 as part of the Power Dynamics series of State of Ceramics.
