Studio Sessions
Reciprocity & Repair
with Xia Zhang
June 2025
About the Studio Session
During these times of disconnection, isolation, and seemingly taller walls, how do we embrace togetherness? How do we hold space for ourselves, expand our limitations to receive from others, and offer from a place of abundance? In this Studio Session, we’ll join together to consider the idea of reciprocity, and how we can be vessels for holding, receiving, and giving.
Through conversations and supplemental materials on reciprocity, we will experiment with ways of becoming truer to ourselves during times of overstimulation and scarcity. We will look at internal and external ways we can care for ourselves and others. Clay, historically has been the main medium for vessel making, and we will use the material to metaphorically contain ourselves, to make containers, and to pour from within.
About the Lead Artist
Xia Zhang is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator who was born in southern China, grew up in suburban Maryland and came into adulthood in Appalachia. Much of her work has evolved based on her observations and experiences from living in white-dominated communities from coal country to wine country. Repetition and process as a medium are the backbones to her practice that examines interiority in an imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
Since 2012, Xia has exhibited in China, Thailand, and nationally. She was the 2016- 2017 Alice C. Cole Visiting Artist at Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA), a 2017-2018 resident artist at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (Gatlinburg, TN), and was an artist in residence summers 2018 & 2019 at The Growlery (San Francisco, CA). Xia is presently an Assistant Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, OH where she lives and works alongside her animals, plants, and partner.
Logistics
This session is scheduled for Wednesdays June 4, 11, 18, 25 from 10am-noon PST (that’s Los Angeles time).
Registration is $250 and includes all four sessions.
Participants gather via Zoom.