Sculpture Space NYC Center for Ceramic Arts is pleased to present OUROBOROS, Alfred Ceramics MFA Graduates 2024
Ouroboros
Alfred Ceramics MFA Graduates 2024
May 24th - June 22nd 2024
Opening Reception: May 24th - 6pm-8pm
The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and Sculpture Space NYC-Center for Ceramic Arts once again mark their commitment to feature a new generation of international artists working in ceramics through this annual exhibition, showcasing a diversity of works by recent MFA graduates of the preeminent program at Alfred University representing Taiwan, Korea, Canada, Antigua and the United States. Through this curated exhibition, Sculpture Space NYC – Center for Ceramic Arts wishes to highlight emerging global directions within the ceramics field.
About the artists and their work:
Chelsea McMaster
Bio: Chelsea McMaster (b.1995) is a Ceramic Artist of Caribbean descent. She completed her BA in Art at Millersville University (PA) in 2019 and an MFA in Ceramics from Alfred University (NY) in 2024. In 2023 she was awarded the NCECA Graduate Student Fellowship and the American Ceramic Circle Research grant. Chelsea makes work primarily using coil building and sculpting techniques with low-fire clay and traditional finishes. Her work seeks to find ways to represent her oral culture and traditions through the ceramic process.
Artists Statement: Black material culture is filled with objects whose complex origins reflect the people they are tied to. I make objects that hold the stories, memories and everyday occurrences that are yet to become ritual. Through the language of Black hair, I explore the idea of the braid as an artifact that exists uninhibited by the boundaries of time and space. Contemplating lived experiences in a black body, I hold space for objects forged through a process of communal history making. Using materials and processes in relationship with the artistic traditions of the African diaspora, I communicate the connection between place and identity. I further explore the parallels between the vessel, the body, and women as collectors and keepers of knowledge.
Daeun Lim
Bio: Daeun Lim is a ceramic artist/designer from South Korea whose work explores the boundaries of functionality. She studied at Ewha Woman's University in Seoul, South Korea, before pursuing an MFA at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Her art has been exhibited in Germany, China, South Korea, and the United States. Daeun has participated in residencies in US, Mexico and South Korea. She was also recognized as an emerging artist in Ceramics Monthly in 2021 Through her work, Daeun invites viewers to reconsider the traditional roles of objects and engage with them in new and unexpected ways through the question, “What can objects do?”
Artists Statement: As a maker, I identify as a designer of misfit objects who creates a stage for objects to play new roles, rather than serving the conventional role that it is given or projected with. Therefore my practice is driven by the questions I ask my objects, and further those that my objects asks to its viewers and/or users: How can I blur the concept of practicality through my object creations? What kind of value do people seek when defining usefulness? What social agreement have we come to establish over the idea of usefulness and how can I challenge that?
Joël Brodovsky-Adams
Bio: Joël Brodovsky-Adams is a queer ceramicist originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba. His work consists of wheel-thrown forms with highly patterned and decorated surfaces. Joël took up ceramics in 2013 at a community studio called L’aluminé in Montreal, Quebec where he studied with ceramicists Marko Savard and Jennifer Wicks. He completed a post-bachelors studio certificate at NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. More recently, he completed his MFA in ceramics at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Joël has several exhibition credits throughout Canada and abroad, including a group show at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery in Waterloo, Ontario; a group show at Thrown Contemporary in London, England; a public installation for the Nocturne Festival in Halifax; a solo show at Studio 21 Fine Art in Halifax which represented the culmination of his work from a three month residency at Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Skælskør, Denmark. He was also the third prize recipient in the AX National Emerging Artist Exhibition in Sussex, New Brunswick.
Artists Statement: My work is an exercise in indulgence. It stands in the face of austerity that frames pleasure as a frivolous, valueless pursuit. This work confronts a culture that relentlessly positions labour over life, productivity over pleasure. My studio practice is deeply rooted in process - everything is constructed using the wheel. Process generates a visual vocabulary determined by very specific ways of manipulating material. The works themselves function as furniture: table, lamp, stool. My current research radiates out from a particular family of forms, dictated by a set of anatomical rules. Evoking the body, they are edgeless, closed volumes with two ends that fold in upon themselves. The forms are versatile: they are joints, modules, anchors. Often made up of components, each assemblage depends upon a version of this form. The works possess a certain theatricality, both as animated characters in and of themselves and as invitations to anticipate the happenings that surround them. While much of the work alludes to the domestic or private space, it also references public furnishings and the starkly different rules of engagement that accompany the public context.
Julien Tang :
Bio: Julien Tang is a Taiwanese visual artist who holds a BFA and an MA in Crafts and Design. Focused on figurative sculpture, she infuses 'happenings' into her work through glazing to create scenarios. She has been selected for the 2024 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale, received the Second Award at the 41st Concurs International de Ceràmica de l’Alcora in Spain (2022), the Fifty Award in the 24th International Portrait Competition (2022), and was awarded a scholarship from the American Ceramic Circle.
Artist Statement: My practice mirrors the minimalist approach of slow cinema, embodying the unspoken through figurative sculptures. Inspired by Eastern thought, pop culture, and my Taiwanese heritage, I'm driven by a desire for empathy and understanding. This exploration delves into the complexities of psychology and the socio-political landscape, aiming for a comprehensive insight into humanity. Currently, I am investigating the synergy between sculpture, video, and performance.
Liz Vukelich:
Bio: Liz Vukelich apprenticed with Simon Levin at Mill Creek Pottery, assisted Liz Lurie and Peter Beasecker in Syracuse, NY, and worked at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. She creates ceramic sculpture for ritual, performance, and interaction. Her work has been exhibited locally and nationally.
Artist Statement: Living is supposed to be silly. Awkward. Intimate. Full of as much wonder and joy as we can cram in. Life is at its best when we are present with each other. These works facilitate those moments. To commune with each other.
With you, the participant, these pieces come alive. In the spaces they create, we drink together, reach to touch another’s fingertips, look into each other’s eyes, listen to another’s heartbeat. We pour out offerings to those who have gone. Place the name of someone we love into a wishing well. Witness the planting of tears as seeds.
The work exists beyond the gallery space; take a pair of cups home with you. Add to the stories.
Spencer Cheek:
Bio: Spencer Cheek (b. 1993) is a sculptor originally from Boston, MA. working primarily in ceramics. They hold a Bachelor of Fine Art from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Post-Bachelor’s degree from The University of Colorado Boulder.
Artist Statement: My practice is both a mode of expression and investigation, existing as a way of analyzing our relationship to figurative objects, both publicly and personally, through the ceramic process. The figurine has been under particularly intense scrutiny recently. They represent a form of tangible mass media, communicating and holding so much as cultural products. What do these commercial objects reveal about what we do and don’t value? I have been sculpting loose, large recreations of ceramic figurines in a process which reveals a certain monumentality within these tiny forms.
Emma Kaye :
Bio: Emma Kaye is Ceramic Artist and Educator currently based in the Northeastern United States. She holds a BFA in Art History from Pratt Institute and is currently pursuing an MFA in Ceramic Art at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Emma has completed Post Baccalaureate studies in Ceramics at Syracuse University and has been a sponsored participant at Penland and Arrowmont Schools of Craft. In 2019, Emma was the recipient of Ceramic Monthly's Emerging Artist Award. Emma has taught and ran ceramics classes and workshops for adults and children through non-profits, public schools, and community spaces.
Artist Statement: Both diverse and abstract in meaning— the clay vessel-form serves as a longstanding component to our lifeways– insistent mediator between ourselves and the wider, deeper ground. At the core of my practice, I investigate the interdependence between clay,vessel and body– intimately entangled, responsive entities, serving as vital sites for growth transformation. Attending closely to the slight swell of a plane, the depth of the seams, the pitch of an edge, I build an illusion through the physiology of my forms. Hollow volumes afford a visual illusion of thickness. These volumes may be accessible and hidden, offering points of entry and obscurity, encouraging inquisitive engagement. Curiously familiar, yet defiantly unrecognizable they inhibit prescription. My work imaginatively animates the co-mingling of the seemingly disparate, unseen realms of life and intelligence.
Gabriel Poucher:
Bio: Gabriel John Poucher is a visual artist from northeast Ohio. His current work interrogates the meaning of nature in the anthropocene through a queer approach to ecological thought, and an investigation of ceramic material. He was a 2022 presenter and exhibitor at the Yuma Arts Symposium, and has exhibited sculptural and functional ceramics nationally. He received his BFA in Crafts with a concentration in glass and ceramic from Kent State University in 2017
Artist Statement: How do we reconcile the concept of “nature” with the current ecological state of the world? In 2020, we hit a historic tipping point: for the first time, the anthropogenic mass (the total weight of all manmade objects) outweighed the planetary biomass (the weight of all living things). Where do we locate “nature” in a landscape that is more synthetic than organic? And what will “nature” mean when the natural and the artificial become indistinguishable? My work engages these questions through a queer approach to ecological thought that interrogates the perceived dichotomies of the organic and synthetic, of “nature” and artificiality.
The Master of Fine Arts program in Ceramic Art at the New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University, has a distinguished history as a center of ceramic innovation, research and education. In our state of the art facility, our funded 2-year program is embedded in an intensive learning community where teaching and mentorship meet research through critical making and rigorous critique. Experimental and encompassing curriculum represents all genres that reside in or move through various realms of ceramic practice. Consistently ranked number one by US News and World Report, the MFA degree in Ceramic Art prepares individuals for creative careers in the arts and culture.
Sculpture Space NYC - Center for Ceramic Arts is a ceramic and sculpture center founded in 2013. Sculpture Space NYC's mission is to stimulate creativity, new ideas and collaboration in ceramics-based investigations. Artists, designers, and craftspeople of all backgrounds converge in this center to experiment, learn, make, reflect and grow artistically.
SSNYC-CCA Curatorial Program is dedicated to promoting contemporary visual art focusing on the research and exploration of three-dimensional work with an emphasis towards ceramics. The not-for-profit gallery maintains an ongoing exhibition schedule featuring works of the underrepresented artist community, as well as the work of emerging and established artists.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday: 2pm-8pm (appointment is not required)
info@sculpturespacenyc.com
Location: we are located at 47-21 35th Street, Long Island City NY 11101, near the 33rd Street/ Rawson Street stop on the 7 train.
