June 7 – August 17, 2025
Main Gallery & Galusha Gallery
NCC’s annual Six McKnight Artists exhibition provides the unique opportunity to view works by the 2024 recipients of the McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists, Maggie Jaszczak (Shafer, MN) and Ani Kasten (Shafer, MN), as well as the 2023 recipients of the McKnight Artist Residency for Ceramic Artists: Larry Buller (Lincoln, NE), Karima Duchamp (Mulhouse, France), Joon Hee Kim (Oakville, ON), and Ellen Kleckner (Cedar Rapids, IA). This exhibition, supported by the McKnight Foundation, showcased the success of each artist’s fellowship or residency.
The McKnight Foundation, a Minnesota-based family foundation, advances a more just, creative, and abundant future where people and planet thrive. Established in 1953, the McKnight Foundation is deeply committed to advancing climate solutions in the Midwest; building an equitable and inclusive Minnesota; and supporting the arts and culture in Minnesota, neuroscience, and global food systems.
About the Artists
Larry Buller is a visionary ceramicist with a refined, yet evocative, portfolio of works. Buller’s work aims to undermine societal power structures that disenfranchise the queer community. His work first appears as masterfully delicate ornaments, common in domestic spaces and often used for iconography. Utilizing these decorative Rococo forms, he subverts expectations through his gay male BDSM imagery. Power play is not just a societal implication in his works but is pronounced with the use of Gothic lettering bearing words like “Daddy” and “Master”. Buller’s work puts the “Dom” in domestic. Buller achieved his MFA from the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts in 2017 at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He has been honing his craft in recent years through reputable residencies such as Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass Village, CO), Red Lodge Clay Center (MT), and Zentrum für Keramik (Berlin, Germany). In 2022, his work was featured in the exhibitions Opulence: Performative Wealth and the Failed American Dream at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, NE) and Queer Clay: Making in Between at American Museum of Ceramic Art (Pomona, CA).
In addition to his creative practice, he is involved in his community, lecturing at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln on the foundations of art, and is a promoter and organizer of the yearly Lincoln Clay Tour.
Karima Duchamp is a French artist of Algerian descent whose work is inspired by both intentional and inherent links to her heritage. Duchamp’s ceramic forms are inspired by architecture, featuring fractal shapes on the structures’ facades. She is also a painter and fuses the angular marks on her vessels with flowing, abstract forms of color. Duchamp achieved her MFA with honors from the Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts (Besançon, France) and went on to study ceramics for an additional year at Maison de la Céramique (Mulhouse, France). Duchamp’s work has garnered much attention and, in 2024, was featured in distinguished exhibitions such as the International Competition of Contemporary Ceramics (Castellamonte, Italy), and the International Ceramics Biennial (Manises, Spain). 2025 is a banner year for Duchamp. Her work is featured in a solo exhibition, de terre, de couleurs et de lumière, at Le Lézard Art Center, curated by Catherine Koenig (Colmar, France). She will also enter her work into the Faenza Prize international competition at the International Museum of Ceramics (Italy). Later in the year, she will undertake a residency at the Taoxichuan Ceramic Art Center (Jingdezhen, China).
Maggie Jaszczak is a potter and mixed-media artist originally from Ontario, Canada. Jaszczak sculpts works that hold a quiet beauty–smooth and minimal, yet functional and pastoral. She uses slab, coil, and mold techniques in the foundations of her pieces, employing smoothing approaches and reduction firing to achieve the
serene essense of her artworks. She completed her undergraduate studies at Kootenay School of Arts (Nelson, BC) and at Alberta College of Art + Design (Calgary) and earned her MFA in ceramics from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Jaszczak has participated in ceramic residency programs at the New Taipei Ceramics Museum (Taiwan), the Archie Bray Foundation (Helena, MT), Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass, CO), and Medalta Potteries (Medicine Hat, AB). Her work has been featured in publications such as Ceramics Monthly (2024), Ceramic Arts Network (2020), and American Ceramic Society (2019). After a three-year residency at Penland School of Crafts (NC), she and her husband moved to Minnesota where they work as studio artists.
Ani Kasten is a practiced and prolific ceramist, currently based in the St. Croix River Valley, MN. The foundation of her work is the exploration of clay’s materiality. Attuned to nature and geography, she investigates the meeting places between the marks of her hand and the essence of the material.
In 2024, Kasten participated in her first New York exhibition, Untitled (10 Women Artists), at Dobrinka Salzman Gallery. At 4 for Art (Lenox, MA), she was shown in the exhibition Three Masters in Ceramics in 2019. Kasten’s work is represented in ten galleries coast to coast across the US. Her work has been acquired by eight permanent collections, including prestigious institutions such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Weisman Art Museum, and the Minnesota Museum of American Art. Notably, Kasten’s work has also been collected by high-profile collectors, such as when she was selected by Houseplant US in 2021 as a featured artist on their website, which showcased a commissioned, exclusive object for the collection of Seth Rogen. Kasten now practices from a small farm near Shafer, MN, which includes a barn that holds her studio and showroom. Her property is a host site for the annual St. Croix Valley Pottery Tour where she displays and sells her own work and the works of several other professional artists from around the country. She continually exhibits in galleries and fine craft exhibitions across the country and overseas.
Joon Hee Kim is a Canadian ceramic artist, originally from Seoul, Korea. Kim’s work explores the human body as a vessel and the ceramic tradition of vessel-making. She expresses herself by sculpting her memories and language into her work. She aims to spark meaningful conversations between artist and viewer, as well as between viewers, prompting thought on how each person’s differences do not need to be barriers but rather opportunities for more complex interpersonal understandings and emotions.
Kim holds an advanced diploma in graphic design from George Brown College (Toronto, ON), a diploma in ceramics from Sheridan College (Oakville, ON), and a diploma in patisserie from Le Cordon Bleu (Ottawa, ON). In addition, she earned an MFA from Chelsea College of Arts—University of the Arts London. In 2024, a solo exhibition of Kim’s work, You, Me, Us, was presented at Kouri + Corrao Gallery (Santa Fe, NM). In 2023, Kim was featured in prestigious exhibitions including Between Horizons at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Art Basel Miami. Kim’s artwork has been written about around the globe, including an Artist Feature Article in the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange (Seoul, 2022). Kim continues to be a dedicated, practicing artist, currently based in Oakville, ON.
Ellen Kleckner is a practicing artist and creative educator based in Cedar Rapids, IA. Community and clay combine in Kleckner’s creations. She regularly engages with community members to bring a sense of playfulness and collaboration to the investigation of material in her work. She often combines materials in her pieces, such as adding wood, rope, and bristles to her ceramics. Kleckner earned her BFA in ceramics from Tennessee Technological University at the Appalachian Center for Craft (Smithville) before continuing with a post-baccalaureate in ceramics at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. She ultimately achieved her MFA in ceramics from Ohio University (Athens). Kleckner’s communal art-making approach was highlighted in the exhibition, Creating in Community, at Mount Mercy University (Cedar Rapids, IA) in 2021. Her work has also been shown internationally, including KVALITRA Gallery (Prague, Czech Republic) in 2020. In 2023, she won Best in Show in the Shapes of Influence exhibition in Springfield, Illinois. Kleckner currently leads as the executive director of the Iowa Ceramics Center and Glass Studio (Cedar Rapids). She also has an upcoming visiting artist residency this year at the Archie Bray Foundation (Helena, MT).