JANUARY 18 – MARCH 2
Main Gallery
NCC celebrated the achievements of our 2023-24 Early-Career Artist Grant Recipients with this exhibition. Northern Clay Center administers several grant programs designed to support artists in the early stages of their careers through residencies, grants, and education. This exhibition featured the work of E.C. Comstock, Carley Holzem, Z. Cecilia Lu, Harry Malesovas, Ivy Mattson, and Akshar Patel.
Early-Career Artist Residencies
Northern Clay Center’s Early-Career Artist Residency programs—the Anonymous Artist Studio Fellowship, the BIPOC Studio Fellowship, and the Fogelberg Studio Fellowship—are designed to provide emerging ceramic artists an opportunity to be in residence for one year at NCC. Between September 1, 2023 and August 31, 2024, the residents had the opportunity to develop their work while exchanging ideas and knowledge with a dynamic network of ceramic artists. Among national clay art centers, NCC offers an urban experience within a diverse and supportive community.
Anonymous Artist Studio Fellowship
The Anonymous Artist Studio Fellowship was awarded to two early career ceramic artists—E.C. Comstock and Harry Malesovas. The award recognizes artists working in a functional, sculptural, relational, or installation-based manner. Fellows shared a furnished studio space with 24/7 access to NCC’s facilities from September 1, 2023, to August 31, 2024.
BIPOC Studio Fellowship
The BIPOC Studio Fellowship supports one early career ceramic artist of color who is working in a functional, sculptural, relational, or installation-based manner. The 2023 recipient shared a furnished studio space from September 1, 2023 to August 31, 2024 and was provided additional resources to pursue mentorship opportunities including participation in the NCECA conference, support more robust materials and firing use, and to buttress the cost of living.
Fogelberg Studio Fellowship
The Fogelberg Studio Fellowship supported one early career ceramic artist working in a strictly functional manner, who is a Minnesota or Wisconsin resident, and interested in pursuing a career in studio pottery. The 2023 recipient had access to a furnished private studio space from September 1, 2023, to August 31, 2024.
Pottery Museum of Red Wing Award
The Pottery Museum of Red Wing Award is presented to one maker in the local ceramics community as selected through a nominative process. Supporting their development and highlighting their achievements, this award aims to elevate the recognition of each recipient within the ceramics community.
The Pottery Museum of Red Wing Award is made possible by the Red Wing Collectors Society Foundation, and is presented by Northern Clay Center to a deserving individual pursuing a career in pottery, or studying or researching the historical aspects of the pottery industry. The Foundation endeavors to broaden appreciation of pottery—past and present—or the general public and maintains the Red Wing Pottery Museum in Red Wing, Minnesota. Northern Clay Center has awarded this grant on behalf of the Foundation since 2004.
Warren MacKenzie Advancement Award (WMAA)
The WMAA provides an opportunity for students, apprentices, and recent graduates to continue their ceramic research and education for a period of up to twelve consecutive months within the grant year, further expanding their professional development.
One cash award, up to $2,000 each, is made annually for travel, education, or research.
About the Artists
E.C. Comstock, Anonymous Artist Studio Fellowship
E.C. Comstock was raised in Boise, Idaho and attended the University of Utah (Salt Lake City), graduating with an Honors BFA in 2022. Since then, they have lived and worked in Penland, NC; Helena, MT; and currently base their work in Minneapolis at Northern Clay Center as an early career artist in residence. Their work focuses on the intermingling of human and material agencies, the act of making as a research method to enter this intersubjectivity, and a relishing in all of the dusty, perverse, and devotional forms it can take on. They delight in generating a range of static and relational works, reaching across disciplines while perpetually returning to clay as a vital community.
Comstock has exhibited work at the Utah Statewide Annual Exhibition (Rio Gallery, Salt Lake City), the Carbondale Clay Center (CO), Pratt Manhattan Gallery (New York), and performed at Volkspark Rehberge (Berlin). Comstock is constantly seeking new collaborations and reading to expand their practice.
Carley Holzem, Fogelberg Studio Fellowship
Carley Holzem grew up in a small rural town in central Wisconsin called Mosinee. She then went on to get her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin – Stout (Menomonie) with a BFA in ceramics.
Her porcelain body of work is thrown and altered with various attachments. The tripod feet are inspired by neolithic tripod pitchers, conveying an anamorphic quality. Holzem uses a wiggle-wire tool she found in her childhood home to facet each form. The rough mark-making left from faceting becomes softer from stretching the pot from the inside to define the shape. The layered colors from the underglaze wash and glaze emphasize the texture of the surface. She uses cone 10 semitransparent glazes ranging from satins to glossy celadons. She is interested in how the glazes interact with the underglazes as different colors layer and create dimension.
Z. Cecilia Lu, Warren MacKenzie Advancement Award (WMAA)
Z. Cecilia Lu is a Chinese-American artist based in NYC. Her art practice engages multi-generational and familial histories in the context of mourning and non-western healing practices. She works primarily in installations composed of ceramics, video, performance, and printmaking. She received her BFA from Cornell University (Ithaca, NY). She has had solo shows at The Soil Factory (Ithaca, NY) and The Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art (NY); and participated in group shows in the String Room Gallery (Aurora, NY), Community Arts Partnership ArtSpace (Ithaca, NY), Williamsburg Art and Historical Center (Brooklyn, NY), and more. Most recently, she was a ceramics artist-in-residence at Woodstock Byrdcliffe (NY).
Harry Malesovas, Anonymous Artist Studio Fellowship
Harry Malesovas has been making art under the name CHUM for the last seven years. He began finding his style in drawing and painting, making compositions comprising monsters that spawn from his imagination—personifying the many internalized selves we all contain within us. These monsters take on many interpretations but are primarily a means of unpacking the past and present to better understand how the many interactions we have in our lives create our present self.
Malesovas had never used the medium before, but after attending his first ceramics class at the University of North Carolina (Asheville), he found his true calling and decided to leave his history major behind in a pursuit of a BFA with a concentration in ceramics. As he worked towards his BFA he fell in love with the medium and how it allowed him to bring his fantastical creatures to life. To Malesovas, being able to not only bring a creation from his mind to paper, but then bring a creation from paper to physical form is incredibly special.
Ivy Mattson, Pottery Museum of Red Wing Award
Ivy Mattson is a functional ceramicist based in Minneapolis, MN. Her wheel thrown and altered work is highly decorated—projecting joy, wonder, and curiosity—values that are echoed in her teaching practice. Mattson first began working with clay while earning her BA in art education at Concordia College (Moorhead, MN). She was then a ceramic studio artist at the Plains Art Museum (Fargo, ND), while teaching art in Moorhead. Mattson then moved Minneapolis where she completed the Minnesota New Institute for Ceramic Education Program at Northern Clay Center in 2023, while continuing to teach and make. Through reflections of nostalgic memory, Mattson experiences a cathartic process in making and hopes to help those who experience her work recapture and revitalize their present moment in light of their past.
Akshar “Shar” Patel, BIPOC Studio Fellowship
Akshar “Shar” Patel is a ceramic artist based out of Tallahassee (FL). Since graduating in 2020 from Florida State University (Tallahassee), with a background in biology and chemistry, Patel, along with his sister Krishna, have ventured into the world of handbuilding and promoting his work via galleries and art festivals throughout the east coast.
Patel’s pieces consist of thin slabs of porcelain that are textured and then decorated with detailed watercolor-like illustrations. The surfaces are made from intricate slip transferred illustrations that he applies to newsprint and transfers on to the slabs prior to building the forms. Afterwards Patel encloses the form and alters it before applying coats of diluted underglazes and transparent glazes. Many of his designs are inspired by botanically accurate floral motifs, or simple geometric patterns. In addition to his pottery, Shar’s gold and porcelain jewelry collection follows a similar style, utilizing the mishima technique, with inspiration from florals with a heavy emphasis on his exploration into geometric linework. All of which are further hand painted metal lustres and handmade findings.
Related Events
Early Career Artist Grant Recipient Presentations
NCC hosted presentations by these early career artists directly preceding the opening reception for the exhibition.
Free, NCC Library