On view: March 31 – April 26, 2026
Sales Gallery & Online
Yael Braha, Christina Margarita Erives, Paul Eshelman, Mike Norman, Joe Singewald, Sandra Torres
Jewelry Spotlight: Kristen Cliffel
April Featured Artists: Yael Braha, Christina Margarita Erives, Paul Eshelman, Mike Norman, Joe Singewald, Sandra Torres
Jewelry Spotlight: Kristen Cliffel
About the Artists
Yael Braha
Seagrove, North Carolina
Born in Italy and a daughter of refugees from North Africa, Braha was raised in Italy in a visually abundant environment that shaped her love for composition, aesthetics, and visual arts. She received a BA in graphic design from the European Institute of Design (Rome), and a MFA in cinema from San Francisco State University. Her past multidisciplinary background informs her recent focus on ceramic work. Braha creates functional ceramics with bold and stylized surface patterns which feature tessellations, optical, and geometrical illusions. The way that patterns are framed within a form, where they are cut, assembled, and overlapped, alludes to the process of film editing. In 2021, she was awarded the Multicultural Fellowship Award from the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA).
Christina Margarita Erives
Los Angeles, California
Christina Margarita Erives is a Mexican-American artist from Los Angeles, California. Erives received her MFA from Pennsylvania State University and has worked as an instructor and resident artist at various studios and universities across the United States. Her ceramic work is highly stylized, sometimes sculptural, sometimes functional, and always colorful. Informed by her heritage and using a diverse range of imagery, Erives investigates the stories we create and tell about food and contemporary womanhood. She cherishes the beautiful power of ceramic artifacts as keepers of ancient knowledge and cultures. Through her clay objects, Erives immortalizes her own experiences, aspiring that they’ll one day offer the future a tangible glimpse of our present.
Paul Eshelman
Elizabeth, Illinois
Paul Eshelman received a BA in art from the University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, WA) and an MFA in ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design (Providence). Eshelman’s functional pottery is his cultural attempt, through the material of clay, to bring order and human dignity to the merely physical act of consuming food and drink. “As my pots are used daily, I hope that they carry measures of quiet and nourishment for body and spirit. I imagine people at a dinner table, workspace, or office cubicle where food and drink are served and humanized by hospitable, well-ordered pots.” Since 1988, Eshelman and his wife, Laurel, have been living and making pottery in Elizabeth, Illinois, a small farming community in northwestern Illinois.
Mike Norman
Golden Valley, Minnesota
Perhaps one might learn about me–and consequently my work—by reading this poem by Bill Holm:
Advice
Someone dancing inside us / has learned only a few steps:
the “Do-Your-Work” in 4/4 time,
the “What-Do-You-Expect” Waltz.
He hasn’t noticed yet the woman / standing away from the lamp.
the one with the black eyes / who knows the rumba.
and strange steps in jumpy rhythms,
from the mountains of Bulgaria.
If they dance together / something unexpected will happen;
if they don’t, the next world / will be a lot like this one.
Joe Singewald
Cold Spring, Minnesota
Joe Singewald grew up in northeast Iowa where he discovered handmade pottery. He first studied ceramics at the University of Wisconsin–Rivers Falls and received his MFA from Utah State University (Logan). His utilitarian vessels have been in multiple exhibitions throughout the country, including NCECA Clay National, Strictly Functional Pottery National, and Utilitarian Clay—Celebrate the Object. Singewald was a 2015 Jerome Ceramic Artist Project Grant recipient. Since 2014, he has been the art department studio technician for the College of Saint Benedict and St. John’s University (St. Joseph, MN). He lives and maintains a studio in Cold Spring, MN with his wife and three daughters.
Sandra Torres
Ojai, California
Originally trained as an architect, Sandra Torres eventually transferred her creative outlet into clay work. Her ceramic education started under the wing of a master ceramist at an experimental studio in Mexico City. In southern California, she continued her learning in three different studios. Torres spent time in China and Mexico to research traditional clay technique. An apprenticeship at Studio Pieter Stockmans (Genk, Belgium) had a great impact on her work and later directed her to be an artist in residence at the International Ceramics Studio (Kecskemet, Hungary). Torres’ work explores the effect of small but significant variations within repetition of shape, size and patterns. She has chosen a process that allows her to create contrast of color, while maintaining the soft bare feeling and translucency of the porcelain–delicate to the sight, yet strong to the touch.
Kristen Cliffel
Cleveland, Ohio
Kristen Cliffel received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art (OH). In 2015, she was awarded the Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. There was no shortage of artistic imprint during Cliffel’s childhood: art lined the walls of the family home and there was a castle in the basement where live mice ran around in tunnels. Now identifying as both a wife and a mother, Cliffel engages themes of domestic mythology through her ceramic practice. Central to her exploration is the unfolding of intimate relationships and the fear, hope, belonging, security, and connection associated with them. Cliffel uses visual metaphors and unexpected combinations of sculpted objects to dissect these domestic fairytales and expose their prescribed notions of happiness, fulfillment, and success. The bird is a form returned to throughout her body of work, both wearable and sculptural.