Current Artist

Eliza Weber
2024 Taunt Fellow
Great Falls, Montana

Eliza Weber’s work explores interconnectedness and materiality in a variety of mediums including ceramic, paper, found objects, and textiles. Through considerations of duality and context, with explorations in emotion and play, individual pieces and installations become abstracted reflections of the world around us. Influenced by the curation of domestic places and the management of environments, interior and exterior overlap, acknowledging the ways in which objects, the self, and others occupy space.

Eliza Weber completed her MFA at Arizona State University and BFA at The University of Montana. She has completed short residencies at Medalta in Alberta, Canada and The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China. Eliza was also an Artist in Residence at Pottery Northwest in Seattle, Washington. Returning home, she was Director of Education at the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art in Great Falls, Montana. She served on the boards of NCECA and the Ceramics Research Center, presently serving on the NCECA Green Task Force. Eliza is currently a Long-Term Resident at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana.

Carey Nathanson
2024 Bray Fellow
Wilmington, North Carolina

Carey Nathanson’s work is primarily hand-built cups, platters, bottles and other vessels made with the intention of being fired in the wood kiln. The goal is to fire 5 to 7 days to saturate the work with fly ash, encourage local reduction effects by building large ember beds and create dramatic surfaces with big color palettes. With each wood firing, the surfaces of the pieces record a snapshot in time of unique conditions and are affected by the place, materials and individual collaborators within that universe.

Nathanson started working with clay during his high school years in his home town of Wilmington, North Carolina. In 2018 and 2019 he studied wood firing as a studio assistant under John Dix in Kobe, Japan and Nick Schwartz in Comptche, California. He has completed residencies at the American Museum of Ceramic Art, Mendocino Art Center, STARworks, Red Lodge Clay Center and Cider Creek Collective.

Lexus Giles
2024 Lilian Fellow
Jackson, Mississippi

Lexus Giles’ work reflects her identity as a Black woman raised in the South, engaging deeply with the Black Diaspora. As a multimedia artist specializing in ceramics, she explores how history manifests in our present lives. Lexus addresses themes of structure, erasure, and the systems affecting her community while celebrating Blackness. She sees herself as a record-keeper, using materials like clay, wood, and found objects in connection to the land and its people that occupy the land. Her artistic process involves hand-building and mold-pressing techniques, emphasizing the human touch and the multi-functionality of objects. Through carving and mark-making, she evokes the complexities of Black identity, the legacies of Atlantic trans/slavery, and African origins, creating a dialogue between past, present, and future.

Giles received her BFA from Mississippi State University in 2019. This spring she earned her MFA in ceramics from the University of Florida. Giles’ work has been exhibited in Mississippi, Florida, Iowa, Chicago, and New York. She received the 2021-2022 University of Florida Grinter Fellowship and the Sam B. Hamilton Noxubee Refuge Fellowship in 2019.

Dante Gambardella
2024 Quigley-Hiltner Fellow
Bozeman, Montana

Dante Gambardella finds great value in learning from the traditions of different cultures, an interest that has led him to study ceramics in Brazil, Italy, and Japan. To him the world of clay is about engaging with his community, contributing to a network of shared knowledge, and challenging himself as an artist.

Gambardella grew up in the Bay Area and found ceramics when he moved to Bozeman, MT. While studying at Montana State University he became very interested in wood firing and using local materials — techniques ceramicists have been using for thousands of years.