Current Long Term Resident

As an artist, Colby Charpentier formulates, tests, and designs alternative ceramic materials and processes. The resulting works are vessels that showcase these technologies. Recent projects include soft paste porcelain as an approximation of Western replication of Eastern porcelain, plaster-clay mixtures to capture the immediacy of wet plaster, and brick lattice to subvert the visual weight and expectations of brick and ceramic materials.

Colby Charpentier received his BFA in Ceramics and Glass from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2013, and an MFA in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2021. He has worked as a studio assistant to artists Daniel Clayman and Chris Gustin; and completed residencies at Sonoma Ceramics in Sonoma, CA, The Morean Center for Clay in St. Petersburg, FL, The Ceramics Program, Office for the Arts at Harvard University and American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, CA. He taught classes at these residencies as well as Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

As an artist, Megan Thomas seeks to tell stories about how people and animals respond to biological and emotional scarcity. Vessels are inspired by anthropomorphic pottery that appears in the early ceramics records of many cultures. While very old pottery may not divulge all secrets to modern viewers, many of these pots seem to be prayers for bounty or attempts at understanding. She finds interest in how environmental and personal collapse might mirror each other. As cycles of ecological boom and bust manifest themselves in the archaeological records of past cultures, so might the cycles of emotional dearth and plenty manifest themselves in the archaeological record of one human’s soul.

Megan Thomas grew up in Hamilton, Ohio. She studied ceramic sculpture and painting at Bowling Green State University as an undergraduate student and graduated with an MFA in ceramics from Utah State University in 2020. She is an enthusiastic birdwatcher.