Jami Porter Lara is a New Mexico-based conceptual artist. Working across media such as ceramics, drawing, signage, textiles, and lithography, she tries to unbend normal, unsettle natural, and unwind beauty from its logic of power. She uses frictions between objects and ideas to stage moments of contradiction and instability, pursuing spaces where art makes more possible than language can hold.

Recent exhibitions include the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DD; the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt in New York City; the Center for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh; the New Mexico Museum of Art; and Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles, CA. Reviews of the work have appeared in Hyperallergic, Art21 Magazine, American Craft, American Art Collector, and Ceramics Monthly. Her work is held in the public collections of the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt; the National Museum of Women in the Arts; the U.S. Department of State; the Albuquerque Museum; and the New Mexico Museum of Art, among others. Residencies include MacDowell, Yaddo, SFAI, Arquetopia, and the Tamarind Institute.

Marian Draper is a ceramic artist whose work is deeply inspired by verdant botanicals and historical patterns. Born and raised in Rome, New York, Draper earned her Bachelor’s in Studio Arts, with a concentration in ceramics, from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, NY, in 2022. During her time at RIT, she focused primarily on creating large-scale vessels, with an emphasis on form and process.
After graduation, Draper relocated to Asheville, NC, to complete a long term  residency at Odyssey ClayWorks. At Odyssey, she expanded her practice by exploring surface applications and design, incorporating mono-printing techniques alongside her form explorations. She also gained valuable experience as a studio intern at Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, MN.
Marian is a recipient of the 2024 Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist Award. Her work reflects her passion for both form and process, infused with a love for rich flora and vibrant surfaces. When not working in clay, Draper enjoys spending time outdoors, drawing inspiration from the landscape for her next creation.

The ceramic works of Samuel Sarmiento are, first of all, objects. Depicting myths and literary stories from across the Caribbean and South America, they do so as sculpted surfaces that create their own boundaries. They are self-contained worlds still connected to everything around them. History is palpable, bodies emerge from bodies emerging from bodies – or do they sink back into time, towards an origin we shall never know? There are forests, seas, cities, animals, trees, goddesses, humans, and meaningful scenes. Humans tell each other about the universe, how it came to be; they pass on secrets of death and procreation together with truths of conflict and suffering, and a hope of redemption. As Sarmiento’s works capture a vibrant oral tradition, they also encapsulate the act of storytelling itself.
Samuel Sarmiento (Venezuela, 1987) is a self-taught artist. He has participated in various exhibitions, individually and collectively, in Venezuela, Colombia, Aruba, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, France, Mexico, Panama, Argentina, and China,

Jake is a potter living in the mountains outside of Helena, Montana with his family. He was born and raised in Helena, and much of the ideas behind his work are influenced by the landscapes of Montana and from growing up in a community that has long supported artist-potters. After pursuing opportunities around the country for the last decade, he moved back to Helena in 2023 to settle down and build a sustainable studio practice.

Jake’s formative education in ceramics came through working at craft schools, community studios, and for other artists, and he received his MFA in Ceramic Art from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. He has completed artist residencies at Red Lodge Clay Center, Pottery Northwest, and Studio 740, and is excited to begin a long-term residency at the Archie Bray Foundation in 2025.