Marcè Nixon-Washington
2024 Lila Satre Meloy Scholar
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Marcè Nixon-Washington’s inspirations include her lived experiences, West African textiles & ceramic history. Beneath the adornment of her work are rich meditative marks that sing songs of resistance. Coil building large vessels is the meditative process that reminds her she is here & alive. Sculpting marginalized folks makes visible the people who keep her city running. Clay is archival, and every time she creates, she hears her grandma’s laughter saying, ‘They couldn’t erase me.’

Nixon-Washington received her BFA from West Virginia University. She studied ceramics in Jingdezhen, China, where she found her love for shards and ceramic history. She investigates ceramics as an archival material to record personal and cultural history. Her work has been exhibited at The Mufei Gallery in Jingdezhen, China, The Carnegie Museum of Art, and The 2024 NCECA ANNUAL. Her residencies include The Manchester Craftsman Guild, Haystack Mountain School of Craft, and Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and Media. She is a member of Union Project’s BIPOC Collaborative Studio and the notable Women of Visions.

Aida Lizalde
2024 David L. Hunter Scholar
Mexico City, Mexico

Aida Lizalde builds installations integrating ceramic vessels, found materials, and biomatter. They investigate the origins of objects as initial extensions of the human body, serving functions such as containment, shelter, filtration, etc. —functions traditionally fulfilled by the body itself.

Their work aims to establish connections between opposing things like natural and unnatural elements, ancient and futuristic objects, and the biological and artificial, through hybrid speculative forms that serve as external body surrogates or extensions of the body, proposing systems of flow, drip, filtration, stagnation, bacterial growth, and decomposition as moments of metabolization outside the body.

Lizalde, originally from Aguascalientes, Mexico, immigrated to the Central Valley of California with their family at fifteen. Lizalde holds a Bachelor’s degree in Studio Art from University of California, Davis, and an MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

Corinna Cowles
2024 Senska Scholar
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Corinna Cowles’ work — pockets, pillows, paintings, curtains, wallpaper, and drapes in addition to ceramic work — is inspired by clothing and decorative patterns, engaging the viewer with absurd dislocations and transformations. Identity, craft, sculpture, domesticity, and class all seep out from a porous, multi-material plane of grids, loops, and abstractions of the everyday.

Cowles followed a traditional academic fine arts track, currently holding a BFA and MFA in painting and studio arts from Columbia College Chicago and the Tyler School of Art respectively. She is continuing her education through dialogue, self-determined projects, and skill exchange via teaching, a professional ceramics practice, and artist residencies, which include The Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Women’s Studio Workshop, and the Vermont Studio Center.

Gina Voelker Bobrowski creates sculptures and installations where form & surface are created simultaneously and found objects are incorporated as acts of preservation and memory. Functional pots celebrate and enhance daily life through use. Direct wall painting and works on paper and board celebrate materials, processes, and unscripted narratives with endless curiosity and invention. Her community projects embrace a similar sense of play while empowering others to use their innate creativity as a vehicle for positive change. She hopes to create work and facilitate community projects that edify and inspire across generations, like the laughter of children, the touch of a heartbeat, the radiant shift of light as the seasons change. Her process reflects the tenets of craft, and is like those of children, a visionary, or outsider artists.

Gina Voelker Bobrowski is a studio and community artist. A native of New Orleans, her formal education includes Penland School of Crafts, Louisiana State University, University of Georgia Athens and Cortona Italy, and the New Mexico Center for Montessori Education. Awards include two NEA Fellowships, Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship, Young American Award, and Museum of Art and Design. She is currently Associate Professor of Ceramics at the University of New Mexico.

Kevin Umaña’s recent works, “hybrid paintings,” combine glazed ceramics on painted canvas and fuse together conflicting styles—mess and order, biomorphic and geometric, thin and thick, matte and sheen. These abstract representations evoke specific places from his childhood, memories of nature, beaches, plants, construction materials, food and religion.

Kevin Umaña is the co-founder of The Ekru Project, an artist-run Kansas City gallery focused on contemporary, emerging, and underrepresented artists. In 2017, he created a permanent installation at The United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Residencies include The Center for Book Arts, New York City; Plop Residency, London, England; and SIM Residency, Reykjavik, Iceland. His work was featured in “Pattern Recognition,” curated by Amy Lincoln at Sperone Westwater in 2022.