Adam Chau is an artist working in New York. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute’s Designed Objects program, his research has been published in Ceramics Technical, Studio Potter, Ceramics Art and Perception, Ceramics Monthly, and New Ceramics. In 2018 he was awarded the NCECA Emerging Artist Fellowship and in 2019 he was accepted into the International Academy of Ceramics. Solo exhibitions include Harvard Ceramics, Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, The Clay Studio, and Taoxichuan in Jingdezhen, China. In 2017 Adam curated Reinvented, an exhibit featuring an international artist roster featuring digitally produced ceramics, which travelled the US to five locations for two years. He is currently a board member of NCECA, Artaxis, and The Color Network.
Past Visiting Artist
Namdoo Kim
Namdoo Kim is an artist with great intellectual curiosity, enormous technical capability, and a deep interest in human society and culture. Kim’s work focuses on issues derived from the material desires among people and their influence, using glass and ceramics, which are the central medium of his works, and they are reflected in cynical perspectives with a sense of humor and satire. While bright and playful on the surface, Kim’s works referencing toys, Adidas athleisure footwear, and other familiar consumer items hold a darker meaning. Building from the ground covered by pop art of the late 20th century, Kim’s pieces have an edge that cuts open and lays bare the contradictions, moral decay, and disappointment inherent within overheated consumer pursuits.
Kim was born and grew up in South Korea. He completed his undergraduate degree in fine arts focusing on glass and ceramics at Hong-Ik University in Seoul, South Korea. Kim then traveled to the United States and embarked on an MFA degree at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, which he completed in 2013. Kim completed his Ph.D. within the Glass Workshop at the School of Art and Design, Australian National University in Canberra Australia in 2021.
Heesoo Lee
Heesoo Lee’s work explores the vulnerability of the human condition through the metaphor of the natural world. Her artistic language, formed by observations of material, nature, and place, engages with themes of identity, connection, and time. In describing subtle variations of light, texture, color, and shadow as they exist in nature, Lee is, fundamentally, illuminating a range of human emotions and the humbling reality of being a feeling person in a vast and changeable world.
Born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, Heesoo earned her BA in art from Ewha University. Heesoo began a full-time studio practice in Berkeley, CA in 2000. From there, she relocated to Maui, where she established a thriving studio business. Heesoo was a summer resident at the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts in 2013 and returned in the fall of 2014 as a long-term resident artist. She is currently a full time studio artist in Helena, MT
Yoonjee Kwak
Yoonjee Kwak makes sculptural vessels to represent human beings as iconic symbols from Korean culture. In Korea, when people talk about someone’s personality, they often use “vessel” as a metaphor of one’s spirit of tolerance. Yoonjee’s interactive conversation with the clay is vital to her process—she slowly builds up clay coils from the bottom, allowing her hand marks to remain on the surface. Through this process of building, memories of patience and time come into her pieces, and she is able to create a meaningful record of her practice.
Originally from South Korea, Yoonjee currently is a resident artist at Pottery Northwest in Seattle, WA after finishing her long-term residency at The Bray in Helena MT (2017-2019). Her works have been shown in a variety of national and international exhibitions including in Korea, Turkey, Italy etc. as well as many states in the USA. She earned her MFA in ceramics at the School for American Crafts at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in 2014 and her BFA in ceramics and glass at Hong-Ik University in Seoul, South Korea in 2012. She was a resident artist and taught ceramics classes at RIT from 2014– 2017. In 2020, she was one of the recipients of the James Renwick Alliance Chrysalis Award for emerging artist in ceramics as well as the Emerging Artist Award in Ceramics Monthly Magazine in 2016.
Raven Halfmoon
Most recently, Raven Halfmoon has focused on producing a body of work that is reflective of how she feels both as a woman and as a Native American living in the 21st Century. In her most recent collection of work, she illustrates how she feels about the ancient legacy of her Caddo tribal heritage, while at the same time acknowledging the modern-day and age. In her work, she explores themes of “otherness”, cultural appropriation and history. She hopes to create awareness of and to address issues that move people who share a similar story.
In 2014, Raven received a BA in ceramics and painting and in art anthropology from the University of Arkansas. She has exhibited broadly in the United States and has completed residencies at the Center for Contemporary Ceramics in 2019; Haystack Mountain School of Craft in 2018; Anderson Ranch Arts Center in 2018; and the Red Lodge Clay Center in 2015 and 2017.
