Simphiwe Mbunyuza (b. 1989; Eastern Cape, South Africa)
creates masterful objects and vessels combining stoneware,
leather, fabric and steel. Mbunyuza’s richly textured, confounding
ceramic objects are featured traditional African iconography and
cultural symbols. Furthermore, to produce his work Mbunyuza uses
a coiling technique that has been employed by the Xhosa people
for centuries.Elegant and graphic, Mbunyuza’s forms and colors unify in his
extraordinarily distinct ceramic objects.
Shea Burke makes vessels that contain thoughts on Black identity, history, and craft tradition. Weaving together inspiration granted from West African functional pottery, raw textured surfaces, and a style of coiling all their own, they craft queer ceramic bodies. These vessels act as a storage place for the wisdom we need to hold on to, until we are ready to pour that wisdom into ourselves. Ceramics can be the centerpiece in connection across the diaspora; reuniting us with the way we used the earth before colonialism.
Shea Burke was born and raised in Rochester NY. They have participated in multiple exhibitions including at Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami, FL and David Klein Gallery in Detroit, MI. Shea received their BFA from Alfred University in 2017 and an MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2021. They were the recipient of a Zenobia Award for a residency at Watershed Ceramics in 2018. Following their MFA, Shea recently completed a Residency at the Harvard Ceramics program.
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.
Austin Riddle’s pots are made as companions for you and your home. A vase for your table, full of freshly picked flowers as you and your partner eat breakfast and plan your day’s activities. Large platters and compartment trays to present home-cooked meals with friends on a warm summer evening. Whiskey sippers that nestle in warm hands, topped off as needed from a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels.
Austin Riddle recently received his MFA in ceramics at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. He received his BFA in ceramics at the University of Utah in 2016. He has been an Artist-in-Residence at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, The Bright Angle in Asheville. North Carolina, and at Art Center West in Roswell, Georgia. He was awarded emerging artist by Ceramics Monthly in 2019 and has exhibited his work all over the United States.
I took a roundabout path to clay, via an undergraduate degree in English literature, and attended Kansas City Art Institute when I was in my thirties. I came to the Bray as a resident in 1985, planning to spend a year there, and figure out where to set up a studio. I spent two years at the Bray, settled in Helena, and have been making pots here ever since. I was on the Bray board from 1992-2003. I may be the only former resident who has subsequently enrolled in community classes. I taught them in the 1980s, and have been taking them since 2018, full circle! Which is to say that my long, deep and varied relationship with the Bray has been central to my life as a potter.
I have always made functional pots, for a number of reasons: we experience them by touch, as well as by sight; we share our intimate domestic spaces with them; they can bring the experience of beauty or unexpected pleasure to our everyday lives; and there is always an implied conversation between the maker and the user, bringing them into a kind of community.
After a neurological disease made it impossible for me to throw pots on the wheel, and with encouragement and tutorials from friends, I began to hand build, mostly plates. So that I would not be tempted to try to mimic what I had done before, I chose to use red earthenware, with maiolica, and to focus more on the painting. It’s a very simple technique, requiring minimal equipment and few tools, which feels in keeping with my physical limitations. This has allowed me, late in my career, to be a beginner all over again.
My concerns haven’t changed much, however, in that I want my pots to express their potential to be useful and generous, to have a fluid quality, now achieved in the painting, rather than in the effects of the kiln. I want them to attract the hand as well as the eye, to be both beautiful and friendly, and to suggest that they can provide abundant nourishment to our daily lives.
Kristy Moreno’s current body of work examines the systems and bonds between social, political, and personal narratives. These narratives intersect to embody forms of relativity, healing and resilience. By producing these physically paused moments, she introduces a space for reflection which investigates the journey of a personal point of view, individual habits and character.
Kristy Moreno was born in the city of Inglewood, California and often found herself creating doodles of her favorite cartoons. Moving to Orange County inspired her to become involved in the art communities of Santa Ana leading her to collaborate with group collectives including We Are Rodents and Konsept. She then attended Santa Ana College where she found an interest in ceramics that lead her to transfer to California State University, Chico to pursue a BFA degree. Her work now spans across mediums from ceramics, illustrations and printmaking to bring awareness and visibility to an abundant future where mutual aid is possible.
