Ceramic Arts Commons^™

To Be Closer, Sarah Moschel Miller

LSU Master's Theses

to be closer explores the intersection of yearning and unease. This series of works uses the visual language of the body and its thresholds to explore how each of us builds interpersonal relationships and understandings of self. Pulling from abjection theory, the abject comes from the internal becoming external, the crossing of a bodily or personal threshold. My sculptures, vessels, and prints translate the visual language of the border of the body into a discussion of emotional ones. to be closer uses these corporeal thresholds and the language of the uncanny as vehicles to discuss the crossing of emotional …

The Home And The Self: On Perceptions Of Feminine Virtue, Rebecca Stevens

Masters Theses

Reflecting on my own feelings and experiences with domesticity and on the larger patterns of socialization they reveal, I use decoration and domestic objects to explore my discomfort with the stereotypes of feminine virtue that I grew up around in the American South. These specific ideas of socialized feminine virtue center around domestic service and a focus on appearance. Working primarily in porcelain with the addition of textiles, I embrace materials, styles, and methods of making that are associated with women and girls. Through hand-crafted tableware, dolls, and decorative patterns I critique gendered forms of socialization while questioning historical and …

An Introduction To East Asian Art: Tour Guide #3, The Year 1591, Victoria Weston

OER Textbooks

Please Note: This tour guide is the third in Victoria Weston's An Introduction to East Asian Art in Three Journeys. To access the full book, visit https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/3/

For the remaining sections, visit:

Guide Part 1: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/4/

Guide Part 2: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/5/ This book is an introduction to important art forms practiced in China, the Korean peninsula, and Japan. It is in no way an encyclopedic treatment of the art histories of East Asia. Rather, it is a textbook for a single semester course. Each section is devoted to one year in time and framed by historical factors that naturally encourage comparative …

An Introduction To East Asian Art: Tour Guide #2, The Year 1230, Victoria Weston

OER Textbooks

Please Note: This is the second of three tour guides connected to Victoria Weston's Introduction to East Asian Art. For the full guidebook, visit https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/3/

The remaining sections can be found at these links:

Guide Part 1: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/4/

Guide Part 3: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/6/

This book is an introduction to important art forms practiced in China, the Korean peninsula, and Japan. It is in no way an encyclopedic treatment of the art histories of East Asia. Rather, it is a textbook for a single semester course. Each section is devoted to one year in time and framed by historical factors that naturally …

An Introduction To East Asian Art: Tour Guide #1, The Year 748, Victoria Weston

OER Textbooks

Please Note: This book is chapter one of Victoria Weston's Introduction to East Asian Art in Three Journeys, which can be found in full at https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/3/

For the remaining chapters, visit:

Guide Part 2: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/5/

Guide Part 3: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/6/

This book is an introduction to important art forms practiced in China, the Korean peninsula, and Japan. It is in no way an encyclopedic treatment of the art histories of East Asia. Rather, it is a textbook for a single semester course. Each section is devoted to one year in time and framed by historical factors that naturally encourage comparative analysis. …

Quietude, Caroline Roberts

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

I grew up in a landscape shaped by the slow withdrawal of an ancient glacier. Its passage carved, gathered, deposited, and smoothed, a force both powerful and tender. What remains is not dramatic ruin, but a terrain of gradual accumulation. Small shifts in light, air, and temperature create an immersive atmosphere—an intimacy that comes through proximity, through a landscape encountered within reach.

This body of ceramic work emerges from an attempt to create such an atmosphere. I am interested in how an object might carry a similar quietude—not as absence or restraint, but as an active force. It is the …

Grit, Nikita Nenashev

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

Grit is the pursuit of intuition and sustained attention in the search for expression. My work aims to create a sense of both familiarity and mystery by operating between the framework of utility and abstraction. I investigate the liminal space between what is known and unknown, creating surfaces and forms that challenge our perceptions of beauty.

Working gesturally and swiftly invites the clay to reveal indicators of its character, leaving evidence of the forces involved in the creation of each form. Textured and scorched surfaces, produced through the firing process, reflect the transformation of malleable material into a state of …

Not For A Profit., Taylor Wiens

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

My body of artwork explores the deep-rooted traditions and emotional resonance of life on a three-generation family farm. By merging my expertise in graphic design, ceramics, printmaking, and glaze research, I have developed a unique method of printing on clay with underglazes, creating layered and nostalgic imagery that tells the heartfelt stories of my farm family. My inventive forms—tiles, architectural structures reminiscent of farm buildings, portraits, and figures—capture the overlooked yet essential aspects of rural life, portraying both the relentless challenges farmers face and the profound sense of belonging and tradition inherent in farm life.

Earth toned clay represents the …

Among The Remnants, Jade-Lynn B. Lewis Vance

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This written thesis serves as supporting documentation and research for my Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, Among the Remnants, at West Virginia University. This dissertation will explain how my artistic vision, influences, research, and thesis exhibition fits into larger art and cultural contexts. Drawing from art history and theory, my work explores memory, touch, and fragmentation. My fascination with artifacts and the stories they hold inspires my research and drives me to create personal connections within my own art. The figurative sculptures serve as a vessel for recalling impactful experiences and embodying personal perception and these interactions. The …

Galician Culture Through The Lens Of Sargadelos, Rosella J. Messaros

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This research project covers the history and significance of the Sargadelos ceramics brand in Galicia, Spain. I then relate my research to my own personal experiences, tying into my family's Spanish heritage.

A Cautionary Tale, Holly C. Hendrick

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

A Cautionary Tale presents a series of narrative ceramic sculptures, each functioning as a short story rooted in the realities of contemporary American life. While fictional, these works draw directly from real social and political conditions, including disinformation, systemic corruption, the abuse of power, and the exploitation of the vulnerable. Through symbolic narrative and visual metaphor, each sculpture operates as both story and social critique.

My work merges artistic practice with engagement in contemporary issues, examining how wealth, technology, and ideology shape human behavior and societal structures. I am interested in how harm becomes normalized and how individuals are both …

European-Islamic Ceramics From The Eighteenth Century Onward, Katherine Collins

Honors Program Theses and Projects

The foundation for this examination rests upon prior research analyzing ceramic traditions and trade routes across East Asia and the Islamic Empires from the eighth to the sixteenth centuries. This knowledge establishes how East Asian innovations, such as porcelain and underglaze techniques, flowed westward through the Middle East via silk trade routes, profoundly influencing South Asian, Middle Eastern, and Ottoman ceramic production and aesthetics. They were able to trace how crucial Islamic technical traditions, including lusterware and tin-glazing, were subsequently transmitted to the Mediterranean basin through conquest and trade. This provided the technical vocabulary necessary for European precursors such as …

Processing Self, Ethan B. Mckellar

All Theses

Processing Self is a body of sculptural and utilitarian ceramic work that explores the intersection of the materiality of clay with the expression of grief and vulnerability. In this work I utilize the process of building unstable ceramic vessels and the communal action of wood firing to translate the experiences of grief and care into physical forms. As I build, I manipulate the clay to its limits, allowing it to falter under its own weight, and display the breakage and damage. By committing to support each vessel through its creation, I make a promise to persevere, echoing the commitment I …

Adaptive Compulsion, Amanda A. Santos

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Adaptive

Adjective

Adap.tive ( ə-ˈdap-tiv)

of, relating to, or being a heritable trait that serves a specific function and improves an organism's fitness or survival

Compulsion

Noun

Com.pul.sion (kəm-ˈpəl-shən)

a repetitive behavior or mental act that a person feels driven to perform to alleviate the anxiety and distress caused by an unwanted thought or urge, known as an obsession.

For years we have lived in unprecedented times. From the worldwide quarantine in 2020 resulting from the pandemic, to our current US political crisis. The constant barrage of events is overwhelming and demoralizing.

The work in this gallery is a display …

Unloved Ecologies, Ellen Griffin

All Theses

Unloved Ecologies is an exhibition of ceramic sculptures that stage encounters between human and nonhuman bodies. Through it, I investigate the intersections of queer identity and ecology to reevaluate what society often deems “unlovable.” By working with the language of Queer Ecology, I explore the tensions between protection and vulnerability, as well as between cultivated order and wild resistance. Ceramic sculpture is my mode for examining moments of transformation, repair, and growth, and natural processes function as metaphors for the ways external pressures shape individuals. My overall goal is to explore the ecological processes of change and examine how our …

The Arch And The Looking Glass: Umbli Cu Cioara Vopsitǎ, Ana Popescu

Masters Theses

The Arch and The Looking Glass: Umbli Cu Cioara Vopsită (You Are Walking Around with a Painted Crow)

A thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics in the Department of Ceramics of the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island.

By Ana Popescu, 2025

Approved by Master’s Examination Committee:

Lesley Baker, Shoji Satake (Chair), Heather Bhandari, Tucker Houlihan

Date: May 17th, 2025

Location: Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island

To be opened for self-reflection in 10 years, on May 17th, 2035:

I’ve been mulling over how to make …

Meeting People Where They Are At: Accessible Approaches To Ceramic Design And The Artistic Process, Molly E. Thompson

Publications and Research

This paper explores accessibility for disabled people in ceramics, drawing upon my personal experiences as a disabled potter at Artistry Community Arts Center in Vermont. I begin with a discussion of how the process of creating pottery can be made more accessible, with a list of adaptable tools I have discovered and anecdotes about how pottery instructors can adapt their teaching styles to different needs. I then explore different examples of adaptive pottery made specifically for disabled people, including some of my own work. While recounting my own successes and failures in pottery production, I conclude that imperfection is the …

Trans-Pacific Connections: Chinese Porcelain And Aztec Motifs In Colonial Mexico, Natalia Ramirez

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This research explores artworks within the Global Baroque as visual and ideological evidence through which colonial power, trade, and cross-cultural influence shaped the material culture of the early modern world. Centering on blue and white ceramics as a key medium of transcultural and trans-local exchange, the study analyzes how global motifs, particularly those drawn from Aztec and Chinese traditions, were reinterpreted, aestheticized, and circulated in Aztec and Novohispanic artistic practices.

Through a close observational comparison of Aztec and Chinese decorative systems, the study recognizes contrasting systems of cultural documentation embedded within similar visual forms. Aztec motifs, rooted in ritual, calendrical, …

Unmeasured, Detached, And Isolated: The Legitimation Of A Domesticated Identity, Eva M. Agüero

MFA in Visual Art

Unmeasured, detached and isolated explores the lingering effects of colonialism on identity, behavior, and cultural perception through the lens of my personal experience as a Venezuelan immigrant in the United States. I investigate how colonial legacies—especially those codified through manuals of etiquette like Manuel Antonio Carreño’s Manual de Urbanidad y Buenas Maneras—continue to shape self-perception and societal expectations. Through video, sculpture, miniatures, and installation, I reconstruct a visual language that resists simplification and reclaims complexity. Engaging with the symbolic weight of tropical imagery, domestic spaces, and hybrid aesthetics, my work challenges Eurocentric frameworks and examines the figure of the migrant …

Moments In The Making, Paige M. Harper

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

Gathering around a table with good company, sharing stories and food, creates lasting memories. These moments of warmth, laughter, and connection stay with us long after a meal is over. These experiences are the driving force that inspire the vessels | create. These vessels serve as conduits for connection, helping to shape and enhance the shared experience. These objects are not only individual pieces, but also components of broader compositions. I consider how they are related in space. Using repetition, contrast, proportion, and negative space, I strive to create cohesive visual experiences that invite curiosity.

Revelry, Karina R. Mago

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

The work in this exhibition is entirely figural, each part crafted individually from clay and fired in a wood kiln. These figures are intentionally anonymous, with their only distinguishing features being the marks left by the passing flames. Certain aspects of the bodies represented have been abstracted, and lines have been carved to highlight the movement embodied by the forms. Each firing occurs over the course of two days, which is only achievable through the collective effort of multiple individuals. It took a community to bring all of these pieces together.

This body of work is a love letter to …

Divided Motherhood: Narrative Within The Domestic Vessel, Jacqueline Denaway

Masters Theses

This research explores the story of motherhood through that of art, craft, and the domestic vessel. It analyzes how the installation, Motherhood Divided, can be viewed as an exemplification of the conflicted divide inherent within contemporary motherhood. I posit this divide to be a result of the tension created between the impossibility of the current normative maternal ideal of intensive motherhood, and its contradiction to that of the private hidden realities of mothering.

The historical origin of intensive mothering is explored, along with its impact on current societal maternal standards. These concepts are juxtaposed with the art of Camille Henrot …

Xxx, Samuel Tucker Claxton

Theses and Dissertations

In XXX Tucker correlates the rise in online hookup apps and the fall of queer nightlife spaces to show how the internet has affected gay cruising spaces. They relate their installation-based work to the ideas of liminal spaces and Jean Baudrillard's

hyperreal. Further, they contextualize their practice within the scope of Robert Grober's work.

Strange World, Brooklin Grantz

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis work explores the intersections of masculine and feminine labors as they relate to the structure of domestic space. I utilize materials and processes akin to craft, construction and architecture, and domicile upkeep, noting what is shared between gendered and polarized fields while exploring uses of the grid in various instances as a structure to adhere to and antagonize: a binary. Highlighting the queerness and fluidity of materials and the similarities between seemingly disparate processes, I relate to the objects I make and alter through my own gender fluidity. I do not see masculinity or femininity as autonomous: the …

Love Letter, Amy S. Duval Ms

Theses and Dissertations

I applied to graduate school to reconnect with and better understand my studio practice, acquire language, and to disrupt my known ways of making. Generally speaking, I see my practice as being about being seen, and unseen, and the pain and pleasure of being perceived. I’ve learned about my ways of being in the studio. I’ve come closer to speaking honestly about my relationship with my materials, processes, tools, how I value my own labor, and how this informs my work. I am grateful for the cascade of small epiphanies that came and left me while I worked in my …

Braiding Culture Through Ceramics & Mixed Media Sculpture, Joy M. Okokon

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Stories are embedded in each strand of Nigerian hair, serving as a bridge across generations and embodying the legacy of cultural expression. Hair-making, a skill passed down through generations in my family, began as a personal practice and has evolved into a powerful means of exploring and showcasing the cultural significance of hair braiding through creative works. The sculptures included in this thesis, Braiding Culture Through Ceramics & Mixed Media Sculpture, feature hair sculpture, afro combs, stools, adire batik made from materials such as clay, wood, glaze and cotton fabric. These materials are carefully selected for their cultural relevance and …

Wavering Masculinities, Riley Rist

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Wavering Masculinities is a compilation of anthropological research, exploration of self-identity/belonging, and deep dive into the cultural expectations of heterosexuality (as it relates to gender expression). The works convey a physical connection to my anthropological research to produce imagery about masculine behaviors and appearances, and the deviations of those appearances and behaviors. This exhibition looks at the line between masculine and feminine expression from the male-identifying perspective to inquire about the amount of feminine traits that can be possessed until sexuality is questioned/assumed (and why does being feminine have to be a bad thing?! )

Tenaciously Curious, Joe Mark Taylor

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this thesis paper, I will outline the journey I’ve taken throughout my graduate studies at the University of Montana and how it has culminated in my thesis exhibition, Tenaciously Curious. I’ll begin with an Introduction that speaks to the importance of finding ways to connect to nature, and the benefits we gain by recognizing our bodies as extensions of the organic world.

In the following section, Influences, Theory and Lineage, I’ll explore the themes that drive my research, highlight artists who have influenced my work, and discuss why this inquiry feels vital within our contemporary moment.

In the section …

Understanding Clay And Its Media Properties Through The Expressive Therapies Continuum, Anne Geisz

Art Therapy Counseling Final Research Projects

For centuries, clay has been used by civilizations to hold food, memories, and records of history. To this day, it is used by engineers, hobbyists, artists, art therapists and many more. This art based, heuristic study explores clay through the researcher’s ongoing practice with the material, within the framework of the Expressive Therapies Continuum (ETC) and examines how its unique media properties make it such a versatile material for both ceramic artists and art therapists. Results exhibit these unique media properties and clay’s ability to reach all levels of the ETC through collected data of images, journals, critiques, and notes. …

To Excavate An Absence, Margaret Compton

Graduate Theses

This thesis is an exploration of memory’s fluctuating aspects, utilizing natural materials and casting processes to create a sculptural body of work deeply rooted in materialized metaphor. Examining the relationship between mold and cast, part and whole, and interior and exterior, I utilize casting as a framework to understand the duality of remembering and forgetting. Memories, much like the natural landscape, are ephemeral, fading, and fracturing over time. Both external environments and internal mental landscapes share the common language of erosion, existing as present or absent, remembered or forgotten. Conestee Nature Preserve in Mauldin, South Carolina, serves as my “site” …