About Us

Rebekah Sweda focuses on interventions to the traditional, wheel-thrown ceramic vessel. She works in various clay bodies, using cuts and slices to activate empty space as material itself. She sees these cuts, slices, and chops as a way to open up new possibilities surrounding abstraction, interior, exterior, and empty space. About her work, she comments, “How much of a thing can be removed before it is no longer itself? How many of these altered individuals form a collective, or community? Grouping forms together into communities or isolating individuals stirs an emotional reaction. Repetition of shape or empty space reinforces ideas of shared space and connectivity. Creating more empty space can focus the form on absence or loss.”

Sweda received a dual degree in chemistry and studio art from Calvin University in 2018 and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2020. Later that year, she exhibited the solo show, Amphora, featuring works exploring the sense of loss she felt from the pandemic, and, in 2021, she exhibited The Derived Vessel, a solo show that finalized the ideas around her graduate work. Prior to joining HCCC as a resident artist, she completed a residency in Rome. She is the creator and founder of Sweda Studio, a ceramic school and studio in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which will open in March of 2023.

Learn more about Rebekah Sweda’s work at rebekahsweda.com and swedastudio.com.

In order to understand the art, history, and culture of ceramics in Korea, Yeonsoo Kim worked with Korean masters at various onggi factories and ceramic studios as a way to secure a strong foothold in the field of Korean traditional pottery. Kim’s artistic identity began developing as his life experiences and values were shared with other artists and workers. He began tasking himself with creating a new hand-built vessel each day. These works, when amassed, act as a type of diary or a visual record of listening to his inner voice. His works explore identity and psychological conditions through the processes of making and daily life.

Kim was born in Haenam, South Korea. He earned his MFA in ceramics at Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, and his BFA in ceramics and glass from the Hongik University, located in Seoul, Korea. He has held apprenticeships with Onggi masters in Jeolla-do (Hayngjong-Oh) and Gyeongsang-do (Jinkyu Huh) in Korea.

Kim has won multiple awards and exhibited nationally and internationally. Most recently, he was named one of the top six Emerging Artists of 2020 from the National Council on Education the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) and had a solo exhibition at the Radius Gallery in Missoula, MT. He has participated in several artist residency programs, including the Korea Ceramic Foundation, Montana State University, Morean Center for Clay, and the Archie Bray Foundation.

To learn more about Yeonsoo Kim’s work, visit www.yeonsooceramics.com/.

Jihye Han uses ceramic and mixed media to construct sculptural and installation-based pieces that speak about the role of boundaries and how they affect social interaction, with a particular sensitivity to the influence of her Korean heritage and international upbringing. Her surface decoration and forms touch on questions about how individuals are connected or disconnected through space, time, and material. She is highly motivated to be a part of HCCC to encourage people to embrace cultural diversity, and she plans to incorporate different methods and processes, including ceramic and mixed-media works that draw from Korean culture and her childhood memories.

Jihye Han earned a BFA in sculpture and ceramics from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and an MFA in ceramics from the University of North Texas. In 2021, she received the Emerging Award as part of ClayHouston’s Award for Texas BIPOC Ceramic Artists. Recently, she was selected as a recipient of a 2022 Emerging Artist Award for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA).

To learn more about Jihye Han’s work, visit

https://www.jihyehanart.com/

Originally from Shandong, China, ceramic artist Chenlu Hou uses storytelling to combine concurrent, overlapping systems and create a kaleidoscope of all things cultural, taboo, territorial and unforeseeable. Hou endeavors to capture a sense of darkness in her work by reframing, distorting, and highlighting the messiness of this combination. Incorporating a variety of media and forms—such as ceramic sculpture, drawing, industrial materials, video, and alienated figures—she employs the visual culture of folktales as a core vocabulary, which produces a very personal artistic context for her work. She enjoys setting up unconventional and absurd relationships between craft objects and moving images to suggest new and different possibilities.

Hou is currently living in Providence, RI.  She received her BA, concentrating in design, from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, in 2012, and her MFA, concentrating in ceramics, from Rhode Island School of Design, in 2019. Her work has been shown in the United States, Mexico, China, Korea, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. She had a solo show in Taipei, Taiwan, in 2021.

Learn more about Hou’s work at chenluhou.cargo.site.

A ceramic artist who most recently lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Joan Brown frequently uses porcelain, a material that helps her represent purity, delicacy, and fragility. This clay body allows her to mimic soft and supple flesh by creating highly detailed manipulations of surface that force the material to become something it is not. By stretching the limits of porcelain’s physical properties, Joan’s work symbolizes many of the complexities of femininity, as defined by both herself and by society. At HCCC, she hopes to expand upon this body of work and continue to develop visual representations of the injustices women face in contemporary cultures. In addition to cultivating her own personal growth, she hopes to be a part of and assist in fostering a community-oriented studio environment that is positive and welcoming.

Joan received her BFA, concentrating in ceramics, from the University of the Arts in 2013 and her MFA, concentrating in ceramics, from Bowling Green University in 2018. In 2020, she completed a two-year residency at University of the Arts, during which time she expounded on her thesis exhibition, Seductive Constrictions. Joan has shown work in Japan, New Orleans, Washington, Ohio and Pennsylvania, including a solo show in 2019, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Learn more about Brown’s work at www.joanclarebrown.com.

Utilizing material and process, Naomi Peterson creates contexts between objects to better understand and define the connections between seemingly disparate things. Integrating both analog and digital methods such as hand building, laser cutting, knitting, 3D printing, and felting, Peterson explores what craft means in the digital age. Her handcrafted, ornate pedestals represent the gravity of a perceived circumstance, such as making a promise. Trust, like a ceramic object, can be broken as well as repaired, though the result will most certainly be altered. Through these contexts, she examines her own experiences and observations in building relationships facilitated by objects and rituals. While in residence at HCCC, Peterson plans to expand on these investigations into subject-object relationships through bodies of work composed of functional and participatory elements.

Peterson received her MFA in ceramics at the University of North Texas in 2021 and her BFA in ceramics at the University of Wyoming in 2017. She was a Post-baccalaureate in ceramics at the University of Wyoming for the 2017 – 2018 academic year and participated in the annual, short-term, Neltje artist-in-residence program in 2018. Peterson has exhibited nationally; recently, her work was on display at Gandee Gallery in Fabius, New York, as part of the 2021 National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Gallery Expo.  In November of 2021, she will participate in a group exhibition, titled Women, Art, and Technology, at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, curated by Eliza Au. 

To learn more about Peterson’s work, visit https://www.naomipeterson.com.

Abbie Preston Edmonson is an object maker. She is continually experimenting with ways to evoke a painterly surface on a three-dimensional object. Holding the tension between form and surface, Abbie’s ceramic pieces become a spontaneous layering process, with a nod to Abstract Expressionism, by exploring intuitive mark-making and gestural brushes of color. During her time at HCCC, Abbie will cultivate a new sculptural body of work exploring the theme of mental illness, focusing on narratives depicting darkness and isolation in hopes of inspiring open dialogue.

Abbie attended Valdosta State University in Georgia, graduating in 2009 with a BFA in ceramics and a secondary in painting. She was an artist-in-residence at Mudfire Studios in Atlanta from 2010-2011. Abbie is the owner and creator of Box Sparrow Studio, a Houston-based brand creating functional ceramics out of Hardy and Nance Street Studios. Recently, she was selected to participate in two celebrity design collaborations through Etsy. You can find her work locally at Forth and Nomad, The Flora Culture, and Manready Mercantile. Abbie is currently serving as vice president on the ClayHouston board and teaches wheel-throwing at Third Coast Clay. To learn more about her work, visit www.boxsparrowstudio.com.