Alexandra Engelfriet is a sculptor and ceramic artist living in the Netherlands.  Her interest in working with clay is strongly connected to an investigation of local clays, direct from the quarry, without being processed into a homogenous substance. Fossils, varying consistencies, bits of different colours of ochre, give clay it’s power, history and life, its own particular character of that specific place.

Engelfriet will use her award to travel to North Carolina where she will work with the rich clays of that area, on which a long history of that region’s ceramics is based.  Engelfriet challenges herself as an artist to gather experiential knowledge, by placing an emphasis on the process and involvement of the body in the making of her art.

Seth Gould is a metalsmith rooted and present in Penland School of Crafts tradition and community in which he currently lives. He is a craftsman whose skill pushes his craft into an art.  Gould will use his LIAEP award to travel to Japan and to work with Seisei Asai and Kiyoko Fujie to learn higo-zogan inlay and patination, Kazuo Kashima to learn damascene, and Living Treasures Ms.Yukie Osumi and Mr. Morihito Katsura for chasing and repoussé as well as alloying Japanese metals such as shibuichi and shakudo.  

Gould hopes to incorporate these new found techniques into his studio practice and become a steward of traditional techniques, connecting the knowledge between eastern and western metalworking, and continuing craft through practice and sharing of information.

Kahlil Irving is a ceramic artist living in St. Louis, Missouri and BFA graduate from the Kansas City Art Institute.  Irving will use his LIAEP award to travel to Hungary, where he will have two different focuses: to develop his sculptural skills and to learn about the current tools and technologies that the Zsolnay factory uses to produce objects.  

Irving’s conceptual intention with his art is to break the cultural rules that have been developed by Eurocentrism, colonialism, and imperialism by navigating materials, forms, and perception in order to find contemporary path for participation in and of modernist ideologies.

Hiromi Iyoda is a Japanese ceramic artist living in Kansas City, MO.  The basis of her ceramic work is majorly figurative or narrative and relies on her past and current life experiences.  Iyoda will use her award to travel to India where she will investigate the intersections of multiple religions.  

Through this investigation, Iyoda seeks a ritual or habit in which to find solace. She believes the narrative underneath this religious intersection has much to offer and plans to incorporate it into her work.  Iyoda plans to create altarpieces and deities people can seek out for solace. These deities will not be of a specific god or religion, but one inspired by the diversity of gods and goddesses of India.

Marcelle Klein is a ceramic artist and director of the  Benyamini Contemporary Ceramics Center located in central Israel.  Klein is hoping to expand her expertise to lead  the  Benyamini Contemporary Ceramics Center onto the next phase of becoming a unique professional institution maintaining exhibitions, collections, research, classes and programs that create community through shared experiences and love of clay.  

She will use the LIAEP award to participate in a professional one month residency at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, Canada; it is Canada’s national ceramics museum and one of the world’s great specialty museums.

Read more about her experience here.

Jennifer Ling Datchuk is a ceramic artist living in San Antonio, Texas.  Her work explores manufactured identity and appropriated appearances, the awareness around them, and how we question and desire authenticity of the “other”. Datchuk explores this conflict through her chosen media – porcelain, which is a nod to her Chinese heritage but also represents “pure” white – the white desire she finds in both cultures.  

Her aim is to take back that fluidity and use it to explore her identity as a woman of color—the sense of being in-between, an imposter, neither fully Chinese nor Caucasian. Datchuk will use her LIAEP award to travel to the Netherlands and participate in a residency at the European Keramic Work Center and will allow her the opportunity to experience otherness outside of her “American” environment

Michael Rees is an artist focused on sculpture, experimental media, and collaboration.  Rees often incorporates technology and invites viewer interaction through a smartphone or tablet app and it is this augmented reality aspect that adds layers of experiences to the sculptures.

Rees will use his award to participate in a collaborative exhibition in the Czech republic followed by a residency in Italy where he’ll realize a marble sculpture from digital files using a robotic carving technique.

Christina Vogel is a plein-air painter from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Vogel is using her LIAEP award to travel and participate in a three-week artist residency at JSS in Civita, an established residency for painters, sculptors, photographers, and videographers, located in Civita Castellana, Italy.  

This will be the artist’s first time working in a foreign country in a professional capacity, during which Vogel plans to develop a body of work, in the form of paintings and works on paper, in response to living in a new place amongst new people.  

Gracey Zhang, a recent graduate of RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), is a freelance illustrator living in New York.  Her work often deals in narrative, observing the motivations and actions stemming from the lives of others, and examining the physical environments they inhabit.

Her work ranges from large paintings, drawings, to editorial illustrations that attempt to convey the reactionary emotions of a group.  Zhang will be using her award to travel to Brazil and expand her view of peoples and cultures.

"Originally published in Ceramic Arts Yearbook & Annual Buyers Guide, 2018, awards pages, http://www.ceramicsmonthly.org . Copyright, The American Ceramic Society. Reprinted with permission."