Peter Voulkos was an American artist of Greek descent. He is known for his abstract expressionist ceramic sculptures, which crossed the traditional divide between ceramic crafts and fine art. He established the ceramics department at the Los Angeles County Art Institute and at UC Berkeley.
Founded in 1966, the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) is an organization in the United States serving the interests of ceramics as an art form and in creative education. Most major American ceramic artists since the 1970s, such as Frances Senska, Paul Soldner, Peter Voulkos, and Rudy Autio have been among its members.
Joan Takayama-Ogawa is a sansei (third-generation) Japanese-American ceramic artist and currently professor at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, California. Takayama-Ogawa's heritage since the 15th century of Japanese ceramic art influences her work, that usually explores beauty, decoration, ornamentation and narrative while also introducing a dialogue that rejects the traditional role of women in Japanese culture. Her most recent work addresses issues like climate change.
Akio Takamori was a Japanese-American ceramic sculptor and was a faculty member at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.
Regis Brodie is a tenured Professor of Art at the Department of Art and Art History at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY and a potter. Since 1972, he has been serving as the Director of the Summer Six Art Program at Skidmore College. He also wrote a book called The Energy Efficient Potter which was published by Watson-Guptill Publications in 1982. He started the Brodie Company in 1999 in the interest of developing tools which would aid the potter at the potter's wheel.
Arnold Zimmerman (1954-2021), also known as Arnie Zimmerman, was an American sculptor and ceramic artist. His work ranged from monumental to miniature, and abstract to figurative, encompassing totemic vessel forms, tabletop sculpture and figures, murals, and room-size installations. He was part of a multi-decade, 20th-century shift in American ceramics during which artists challenged clay's identification with function and craft, engaging fine-art domains such as emotional expression, social commentary, figuration and narrative. Zimmerman first gained recognition in the 1980s for deeply carved, architectonic sculptures characterized by rough physicality, rhythmic surfaces, gestural presence and Italian Romanesque influences. In the mid-1990s, he shifted to figurative work that critic Donald Kuspit wrote, examined the interaction of finite man and infinite matter, artist and creative work: "There is a sense of futility and folly as well as seemingly senseless idealism and innocence built into Zimmerman's parables of the all-too-human."
Mark Hewitt is an English studio potter living in the small town of Pittsboro, North Carolina outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In 2015 he received a United States Artist Fellowship, for contributions to the creative landscape and arts ecosystems of the country. He was a finalist for the 2015 Balvenie Rare Craft Fellowship Award, for contributions to the maintenance and revival of traditional or rare craft techniques. In 2014 he was awarded a Voulkos Fellowship at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana, for outstanding contributions to the ceramic arts.
Beth Cavener, also known as Beth Cavener Stichter, is an American artist based out of Montana. A classically trained sculptor, her process involves building complex metal armatures to support massive amounts of clay. Cavener is best known for her fantastical animal figures, which embody the complexity of human emotion and behavior.
Cristina Córdova is an American-born, Puerto Rican sculptor who works and lives in Penland, North Carolina.
Ashwini Bhat is an artist, based in Northern California. She is known for her sculptures.
Heather Mae Erickson is an artist, a craftsperson, and a designer. Erickson earned her BFA at The University of the Arts, majoring in crafts specializing in ceramics with a concentration in art education. Continuing her studies at Cranbrook Academy of Art, she earned an MFA in ceramic art.
Kirk Mangus (1952–2013) was an internationally renowned ceramic artist and sculptor "known for his playful, gestural style, roughhewn forms, and experimental glazing". His murals, works in clay, on paper, in wood, and other media pull from a rich and diverse set of influences: ancient Greco-Roman art, mythology, Japanese woodblock prints, comic books, folk stories, from Meso-American through Middle-Eastern and Asian ceramic traditions as well as the people he saw, the places he travelled, and his own dreamworld. He loved experimenting with new mediums, local materials, clay bodies, slips, kiln-building and the firing process.
Harris Deller is an American ceramist.
Ayumi Horie is a Portland, Maine-based studio potter. She is recognized for her unique aesthetic as well as for her pioneering use of digital marketing and social media within contemporary ceramics. She is curator of the popular Instagram feed Pots in Action and is a 2015 United States Artist Distinguished Fellow in Craft.
Kurt Weiser is an American ceramicist and professor. His work—explorations of the relationship between man and nature through narratives rendered in vivid color—are described as "Eden-like." His work has often taken the form of teapots, vases, and cups, though he has recently begun crafting globes as well. Weiser is currently the Regents Professor at Arizona State University's School of Art.
John Parker Glick was an American ceramicist. Though open to artistic experimentation, Glick was most influenced by the styles and aesthetics of Asian pottery—an inspiration that shows in his use of decorative patterns and glaze choices. His experience working with ceramics led him to publish several articles about the craft. In addition to producing pottery, Glick began making "landscape oriented" wall panels during the latter part of his career. Known as "the people's potter," he is primarily remembered for his contributions to art and the field of ceramics.
Anne Hirondelle is an American ceramicist known for her approaches to both the form and function of her pieces.
Karen Thuesen Massaro is a ceramicist working in the United States known for creating unconventional arrangements of sculptural objects through her work. Interested in exploring abstraction, she has experimented with a variety of different themes including the repetition of forms and surface textural change, negative space, and the geometric patterning of natural objects. Massaro creates much of her artwork by taking casts of physical objects, like fruit, molding them out of clay, and decorating them with patterns. Her manipulations make common objects feel less ordinary. These experiments allow her to explore color and form in complex ways.
Tip Toland is an American ceramic artist and teacher who was born in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. She earned a BFA in Ceramics from the University of Colorado and an MFA in Ceramics from Montana State University. Her works, which are figurative and often described as "hyper-real," are held by galleries and museums around the United States.
Nan Bangs McKinnell (1913–2012) was an American ceramicist and educator. Nan was a founding member of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, a member of the American Craft Council College of Fellows, along with receiving several awards for her work. James "Jim" McKinnell (1919–2005), her spouse, was also a ceramicist and they made some collaborative work.
