BLOG: Ceramic Arts conference offers unique, exciting opportunity for ceramic students

This past March, I was given the opportunity to attend the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) in Kansas City, M.O. As an art major with a ceramics emphasis, I was curious and excited about the things I would learn and the artists I would meet along the way.

I drove to Kansas City in the company of my fellow classmate Stasi Zabe, also a ceramics student. As we arrived in the city, the excitement was already starting to bubble up inside of us.

The next morning, armed with coffee and our passes, we eagerly entered the conference. We spent that first day wandering through the Resource Hall. This hall was filled with a multitude of booths selling and giving away more than we could’ve imaged. It was overwhelming at first, but once we started looking, we bought decals and tools, and we were given free samples of glazes and clay to test.

We talked to people about kilns, and about clay, and graduate programs and apprenticeships. It was amazing being in the same place as so many other people who share the same passion and curiosity for clay as I do.

The next few days were spent attending lectures, discussions and panels, and we observed a number of different demonstrations.

My favorite lecture was one by Pete Pinnell. It was an art history lesson about the history of forks. He took us back to the first time any kind of utensil was used, and he applied it to how we ceramicists think about our work as utilitarian. The lecture was incredible and I walked away from it with a new point of view regarding my own functional work.

For me, the best parts of this conference were the people. We found a few of our fellow classmates at the conference who had graduated and started their careers in the ceramic community. It was a wonderful place to be with them, and it was great to see what they’ve done with their educations.

Since this is an event that’s attended by artists, not only from around the country but around the world as well, I was constantly looking for faces I might recognize. It was amazing to be able to talk to Justin Lambert, an artist who fires much of his work in a wood fire kiln. If you ask Zabel, she would tell you I was starstruck.

On the last day, I met the one woman I was hoping to meet. This artist’s name is Elisa Helland-Hansen, and she’s from Norway. I’ve followed her on Instagram for some time now, always seeing the pots she’s making, admiring her unique studio and being inspired from the amount of work that she puts into her art.

As soon as I saw her, I made my way over to her and introduced myself. She was so sweet and so kind. We chatted for a minute, took a few pictures and we were both on our way.

I left the conference with a full, happy heart, a bag full of new tools and a head stuffed full of new ideas for my future work. This whole event was just the push I needed to go back home and make work for my graduating senior show.

My show, Concerning Relativity, is up from April 18 to the 22 at the John A. Day Gallery, with a closing reception that Friday from 6 to 8 p.m.