NCECA 2021 Virtual Conference: Rivers, Reflections, Reinventions | Daily Schedules

The programming schedule for the 2021 Virtual Conference is structured around daily themes and keynote speakers to inspire, reflect, and create equity action in ceramic art and education. Wednesday's theme will be Advocacy & Activism; Thursday's, Global Community; Friday's, Education; and Saturday's, Responsive Practice. Each day's keynote speaker will offer vital perspectives on the current issues in contemporary societal culture. Join us in embracing change, challenges, and community.

Wednesday, March 17, 2021 | Advocacy & Activism

Advocacy & Activism
Advocacy & Activism presentations will question established canons, discuss ways through which engagement with change takes place in ceramic art, teaching and learning. Clay’s tactile nature records histories. Can the material’s plasticity also foster intentional equity that encompasses gender, class, race, and the work of communities?

For Freedoms and The Infinite Playbook with left to right, Michelle Woo, Eric Gottesman, Jun Mabuchi, Claudia Peña, and Manushka Magloire will discuss healing, justice, and the power of listening in a conversation. For Freedoms’ exhibitions, installations, and public programs have used art to deepen public discussion on civic issues and core values, and to advocate for equality, dialogue, and civic participation.

Thursday, March 18, 2021 | Global Community

Global Community
Global Community presentations will address ceramic art internationally to examine the impact of intercultural exchange and explore ways of creating communities of opportunity through ceramic art. In this time of global pandemic, perhaps we have never been more connected despite the physical space.

Demonstrating Artists | Suze Lindsay and Richard Zane Smith

Keynote Session
Kwame Akoto-Bamfo is a versatile Ghanaian artist who is known for his work Nkyinkyim Installation/Museum, cultural activism, and contributions to Ghanaian tertiary institutions and traditional communities. His outdoor sculpture “Nkyinkyim Installation,” dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Transatlantic slave trade, is on display at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. The work is directly connected to a larger installation in Ghana of the same name made up of over 1,500 portraits of Africans in the Diaspora.

Friday, March 19, 2021 | Education

Education
Education presentations will investigate innovations and reinventions of teaching modalities, resources, and models to create equitable and accessible learning environments and opportunities. Critical responses to current circumstances will address anti-racist approaches in education and generate discussion on resources for school and community contexts.

Demonstrating Artists | Kensuke Yamada and Syd Carpenter

Keynote Session
Dr. Ahna Skop is a geneticist, artist, science communicator, and champion for the underrepresented in science. Her lab studies how cells divide. Cell division is highly dependent on visual data, which dovetails perfectly with one of her other passions, art. Ahna has several scientific art installations on the UW-Madison campus and she has also curated, and created several traveling science art exhibitions. Ahna majored in biology and minored in ceramics at Syracuse University, obtained her Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology at UW-Madison, and her post-doctoral work at UC-Berkeley. Ahna is a Professor in the Laboratory of Genetics and an affiliate faculty member in Life Sciences Communication and the Division of the Arts at the UW-Madison.

Saturday, March 20, 2021 | Responsive Practice

Responsive Practice
Responsive Practice presentations will provide a platform to reflect, share, and consider new ways to integrate theories and methods to build resilient, adaptive, and inclusive practices and opportunities in the ceramic arts.

Demonstrating Artists | Suze Lindsay and Richard Zane Smith

Keynote Session
Ronald Rael, draws, builds, writes, 3D-prints and teaches about architecture and craft as a cultural endeavor deeply influenced by a unique upbringing in a desolate alpine valley in southern Colorado. As the San Francisco Chronicle writes, "[Rael's] imagination is audacious. He speculates on the implications of the border wall, building with mud and using 3D printers to create buildings -- as seen in his books Borderwall as Architecture, Earth Architecture and Printing Architecture. Rael is a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley and is a founding partner of the Oakland based Make-Tank, Emerging Objects. You can see his drawings, models and objects in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Sunday, March 21, 2021 | Closing Session

Closing Session
Welcome - 2023 Conference Announcement
Past Masters
2021 Emerging Artists Presentations

Closing Keynote Session
Winnie Owens - Hart | Myths, Stories and the Truth
“Clay is the common denominator for thousands of NCECA members. The paths that led every one of us to become this NCECA statistic have their own personal journey to share. This is the story of my journey”. Winnie Owens-Hart, is an educator, artist, filmmaker, author, and critical thinker in matters of clay, art, and culture. She has taught at Howard University for more than 37 years and has conducted research, exhibited, and presented lectures internationally. She has worked with women in a pottery village in Ghana for more than a decade. As both a published author and curator, Owens-Hart has curated exhibitions primarily focused on contemporary African American artists and has also produced documentary films, including Style & Technique-Four Pottery Villages and The Traditional Potters of Ghana-The Women of Kuli. Over more than four decades, her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with work in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, The John Michael Kohler Art Museum, universities, and private collections.

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