The past 20 to 25 years have been exciting and expansive for ceramics. During this time, the field has expanded to include everything from performance, video, installation, ephemeral raw clay sculpture, and 3–D printing, to traditional sculpture, industrially-made slip-cast dinnerware, studio production ware, and one-off pots. I am sure this list can and will be expanded as time progresses. 

Artists such as Edmund deWaal (UK), Gwynn Hanssen Pigott (Australia), and Julia Galloway (US), to name a few, gave studio potters new ways to exhibit their work and new venues in which to do so. The installation of functional pots means the pieces can be sold individually, but the overall installation is a statement beyond the individual works themselves. Others use ready-mades to make political statements, such as Paul Scott’s (UK) personalization of the Blue Willow pattern. 

Marek Cecula’s (Poland) work spans many of the above-mentioned genre. In the 1990s, his installation of plates, whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts, links loosely to Judy Chicago’s earlier Dinner Party. “Since 2013 Cecula’s Ćmielów Studio in Poland, together with Modus Design and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, have been organizing student workshops, called ART Food Project. As a part of this project students from prestigious universities from all over the world come to Ćmielów to ponder upon the issues of the contemporary ceramics. The goal of the workshops is also to develop future cooperation between students and the industry” (Cecula). 

NCECA’s annual Fab Lab has popularized the expansion of 3–D printing directly in clay (explored and perfected by John Balistreri [US] and others) which was unheard of 10 to 15 years ago. Eliza Au’s work in the Indian Ceramics Triennale is an example of the versatility of the 3D printing technology.

We are seeing more and more work by the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities, finally. Theaster Gates, Paul Briggs, Sana Musasama, and Lydia Thompson have had a firm hand in making this happen. And ceramics artists are using their work to make political and personal statements. 

In addition, artists such as Linda Sormin deny the tradition of ceramics with their work. Sormin explores fragility, upheaval, migration, survival, and change. Lynda Benglis is one of a group of artists who built her reputation in sculpture before including clay in her abstract forms. 

As mentioned, it is an exciting time in ceramics, and we can only sit back and see what happens next, as Artificial Intelligence and other future innovations penetrate the field and artists continue to push the potential. I have faith, however, that embracing the new will not diminish our love of the traditional in the ceramics field.