About Us

Heather L. Johnson grew up on the move, discovered motorcycles late in life, and makes art from the vantage of a drifter. She hand stitches detailed embroideries based on experiences from the road, looking for patterns and cycles in the world that reveal the fragility of humans in relation to the environment and to one another.

Heather’s current work stems from her ongoing motorcycle travel project, In Search of the Frightening and Beautiful (https://thefrighteningandbeautiful.blogspot.com). While traveling, she gives small stitched pieces to strangers, while collecting experiences she later translates into new bodies of work. She has ridden over 38,000 miles through 14 countries, releasing 47 artworks around the Western Hemisphere. During her residency at HCCC, she will plan the next ISFB journey and craft new embroideries in preparation for returning to the road in 2019.

For over 20 years, Heather has shown her work in galleries, museums, and in the public realm throughout the U.S., in Europe, and Japan. She earned an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2001 and has since completed several artist residencies, most recently at Cherryhurst House in Houston, where she currently resides. Many of her road stories are published in the online magazine RideApart (https://rideapart.com/). To learn more about Heather, visit heatherljohnson.com/.

Antonius-Tin Bui (they/them) proudly identifies as a queer, gender-nonbinary, Vietnamese-American artist. They are the child of Paul and Van Bui, two Vietnamese refugees who sacrificed everything to provide a future for their four kids and extended family. Born and raised in Bronx, NY, Antonius eventually moved to Houston before pursuing a BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MIC/A).

Since graduating in 2016, Antonius has been fortunate to receive fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Kala Art Institute, Tulsa Artists Fellowship, and Halcyon Arts Lab. Thanks to these opportunities, they have greatly expanded their practice beyond just hand-cut paper techniques. They are currently interested in complicating Vietnamese history and queerness through performance, textiles, and photography. Antonius has exhibited at various institutional, private, public, and underground venues, including the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Hillyer Art Space, Lawndale Art Center, Living Arts, 108 Contemporary, Artscape, and the Philbrook Museum. To learn more about Antonius, visit antoniusbui.com/about/.

Zoe Gross is a ceramic artist from New York. She received her Bachelor’s degree in fine art from Skidmore College (2015) and her Master’s degree in ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design (2018). Zoe primarily works in ceramics, and she is interested in exploring the creative process through experimenting with materials such as clay, fabric, paper, and textiles. Her work explores ideas of femininity, ornament, craft, and the subtle taboos surrounding these subjects. Zoe’s work is rooted in the implied similarities between the cycles in nature and the cycles inherent in the creative process. Her pieces grow and decay through layering, disintegrating, adding, and subtracting. Zoe began her artistic career as a potter, and the vessel, which has long stood as a metaphor for the human body, continues to play a large role in her work. Through the process of embedding adornment in their structures, her ceramic sculptures warp and shift away from a traditional or functional vessel and begin to imply bodily forms. These sculptures are permeable membranes that embody open and closed spaces and allow their contents to spill out. To learn more about Zoe, visit zoeaureliagross.com/about/.

Eunsil Leem appreciates the value of craftsmanship and craft knowledge as much as the final outcome. After earning a BFA in furniture design from Sangmyung University in Seoul, Korea, she turned to woodworking to learn more about hands-on making. While enrolled in a woodworking program in a local community college, Eunsil took a jewelry class and fell in love with art jewelry. Making one-of-a-kind jewelry fulfilled her desire for making functional and creative art. After finishing advanced jewelry classes, she continued her education in graduate school, earning an MFA in jewelry and metalsmithing from Southern Illinois University.

In her work, Eunsil explores the limitations of language to express unspoken experiences and emotions, which she believes are “the truth.” Through the making process, she believes non-tangible concepts, such as thoughts and feelings, become real. Eunsil communicates a story by cutting, etching, reconnecting, firing, and hammering her chosen material. The inspiration for her work is based mostly on her personal experience, but she strives to create visual poetry in order to express experiences and emotions that are common to many. To learn more about her work, visit eunsilleem.com/.

As a metalsmith, Corey Ackelmire is interested in how people make, keep, alter, and use objects for emotional, superstitious, and practical purposes. Metal objects, from common currency to silver spoons, tend to be both durable and malleable, common and sacred, sentimental and mundane. Exploring their place in material culture is the
focus of her work.
Corey earned her BFA in jewelry and metalsmithing from Missouri State University in 2003 and her MFA in jewelry/metals/enameling from Kent State University in 2007. She has been an educator since 2005, is a published author, and has exhibited her work in numerous national and international exhibitions. Currently, she is a full-time instructor and the Visual Art Program coordinator at Houston Community College in Houston, Texas. To learn more about her work, visit coreyackelmire.com.

Originally from Madison, WI, Daniel Garver studied painting in Cortona, Italy, as an undergraduate and received a BFA concentrated in ceramics and art history in 2011 from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  In order to pursue educational experiences in craft, he later moved to Penland, North Carolina, where he worked as a studio assistant, teaching assistant, and freelance artist.  In 2015, Daniel received a Core Fellowship at the Penland School of Crafts. Over the course of this two-year fellowship, his work shifted dramatically from ceramics to textiles, while he simultaneously explored metal fabrication, printmaking, paper folding, and drawing. His bold, pattern-heavy work in weaving and drawing explores topics of mathematical sequences, visual perception, and structural systems.

Daniel’s work has been exhibited nationally at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Earlham College, Penland School of Crafts, Peter’s Valley, Red Lodge Clay Center, Caldwell Arts Council (NC), and most recently at the Meadows Gallery (Denton, TX), in the exhibition, Materials: Hard and Soft.  During his six-month residency at HCCC, Daniel will continue his research and production of tapestry weaving and natural dyeing, specifically exploring the process of ikat, in which individual threads are bound, dyed, and woven to create intricate nuanced patterns. To learn more about Daniel’s work, visit https://www.danielgarver.com/art.

Ean Escoto works in jewelry metals, incorporating fabrication, casting, ceramics, 3D printing, and electronics.  He believes that jewelry accrues sentimental value as it is carried through life events, and he wants his jewelry to be a participant in people’s lives.  His work always provides the wearer with a small story or mystery to share. Whether derived from studies in materials, technique, or interaction, his pieces shrink the gaps from plinth to hand and person to person by rewarding curiosity and investigation.

Ean was raised in the small, picturesque town of June Lake, California. He moved to San Diego to study bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego, but he graduated from San Diego State University with a BA in applied design for jewelry, metalsmithing, and ceramics in 2016. Ean is a 2016 Windgate Fellow. He has been a partner in a private studio for five years, and his work has been shown in Taboo Studio, San Diego, CA, and Galerie Marzee, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. While at HCCC, he plans to work on jewelry that expresses its motivations and goals through electronically controlled movement. He will also continue to develop the more accessible side of his jewelry line. To learn more, visit https://eanescoto.com/