About Us

Rebekah Sweda focuses on interventions to the traditional, wheel-thrown ceramic vessel. She works in various clay bodies, using cuts and slices to activate empty space as material itself. She sees these cuts, slices, and chops as a way to open up new possibilities surrounding abstraction, interior, exterior, and empty space. About her work, she comments, “How much of a thing can be removed before it is no longer itself? How many of these altered individuals form a collective, or community? Grouping forms together into communities or isolating individuals stirs an emotional reaction. Repetition of shape or empty space reinforces ideas of shared space and connectivity. Creating more empty space can focus the form on absence or loss.”

Sweda received a dual degree in chemistry and studio art from Calvin University in 2018 and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2020. Later that year, she exhibited the solo show, Amphora, featuring works exploring the sense of loss she felt from the pandemic, and, in 2021, she exhibited The Derived Vessel, a solo show that finalized the ideas around her graduate work. Prior to joining HCCC as a resident artist, she completed a residency in Rome. She is the creator and founder of Sweda Studio, a ceramic school and studio in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which will open in March of 2023.

Learn more about Rebekah Sweda’s work at rebekahsweda.com and swedastudio.com.

In order to understand the art, history, and culture of ceramics in Korea, Yeonsoo Kim worked with Korean masters at various onggi factories and ceramic studios as a way to secure a strong foothold in the field of Korean traditional pottery. Kim’s artistic identity began developing as his life experiences and values were shared with other artists and workers. He began tasking himself with creating a new hand-built vessel each day. These works, when amassed, act as a type of diary or a visual record of listening to his inner voice. His works explore identity and psychological conditions through the processes of making and daily life.

Kim was born in Haenam, South Korea. He earned his MFA in ceramics at Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, and his BFA in ceramics and glass from the Hongik University, located in Seoul, Korea. He has held apprenticeships with Onggi masters in Jeolla-do (Hayngjong-Oh) and Gyeongsang-do (Jinkyu Huh) in Korea.

Kim has won multiple awards and exhibited nationally and internationally. Most recently, he was named one of the top six Emerging Artists of 2020 from the National Council on Education the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) and had a solo exhibition at the Radius Gallery in Missoula, MT. He has participated in several artist residency programs, including the Korea Ceramic Foundation, Montana State University, Morean Center for Clay, and the Archie Bray Foundation.

To learn more about Yeonsoo Kim’s work, visit www.yeonsooceramics.com/.

Jihye Han uses ceramic and mixed media to construct sculptural and installation-based pieces that speak about the role of boundaries and how they affect social interaction, with a particular sensitivity to the influence of her Korean heritage and international upbringing. Her surface decoration and forms touch on questions about how individuals are connected or disconnected through space, time, and material. She is highly motivated to be a part of HCCC to encourage people to embrace cultural diversity, and she plans to incorporate different methods and processes, including ceramic and mixed-media works that draw from Korean culture and her childhood memories.

Jihye Han earned a BFA in sculpture and ceramics from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and an MFA in ceramics from the University of North Texas. In 2021, she received the Emerging Award as part of ClayHouston’s Award for Texas BIPOC Ceramic Artists. Recently, she was selected as a recipient of a 2022 Emerging Artist Award for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA).

To learn more about Jihye Han’s work, visit

https://www.jihyehanart.com/

Originally from Shandong, China, ceramic artist Chenlu Hou uses storytelling to combine concurrent, overlapping systems and create a kaleidoscope of all things cultural, taboo, territorial and unforeseeable. Hou endeavors to capture a sense of darkness in her work by reframing, distorting, and highlighting the messiness of this combination. Incorporating a variety of media and forms—such as ceramic sculpture, drawing, industrial materials, video, and alienated figures—she employs the visual culture of folktales as a core vocabulary, which produces a very personal artistic context for her work. She enjoys setting up unconventional and absurd relationships between craft objects and moving images to suggest new and different possibilities.

Hou is currently living in Providence, RI.  She received her BA, concentrating in design, from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, in 2012, and her MFA, concentrating in ceramics, from Rhode Island School of Design, in 2019. Her work has been shown in the United States, Mexico, China, Korea, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. She had a solo show in Taipei, Taiwan, in 2021.

Learn more about Hou’s work at chenluhou.cargo.site.