84 - A look at Takuro Kuwata's playful and provocative exhibition

Ceramics Now Weekly #84 features reviews by Cammi Climaco and Katherine Ross, the week's news in the ceramics world, and new featured artists.

Feb 25, 2025

Hello! Welcome to the 84th edition of Ceramics Now Weekly. This is Vasi Hirdo, the founding editor of Ceramics Now.

I hope you are doing well today 👋 Before we begin, I'd like to thank everyone who subscribed to Ceramics Now in the past weeks—you make this publication possible! We're in the final stretch of our February membership drive, and if you haven't joined yet, now is the time. Memberships are essential to keeping Ceramics Now running and ensuring our content stays available online for free to everyone. We're 70% of the way to our goal of welcoming 100 new members—will you help us reach it?

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Takuro Kuwata at Salon 94: Playful, Provocative, and Unapologetic

By Cammi Climaco

While I’ve followed Takuro Kuwata on Instagram for the past seven years, I’ve only seen his work floating by on a glowing two-inch by two-inch screen. Seeing his show at Salon 94 was a bit of a parasocial experience. [...] But, as someone who makes ceramics, teaches ceramics, and thinks about ceramics at least twelve hours a day, it had an in-person wow factor I wasn’t expecting and was surprisingly more intimate.

Looking closely at his pieces, I could see the story of the maker: the hands, the anger, the ecstasy, the glory, the defeat, his ego and humor. He’s showing us a Japanese man in Japan and a Japanese man in America. And most importantly, a ceramicist who clearly loves this material. He gives us the the paths of construction—some quick, sloppy finger marks and big moments of refinement with his super smooth surfaces. There are places where the clay wasn’t going to do his bidding anymore, with the not-sorry cracks and glaze drips, and other places of pure, planned excellence.

Tracing Ways: Mapping Presence Through Material and Place

By Katherine Ross

I drove to the exhibition opening from my rural home in the woods of Indiana to the gridded pavement of Chicago. The Comfort Station appeared on a small patch of green, a building out of time in the contemporary city. The drive gave me time to think about clay, about movement, about time, and about relationships. Living in the woods, I walk on clay every day, and I see it. [...] Next to the building were three tents, provisional homes for the unhoused taking refuge by the station. Stepping inside the building I was ready and prepared to engage in the conversation the work would offer. Tracing Ways tells stories, makes connections, looks far into the landscape and lingers in the details.

In Tracing Ways, artists E. Saffronia Downing and Rosemary Holliday Hall embrace a collaborative approach to materiality, exploring themes of place-making and site-specificity. Using clay, found objects, and collected traces, their installation maps the relationships between makers, matter, and the environment. This review by Katherine Ross examines how the artists reimagine material as a vessel for presence, process, and transformation.

New featured artists in Ceramics Now

Sponsored by University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Renowned sculptor visits University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

The College of Arts and Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater invites the public to an artist talk with Cristina Córdova in the atrium of the Greenhill Center of the Arts on March 13 at 6 p.m. An hors d’oeuvres reception will follow providing an opportunity to view an exhibition of her work in the Crossman Gallery.

The week’s news in the ceramic world

🏖️ Applications are now open for the 32nd Mediterraneo Contemporary Ceramics Competition, which will take place in the beautiful Italian city of Grottaglie (Puglia) between July 5 and October 12, 2025. Three prizes will be awarded: the 1st Mediterraneo Prize (€5000), the 2nd Personal Exhibition Prize (€2000 and a personal exhibition in the next edition), and the 3rd Artist's Residence reserved for Under 35 (€1000 and a residency). The deadline for applications is May 5.

⛰️ We recently published an article about Nato, a ceramicist preserving Georgia's ancient traditions through her work. Her earthenware vessels are more than functional objects—they carry centuries of history, craftsmanship, and cultural identity. By blending heritage with modern techniques, she redefines Georgian ceramics for a new generation. Through Vacation With An Artist (VAWAA), you can experience this tradition firsthand and learn directly from Nato. Read the full article and book your 4-day apprenticeship here.

🎓 Messums ORG is hosting a ceramics symposium on Saturday, March 1, to celebrate the opening of their 5th annual ceramic season with Contemporary Danish Ceramic. The symposium begins with an informal gathering in the exhibition space, offering the opportunity to engage with exhibiting artists and explore themes in the show. A curator-led tour follows, introducing the exhibition's central ideas. In the afternoon, international ceramic experts will discuss Danish ceramics within the broader European context of art, craft, and design while examining the role of major porcelain manufacturers and leading artists. The day will conclude with talks from select exhibiting artists. Online tickets are free.

👌 CERCCO (the Center for Experimentation and Realisation in Contemporary Ceramics of the Geneva University of Art and Design) invites applications for two residencies for 3 months. Workspace at CERCCO is open to ceramicists, designers, artists, and architects who wish to experiment and carry out a specific project. CERCCO will make a wide range of technical and artistic expertise available. Applications deadline: March 16.

📌 ATHENA! Clay Fair invites artists to apply to the next edition of the fair, to take place in Ghent (Gent), Belgium, between May 17-18, 2025. They are looking for experimental and unexpected pieces that cross the border of the ordinary object. Participation fee: €100. Applications are due March 2.

☀️ Applications are also open for Argillà Argentona 2025, an international ceramics festival that will take place in the town of Argentona, near Barcelona, between July 4-6, 2025. Over 30.000 people visit the festival, which includes exhibitions, workshops, pottery demonstrations, film screenings, and more. Participation fee: between €120-240. Applications are due March 31.

💬 A-B Projects is hosting a new State of Ceramics online discussion, Material Culture: Revealing Obfuscated Histories. Join Lauren Sandler to discuss the colonial legacies embedded in clay and the systems of extraction and erasure that shape its use. This conversation will explore ceramics as material culture, revealing hidden histories, rupturing dominant narratives, and reimagining pedagogies and practices. The discussion will take place on Saturday, March 1, 2025, at 10 AM (PST).

💬 The Crocker Art Museum is hosting a conversation between 2024 Knudsen Prize winner, Ashwini Bhat, and Sara Morris, the Crocker's Ruth Rippon Curator of Ceramics, on Saturday, March 8, 2025, from 2 PM (PST). Bhat will discuss her work's exploration of landscape, ecology, climate change, and natural history, as well as how her practice is shaped by time spent in India and California.

Do you have news that you’d like to share with the world? Let us know—reply to this email.

Exhibitions

Discover these ceramic exhibitions that were recently featured in Ceramics Now.

🔍 What's on View

A selection of ceramic exhibitions currently on view around the world.

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