Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident (ASPN) 2026
Marina Max is a ceramic artist and musician based in Lincoln, Nebraska. She is in her final year at the University of Nebraska, pursuing a BA in Ceramics and a BA in Art History and Criticism. She has worked as an audio engineer and musician across the Midwest for the last decade, booking and curating events alongside her own. Currently, she is pushing the intersections of her ceramic work and musical/event-based experiments. An emphasis on material exploration and collaboration with the natural world acts as a throughline between these practices.
Marina looks to a variety of ancient and modern cultures alike in order to locate herself in her own diasporic history. At the heart of all her ceramic work, she exercises the fluid relationship between past and present. Throughout her undergraduate degree, Marina has been a research assistant to Pete Pinnell in glaze formulation and worked closely with her mentor and professor Margaret Bohls. Marina has attended NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) the past three years, acting as a university ambassador in 2023 and presenting her own research at Matt Kelleher’s STEAM Poster Session in 2024 and 2025. During the summer of 2025, Marina spent seven weeks as a resident artist at the ‘Zentrum Fur Ceramik’ in Berlin, Germany. She has also curated and shown work in local exhibitions, including at the Eisen-Trager Howard Gallery, the Medici Gallery and within Lincoln’s downtown Parrish Studios.
I create from spiritual necessity, to participate in the beautiful and painful experiences which make us human, as well as to question and grapple with the complexity and weight of human history. My work begins by interrogating the relationship between humans and art across time. Considering the interconnectedness between ancient and modern cultures allows me to create complex timelines which ultimately help me locate myself within the diaspora of my own histories and cultures.
As a ceramic artist, I maintain a slippery relationship between objects and environments. I work sculpturally, although I am committed to the history and context of the vessel. I recently made a series of pouring vessels inspired by Minoan and pre-Helladic Greek objects. Generous bellies and evocative spout-handle relationships draw sensual lines upward, reaching beyond themselves. I see this reach towards irretrievable memories–– oil pouring rituals, matriarchic leadership, and a society unburdened by war. These are romanticized assumptions we make of the Minoans, a culture that provides a fertile mythos upon which we readily project idyllic utopias.
The ceramic field is inherently process-oriented due to the nature of the material. My pieces are strongest when I honor my intuition and continue to stay curious through the successive stages of creation. I’m drawn to materials that allow me to work seamlessly into and beyond the fired state. Wax on the surface of vessels traps foliage in unique states of decay. The wax appears liquid-like and freezes the color of the foliage, at least temporarily. With time, the surface will change and the reddish-brown leaves will further dull. Collaboration with natural processes, allowing time and environments to act on my work, then responding as materials change and rearrange connects my practice to forces beyond myself. This work explores liminality and metamorphosis while challenging permanence.