Curatorial Statement
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Exhibition Posted Online: Monday, September 8, 2025 at 10 am MT
Gallery Closing Reception: Friday, September 26, 2025 from 5-7 pm MT
Juried National VIII
Red Lodge Clay Center’s Juried National VIII extends our mission by showcasing current relevant and diverse practices in the field of ceramics and provides a spotlight on the breadth of work currently being made that utilizes clay as a featured material. It is our hope that the Juried National will bridge emergent and established makers, and will include some of the best utilitarian, sculptural, traditional and/or experimental work being created today.
Juried by Matthew Metz and Linda Sikora
Matthew Metz has been a making his living as a potter for 25 years.He resides and works in Alfred Station, New York with his wife, potter, educator, Linda Sikora. Born in Kendallville, Indiana in 1961, he received a B.F.A from Ball State University and his MFA from Edinboro University, PA. From 1989 to 1991 he was a resident at Archie Bray Foundation and was awarded an Individual artist Grant from the NEA. In 1991 Matt and Linda moved to Houston, MN, where they worked for the next 14 years before moving to Alfred.
Matt received two McKnight Artist Fellowships through the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1997, 2005. Matthew shows his pottery throughout the U.S. and internationally- including the St. Croix Potter’s Tour, Old Church Pottery Show, and Pottery on the Hill. He is represented by Schaller Gallery, Trax Gallery and the mobile Artstream Gallery. In 2015 he was a founder of the Flower City Pottery Invitational in Rochester, NY. Matthew’s work is in private and public collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Erie Art Museum, Racine Art Museum, Alfred Museum of Ceramic Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, and Long Beach Museum of Art. He has presented professional pottery workshops at universities and craft schools across the U.S and Canada. In 2016 he and Linda were featured in the “Teachers” episode of the PBS series “Craft in America”.
Linda Sikora is second generation Canadian whose paternal grandparents left Eastern Europe, as political tides turned, to work in Western Canadian orchards and coal mines. Sikora’s mother was the oldest of 14 siblings (Scottish/French) in Eastern Canada. Secondary school education was a luxury not afforded her parents, but values of personal agency and industry were abundant. The furniture her father built for the family household and her mother’s acute aesthetic influenced the pursuit of an art/craft/design education.
Sikora resides with her family near Alfred NY where she has a studio practice and is a Professor of Ceramic Art at the New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University. Academic study in visual art (BA) and a ceramic-based apprenticeship in British Columbia was the foundation of her training that continued at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (BFA) and University of Minnesota–Minneapolis (MFA).
Professional activities are national and international: Artist residencies include: Archie Bray Foundation; Chunkang College of Cultural Industry, Korea; Tainan National College of The Arts, Taiwan; Clay Edge, Australia.
Public Collections include: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; Racine Art Museum, WI; Alfred Ceramic Art Museum; LA County Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of the Arts; Everson Museum, NY; Campos de Gutiérrez Foundation, Medellin, Colombia; Huntington Museum of Art; Fuller Craft Museum; Gardener Museum, Canada; LSU Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Smithsonian Museum of American Art; National Museum of Sweden. Sikora was nominated and selected as a United States Artist Fellow in 2020.
Juror’s Statement:
Ceramic Art has long been entangled in a wondrously, wildly broad realm of creative practices and pursuits that explore, deepen, mix, or implode genres. Creatives engage earth and alchemy as material and method – making objects of the interior – it is a medium for thinking and acting through, about and with. The mattering of clay offers up the opportunity for a particular type of revelation – a particular manner of reflecting a maker back to themselves – and with this, a way to locate oneself more dynamically in the world.
Our gratitude to Red Lodge Clay Center for their commitment to expansive programing and for carrying out, with grace, the hard work behind creating the successful platforms and events to support it. It is always a humbling task to jury an exhibition and never easy to give up the experience of encountering creative work firsthand. All, (every single one!) of the works submitted for review begged to be encountered – making this an exercise of extraction: zooming images in and out, imaging tactility, measuring invisible objects with rulers held in space, acting out shapes and forms through pantomime. As jurors, we remain humbly aware of the ‘margin of error’ when the conveniences of images must suffice to support such a project. To all the creatives who submitted images for consideration, we express our gratitude for the privilege of viewing your work.
-Matthew Metz and Linda Sikora
Thank you to all of the 205 artists who applied for sharing your work with us. Matt and Linda selected 68 pieces from 57 artists.
Participating artists include: Maria Albornoz, Michael Ashley, Jennifer Azzariti, Wesley Barnes, Julien Birch, Shannon Blakey, Sally Brogden, Ray Brown, Echo Davis, Laura Dirksen, Julianna Dougherty, Jaden Estes Carlson, Andrew Foster, Ovidio Giberga, Seth Green, Paige Harper, Sid Henderson, Stephen Heywood, Matt Hiller, Steve Hilton, Tsehai Johnson, Johanna Keefe, Lucien Koonce, David Kring, Wes Ladner, Bernadette Larimer, Andrea LeBlond, Huey Hyuk Lee, Daeun Lim, Quinn Maher, Jennifer Masley, Samuel McCall, Charlotte Middleton, Dan Molyneux, Carey Nathanson, Alex Okenfuss, Carter Pasma, Samantha Purze, Grace Roberts, Amy Sanders, Charlie Smith, Rebecca Stansbury, Jason Lee Starin, Mike Stumbras, Meghan Sullivan, Kate Sutter, Olivia Tani, Zach Tate, Chance Taylor, Matthew Towers, Andrew Tran, Kim Tucker, John Utgaard, John Vorstadt, Jason Wang, Bill Wilkey, and Emily Woo.
Merit Awards (to be awarded at the exhibition Closing Reception, September 26, 2025)
- Juror’s Choice Award: $1000
- Director’s Choice Award: $500
- Gallery Curator’s Choice Award: $300