Curatorial Statement
Exhibition Posted Online: Monday, February 8, 2021 by 10 am MT
The Red Lodge Clay Center is proud to present an exhibition of our current Long-Term Resident Artists newest work. The residency program at Red Lodge Clay Center is designed to encourage the creative, intellectual and personal growth of emerging and established visual artists. Each Resident brings a unique and vital voice that adds to the richness of the Clay Center. Their work is distinct but they all challenge their materials, and push their ideas forward as they develop their professional artistic careers through our immersive, year-long residency experience. Participating artists include Derek Au, Soojin Choi, Jon Green, Jared Peterson. and Stephanie Wilhelm
Derek Au During his first year in college Derek Au fell in love with ceramics, and moved to California to “become a potter”. In 2000, burned out and in search of more meaningful work, Derek landed a job with Greenpeace in Amsterdam. Derek eventually disembarked in Hong Kong and volunteered for Greenpeace China. He fell in love with the people and culture and found work in Jingdezhen as a studio manager at the Pottery Workshop. In 2014 Derek began coding Glazy, a popular ceramics recipes database.
Soojin Choi was born and raised in South Korea, and she has worked as an artist in the United States since 2010. Soojin earned her BFA at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2015 with a double major in Craft/ Material Studies and Painting/ Printmaking. She continued her studies at Alfred University to pursue a MFA degree in ceramics in 2018. After graduate school, she accepted a residency at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, MN with funding by Anonymous Artist Studio Fellowship. Her work transforms objects, figures and spaces into visual language by repeatedly layering flat and spatial surfaces.
Born in a Mexican-American family, Jon Green is entertained by the absurd nature of the American-Dream. Jon completed his BFA at the University of Montana with a minor in Art History, and worked as a studio assistant for Julia Galloway, Casey Zablocki, and Anton Alvarez. Jon has attended Red Lodge Clay Center’s ASPN program, an Artist in Residency at Medalta, and is currently a Long-Term Resident at Red Lodge Clay Center. Jon’s work pays homage to the craftspeople and merging customs of the Americas through aggrandizing objects and ornamentation.
Jared Peterson Jared, affectionately known as J-Dog was raised in Morgantown, West Virginia. There, he attended West Virginia University for his undergraduate education and received degrees in both English and Ceramics. In his personal life, Jared loves to play outside. When not in the studio, you can find him fly fishing a river or hiking in the National Forest. His work has been exhibited both internationally and nationally.
Stephanie Wilhelm is a ceramic artist from Maryland. She holds a BFA from Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania and an MFA from the University of Florida. She is a dedicated educator with years of teaching experience Stephanie was a 2014-2015 Artist in Residence at the Brockway Center for Arts and Technology in Pennsylvania and a 2018-2019 Artist in Residence at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts.