NCECA promotes and improves the ceramic arts through education, community-building, research, and creative inspiration, offering programs, events, and publications to support the field and communities in which we work. NCECA’s broad interests are shaped by artists, students, individual and corporate patrons, gallery owners, museum curators, and providers of ceramic arts-related products and services. As a dynamic, member-driven organization, NCECA is flexible in its program development, international in its perspective, and responsive to the changing needs of its constituency.

The program is supported in part through generous gifts to the Viola Frey Distinguished Visiting Professor Endowment. Created in 2001 to honor the life and work of groundbreaking and cross-disciplinary sculptor Viola Frey, the endowment brings leading artists from around the world to teach as CCA Distinguished Visiting Professors. The endowment brings leading artists to teach as CCA distinguished visiting professors. Participating artists have included John Bankston, Kota Ezawa, Rob Epstein, John Zurier, Mario Ybarra, Cheryl Dunne, Deana Lawson, Kristina Podesva, Anthea Black, Dario Robleto, Pratibha Parmar, and Edith Garcia.

As Audience Development Coordinator and Guest Curator at the Milton Keynes ArtsCenter, I oversaw the development of our special exhibition programming schedule, which entailed planning and researching local, national and international artists. I recruiting artists for exhibitions and managed the support staff to ensure that events and exhibitions were organized professionally and within budget. My role also allowed me to contribute to the organizations goals to secure coverage in the local, national and international press by establishing our production of branding and marketing materials, issuing and writing content for press releases, development of email campaigns (Mail Chimp) and updating social media platforms. I was also part of the initial Project Team to establish our well established annual Plate Fundraiser - invited world renowned artists to donate an artwork to fund our public programming. In wanting to ensure that I continue to work within my curatorial aims, I strive to develop and organize exhibitions that highlight the current practices in the current contemporary arts fields from innovative technologies and contemporary visual culture to showcasing established and emerging artists. A selection of the curatorial projects that I oversaw were Richard Slee: Revolution in the Rain, Wonderland and Rising Stars Touring Exhibition. Richard Slee an influential British contemporary artists well known for his colorful and witty meticulously rendered sculptures was the Centers inaugural exhibitions. For our winter programming, I organized Wonderland, an exhibition which brought together local, national and international artists and their works in fine arts,sculpture, printmaking, experimental jewelry and fashion resulting in a highly successful selling exhibition. I managed and scheduled Rising Stars a national touring exhibition which highlighted the work of emerging British artists across the United Kingdom.

How is it possible that civilisation has a global understanding of the abstraction of the human form? At a subconscious level as humans, we have the ability to find the form of the body in the most minimal of shapes, objects and even natural phenomena. In this research I have focused on variations, from realistic representations of the human form to abstraction. I have broken it down into its basic elements to explore at what point our visual language allows us to recognise and define a shape or an object as being influenced by, or connected to, the human form.

As Teen Programs Assistant at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, MN, which is recognizedinternationally as a singular model of a multidisciplinary arts organization and as a national leader for its innovative approaches to audience engagement. As Teen Programs Assistant, I developed and implemented an extensive range of teen specific education programs that connected young people to contemporary art and artists. These included: Teen Interpretive Programs, artist residencies, artist workshops, artist talks, social events, etc. We provided access to contemporary art and artists as tools for teens to examine, identify, and engage with issues that they deemed valuable and useful for self exploration. https://walkerart.org/visit/teen-program/

Working at the CreArte Chicano Latino Arts Center and Museum as the Education Coordinator, I actively implemented an assortment of public programs, from one-day workshops through to after-school programs for youth. I oversaw all of the organizations outreach programs as well as maintained daily operation of the exhibitions galleries. In supervising and maintaining the CreArte database of local artists, I was also able to draw the arts into the public school system. Working closely with local artists. I also directed CreArte’s exhibitions galleries, spaces that were regularly used as a meeting place for the community. It was within these galleries that we exhibited the work of our after-school programs as well as monthly exhibitions by local artists, ultimately offering me the opportunity to bring a wide range of diverse voices to the community of South Minneapolis.