The Gallery Gallery Reception at the 2024 NCECA Coalescence Conference in Richmond, VA. Image courtesy of NCECA.

Picture an event featuring the work of nearly 500 ceramic artists attracting thousands of clay enthusiasts. Some of these artists and visitors are local to Utah but many hail from across the United States and overseas. During the conference (and in some cases after) attendees and the public will be able to enjoy more than 50 exhibitions featuring ceramic vessels of every conceivable kind as well as sculptures and installations. They’ll find them at the Salt Palace Convention Center and in museums, galleries, bookstores, theaters, frame shops and furniture stores throughout Salt Lake Valley and in Bountiful, Ogden and Logan. Now imagine the logistics, the shipping costs, and the environmental impact—not to mention the insurance—to make this all come about! This vision will become reality as SLC welcomes the 59th National Council on the Ceramic Arts Conference to town March 26th through 29th.

While attendees will have access to panels, presentations and resources concerning the minutiae of the medium inside the convention center, both the ceramic diehards and folks with just a casual interest can enjoy hundreds of contemporary artworks on display without cost. The Cornerstone and featured exhibitions near the convention center and the Clay About Town exhibitions throughout Salt Lake Valley Ogden, and Logan are all free and open to the public (download a list of exhibitions here and view an interactive map here).

A student examines a work at “Permanence of Earth” at the Shaw Gallery on the campus of Weber State University. Image by Brandi Chase.

The National Council on the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) “engages and sustains a community for ceramic art, teaching, and learning.” Its growing membership includes more than 6000 artists, students, collectors, institutions and businesses from more than 20 countries. Because NCECA is both an inward- and outward-facing organization, its programming, publications and networking opportunities nurture and cultivate membership while preparing the next generation of ceramic devotees. Perhaps the best-known expression of their efforts is the eponymous conference held in a different U.S. city every year.

NCECA chooses host cities anywhere from three to five years in advance of the conference according to its logistical needs, the city’s arts ecosystem and the city’s alignment with the organization’s values and policies. Two years in advance of the conference, the volunteer board of directors appoints Onsite-Liaisons (“Onsites”) from the area. The Onsites inform the board about the location and ensure a successful event by raising awareness of ceramic art in the region and developing collaborative networks of local artists, galleries, educators, institutions, volunteers and vital resources outside of the clay community.

Like previous Onsites in other cities, Salt Lake City’s representatives Antra Sinha and Horacio Rodriguez, with the chair of the Exhibitions Committee, Dara Hartman, workshopped conference themes with the board. The board chose “Formation” (a nod to the shifting climate and geology surrounding the Great Salt Lake), then selected the best-aligned conference programming and exhibitions from 177 presentation proposals and 65 exhibition proposals submitted from the field.

NCECA Programs Director PJ Anderson emphasized the importance of keeping the themes and programming relevant and unique to the location in a recent conversation with Paul Blais of Potter’s Cast. “We try really hard to connect with communities in that area” said Andersen, “Not only with the ceramics community, but the community at large…sometimes we show up with 5,000 people—it’s great if they like us and are excited for us to come!”

This photo from February, 2025, shows preparations for Holding Space: Highlights from the NEHMA Ceramics Collection, at Utah State University in Logan. Image by Shawn Rossiter.

According to Sinha, more than 480 local, national and international artists are exhibiting this year. The board selected Featured and Clay about Town exhibitions come from proposals collected from the membership. These exhibitions align with the theme “Formation” and in many ways reflects the inside view of contemporary ceramic arts, within the ceramic community itself. The NCECA Cornerstone exhibitions come about outside of the Board’s work on programming and convention contracts. They arise from a collaboration between a professional curator and an eminent host museum or gallery. As such, these displays have an allusive rather than explicit relationship to the theme.

This is especially so for Judith Schwartz’s theme for the NCECA Annual, True and Real at UMOCA. In Executive Director Josh Green’s view, Schwartz’s theme engages with art practice as a way to investigate and develop concepts of identity when, increasingly, truth and authenticity are fragmented and subject to criticism. Green sees a connection in “the ways that artists experience a sense of formation through the process of creation and the ways that identity and evolving art practices play a role in the formation of culture.”

Installation view of “True and Real” at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. Image by Shawn Rossiter.

The evolution of NCECA’s Annual Exhibition exemplifies how changes in creation, practice, and identity shape culture. In the past, a panel of makers determined the Annual Exhibitions. NCECA leadership sensed that this insider approach may have limited ceramic arts’ mainstream acceptance into contemporary art discourse. In 2017, the Annual became a platform to foreground contemporary curatorial sensibilities and practices and a means to develop relationships with eminent museums and galleries. Green avers that under this approach professional curators hone their skills around ceramics, the rigor of ceramic art exhibitions deepens, and the scope of the field widens. NCECA shares conference themes with curators and museums under consideration but does not require a match. Instead, the board prioritizes the curatorial lens. A view outside of the NCECA initiated, Green contends expands ceramic arts’ appeal “as a living, contemporary art form, made by individuals embedded in systems of cultural expression and change.”

By changing its location each year, NCECA conferences create conditions where conversations about ceramic arts can occur in new regions, inside and outside of the ceramics community, thereby sustaining and growing the field. The event brings resources and the national and international scene into conversation with that of the host city. But because every location requires an army of volunteers on the ground to ensure a successful event, local efforts on the ground build relationships and create networks between ceramicists and non-ceramicists that remain in the community afterwards.

Hartman, who has been attending and even hosted exhibitions at NCECA since 2002, now has greater appreciation of the production and its potential benefits to Utah’s ceramics community after helping behind the scenes with this event. She sees the connections she and other volunteers have made as resources to build upon. “Even now,” says Hartman, she and other volunteers “are having conversations about how to continue building on this community afterwards.”

Patrons examine works at “Permanence of Earth” at the Shaw Gallery on the campus of Weber State University. Image by Brandi Chase.

Read all about NCECA’s 2025 Conference “Formation” at nceca.net.

15 BYTES COVERAGE OF THE EXHIBITIONS

Firing with Care: Artists Explore Sustainability in Ceramic Art

Fired and Formed: UMOCA’s Showcase of the Oldest Art Medium

At Phillips Gallery, Larry Elsner’s Legacy Continues with Elegantly Crafted Ceramic Works

At Phillips, Utah State University Artists Explore Clay’s Transformative Nature

Breaking, Mending, Remembering: The Language of Clay in the Kimball’s Traces

Finch Lane’s “Rebel Girl” is Empowerment in Clay

Earth in Flux: The Power and Permanence of Clay at WSU’s Shaw Gallery

Doomscrolling, Dreaming and Digital Decay: Aimee Odum at OCA

Good Girl Gone Subversive: Elyse Pignolet’s Feminist Delftware

The following is an incomplete list of exhibition receptions. Please check with venues to verify information.

Brandi Chase

Brandi Chase is poet, student, teacher and maker of pots (most often, but one never knows). She loves red lipstick.