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Anna Kruse received her Master of Fine Arts at the State University of New York at New Paltz in 2021. She completed a Post Baccalaureate at the Oregon College of Art and Craft and obtained her B.A. with honors in Psychology and Studio Art from the College of Wooster. In the fall of 2022, Anna was the Visiting Artist Scholar and Teacher at Southern Oregon University before moving into the position of instructor in ceramics. She recently received the Visual Arts Grant from the Haines and Friends Visual Arts Grant Program. In 2021 she was nominated and awarded the International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture. She was invited to be a resident artist at Township 10 during the summer of 2020 and completed a residency at Peninsula College. Anna has shown her work across the contiguous United States.

Based in Kansas City, MO, Maura Wright is a visual artist primarily working in earthenware clay and painted paper. Inspired by the exuberance of Rococo ornamentation, the encompassing nature of interior fresco wall painting, and the expressiveness of touch found in American folk art, her ceramic vessels and still life sculpture embrace the evocative capabilities of clay. Vases, tureens, and basket forms are obsessively embellished with drippy glazes, embedded mosaics, pinched florals, and ostentatious handles. Bold and colorful patterns are paired with a reverence for romantic classical forms.

A trained ceramicist, Wright’s practice has expanded to include large-scale installations depicting the domestic interior. Painted environments are intended to invoke feelings of sensuality and dreaminess with a touch of nostalgia for things that never were. When paired with ceramic objects, the resulting pastiche reflects the impropriety and insouciance of contemporary culture.

Wright earned her M.F.A. from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2018 and a B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2013. Her work has been featured in several publications, including Architectural Digest, Surface Magazine, Curbed and Dwell Magazine.

After six years in Montana, she relocated her studio to the midwest during the summer of 2024.

Jason Lee Starin has shown in numerous group exhibitions throughout the USA, most notably at Atlantic Gallery, NYC., Katherine E. Nash Gallery, MN., Law Warschaw Gallery, MN., Woodmere Art Museum, PA., Gravity Gallery, MA., American Museum of Ceramic Art, CA., The Center for Craft, Creativity  and Design, NC., GCA Gallery, NYC., Arizona State University Art Museum, Ceramics Research Center, AZ., The Clay Studio, PA., and San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, TX. Starin has held artist residencies at The Archie Bray Foundation from 2024 to 2026, at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in 2023, and at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia from 2015 to 2019. In 2017, Starin received an Independence Foundation Fellowship Grant to research his interest in geomythology during a two-month stay at the NES Artist Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland. From 2015 to 2020, Starin served as a faculty member as well as the ceramic shop supervisor and technician in the craft and material studies program at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. During that time, he also taught advanced handbuilding classes at The Clay Studio. From 2013 to 2014, Starin was the lead ceramic technician and studio manager for the ceramic department of Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham, OR. He has held positions with BDDW, LLC., Mudshark Studios, LLC., Michael Curry Design, Inc., The Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, as well as Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University. Starin received his M.F.A. in applied craft and design from Pacific Northwest College of Art and Oregon College of Art and Craft in 2011, and his B.F.A. in ceramics from Grand Valley State University in 1999. In 1998, he studied conceptual art and sculpture at Kingston University, Kingston, UK.

Artist Statement

Through intuitive making with my hands, my artwork strives to extend the role of functionality beyond mere utility and towards a possibility that the making act is a haptic necessity that defines and sustains our human identity. Employing ceramics, discarded objects, and construction materials to create sculptures, my art practice attempts to find connections between craft, escapism and emotional awareness. Artworks reference geological landforms, structural geometries, and the myths of creation and survival that intertwine our imagined and physical identities and surrounding realities.

Image: 

Left: Jason Lee Starin, Ceramic stoneware, cone 5, oxidation glaze, 19”H x 18”W x 7.5”D, A wall-hanging ceramic sculpture incorporating geometric and organic abstractions.

Right: "Yellow Amphora," Maura Wright, 2024, earthenware, slip, glaze, luster, 32” x 18” x 18”