NCECA’s Emerging Artists Fellowship program seeks to identify under-recognized artists doing extraordinary work in ceramic art and highlight them to an international audience. Nicki Green and Kathy King will join NCECA Director at Large Michelle Castro as the panel to select Emerging Artists through a review of statements, images, and support documents submitted for consideration. Emerging Artists will receive a $3,300 honorarium, provide articles to be published in the NCECA Journal, exhibit their work, participate in virtual programming, and present during the 2025 NCECA conference, Formation, which takes place March 26–29, 2025, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Exposure during the conference also includes participation in informal talks and special events. Additional opportunities for promotion may occur through other special programming.

NCECA believes that those creating work offering new/exciting/thoughtful perspectives on the ceramic medium, expanding upon genres of creative production and inquiry are qualified as candidates for its Emerging Artist Fellowship. An Emerging Artist may be at the early stages of receiving recognition for their work but is currently underrepresented through exhibitions or publications that might otherwise bring the work to wide attention. The intent of the fellowship is to recognize, cultivate, and amplify vital new voices of creative endeavor in ceramics, as well as to forge a longstanding relationship between NCECA and the community of recipients. The fellowship enables these artists to reach broader national and international audiences and impact discourse in the field.

Because the concept of emergence in the arts does not always correspond with a specific age, or other quantifiable terms, NCECA requires applicants to briefly describe why they perceive themselves to be at an emergent point in their careers and how they anticipate the fellowship will impact the trajectory of their endeavors. The review committee, at its discretion, may eliminate candidates considered to be beyond “emerging.”

ABOUT the JURORS:

Nicki Green is a transdisciplinary artist working primarily in clay. Her sculptures, ritual objects and various flat works explore topics of history preservation, conceptual ornamentation and aesthetics of otherness. She has exhibited internationally, notably in La Biennale de Lyon, Lyon, France, the New Museum, New York and Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, France. Green is a 2022 Tiffany Foundation Award Winner, a 2022 Nancy Graves Foundation Grantee, and a 2020 ART MATTERS fellow. She earned a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute (2009) and an MFA from UC Berkeley (2018). She is an Assistant Professor of Ceramics at Alfred University.

Kathy King is an active studio artist in the Boston area, an instructor, and the Director of the Ceramics Program and Visual Arts Initiatives at Harvard's Office for the Arts. Before returning to Boston in 2008, she was an Associate Professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA. She earned her BA in Studio Art with a major in Ceramics from Connecticut College, New London, CT, and her MFA from the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL. She has given workshops and lectures at over eighty-five colleges, schools, and art centers throughout the USA. The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts featured King as an Emerging Artist in 1999, a Demonstrating Artist in 2002, a co-juror with Mark Burns for the 2012 National Student Juried Show, and a lecturer and panelist on multiple occasions. She was awarded a Brother Thomas Fellowship by the Boston Foundation, Boston, MA, and a Craft Schools US Residency to the Shigaraki Ceramics Cultural Center. Other residencies include the Archie Bray Foundation in MT, the Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in ME, and Winter Residencies at Penland School of Crafts, NC. She currently hosts the podcast “For Flux Sake."

NCECA is pleased to announce the 11th annual NCECA Multicultural Fellowships. The purpose of this fellowship is to increase participation in the annual conference by historically underrepresented cultural backgrounds and to foster and catalyze participant’s capacities to expand awareness and deepen knowledge of the ceramic arts through learning, intellectual inquiry, and creative research.

Following Theaster Gates’s challenge to cultivate greater diversity in the field of ceramic art through simple, direct, and meaningful gestures of welcome, in 2015 NCECA launched the Multicultural Fellowship program with the goal of increasing participation in the annual conference by historically underrepresented cultural backgrounds. NCECA and its donors have generously supported efforts to offer an 11th year of Multicultural Fellowships in 2025 that will provide support for conference registration, membership, travel, and lodging costs. NCECA awarded six (6) fellowships in its inaugural year, with an increasing number awarded each year. This year NCECA is excited to award up to twenty (20) awards. Fellowship recipients will be eligible to receive up to $850 in support. The Fellowship recipients will be notified of the selection in November 2024 and publicly announced through NCECA E-News, social media platforms, and conference publications.

Current NCECA members are strongly encouraged to issue personal invitations to friends and contacts who they believe will provide value to the field at large, NCECA, the cohort collectively, and themselves. Up to twenty (20) NCECA Multicultural Fellowships will be awarded for participation in Formation, the 59th annual conference of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts hosted by Salt Lake City, Utah, March 26–29, 2025.
This fellowship is for first time NCECA conference attendees.
Candidates must not have previously attended NCECA’s annual conference;
and be of African American/Black, Asian, Latinx/Hispanic, Indigenous, Native American, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, North African, or other underrepresented cultural backgrounds and descent;
and be committed to advancing ceramic art and learning through their studios, research, work, and life.

NCECA is pleased to announce the 21st annual NCECA Graduate Student Fellowships. The purpose of this fellowship is to foster and catalyze graduate students’ capacities to expand awareness and deepen knowledge in the ceramic arts through learning, intellectual inquiry, and creative research.

The applicant must make a project proposal for use of the $2,000.00 award (may not be used for tuition), and must submit additional materials as specified in the Application Process. A maximum of three awards in the amount of $2,000 each will be made, of which $1,000 (half the total amount) will be mailed upon return of the signed agreement. The Fellowship recipients will be notified of the selection in November 2024 and publicly announced through NCECA E-News, social media platforms, and conference publications. The balance of $1,000 will be sent following completion of a project report with images once it has been reviewed and approved. Final fellowship reports are due by December 31, 2025.
RECOMMENDATIONS
To complete your application, NCECA must receive your two letters of recommendation by September 19, 2024 (11:59pm Eastern). Please inform your recommenders of this deadline in advance. It is the applicant's responsibility to inform their recommenders about the deadline and to ask for the letters of recommendation. NCECA will not contact recommenders directly.
All recommendations must be emailed confidentially by the recommenders to [email protected]