On View: Black Clay
In partnership with Pottery Northwest
December 3, 2025 through February 22, 2026
ARTE NOIR, in partnership with Pottery Northwest, presents Black Clay, spotlighting over 20 artists whose work shapes clay into narrative, memory, and resistance. From African American folk traditions to surrealism, spirituality, femininity, and the lived tension between racism and liberation, Black Clay honors the lineage of Black artists whose hands transform earth into legacy. Each work becomes a vessel of imagination, culture, and the rooted creativity of African and African American communities.
ART GALLERY
Meet the Artists
BIO
Sasa Aakil is an interdisciplinary Artist, Writer living and working in the DC area. She is a potter, painter, poet, print maker, and bassist and served as the 2021 Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate. Sasa has been featured in the Bethesda Magazine for her work as Youth Poet Laureate. She has also been featured in The Washington Post, as well as on WTOP for her work on the A Man Was Lynched Yesterday Project in 2020. She has shown sculptural and two-dimensional work at the American Poetry Museum and Black Rock Art Center. Sasa is the founder of If All the Trees Were Pens Open Mic and recently published her first chapbook, the culmination of all my despair and the music that saves me. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Howard University in 2024. More information about Sasa’s work can be found on her website www.sasaaakil.com.
BIO
Imani Anderson is an artist and designer based in Philadelphia, PA. Raised in Alabama, she developed an early love for art and later studied graphic design at the Savannah College of Art and Design. While building her career in design, she also cultivated a personal artistic practice in ceramics and other mediums. Anderson’s ceramic work is inspired by the organic forms and visual textures found in nature. Her process includes material experimentation and intuitive form-making, resulting in work that feels both grounded and expressive.
BIO
Kouassi Aragão is a San Diego-based ceramic artist, lab technician, and a graduate of San Diego State University with over nine years of experience working with clay. Her work is inspired by the natural world and deeply rooted in her diverse cultural heritage, such as her Portuguese, São Toméan, Congolese, and Cape Verdean roots. Each piece reflects her rich background with stories of resilience, beauty, and the connection to the earth. Ceramics became a pivotal part of Kouassis' life in 2016, following a car accident that shifted her focus from an active lifestyle of sports to a new creative outlet. The process of shaping and molding clay offers her a unique form of expression and freedom. When not shaping clay, Kouassi supports other artists in the studio by sharing technical expertise and a deep passion for the ceramic arts.
BIO
Michaela Ayers (she/her) was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska—where, to the surprise of many, Black people do exist. An interdisciplinary artist and art historian, her work lives at the intersection of spiritual development, creative expression, and nourishment.
Ayers first touched clay as a child and rediscovered it more intentionally in high school, alongside an early interest in collage. She went on to earn a BFA in Art History from the University of Kansas in 2008. In 2010, she moved to Seattle, Washington, where she founded Nourish, an experiential learning studio, and Black Her Stories, a storytelling and community engagement platform that celebrates the creative power of Black women past and present.
Now based in Detroit, Michigan, Ayers continues to create ceramics and collages as a form of healing and inquiry. Her practice explores the relationships between identity, memory, and spirituality—drawing inspiration from Romare Bearden, AfriCOBRA, and other visionaries of the Black Arts Movement. Through the lens of spiritual activism and the radical imagination, her work celebrates the liberatory ways Black communities care for one another and for Mother Earth.
In addition to her studio practice, Ayers is a seasoned facilitator who collaborates with communities and organizations to cultivate cultures of connection. By blending creative play, storytelling, and collage workshops, she creates accessible spaces for self-expression and collective care.
She lives and works in Detroit, Michigan.
BIO
Tay Baker, a current MFA student at Cal State Northridge, strives to depict black culture in a way that’s inviting for people willing to learn and understand the culture. He wants to explore ways that celebrate the culture instead of focusing on the everyday traumas they face as a people. Along with expressing black culture through clay, he uses thrown forms, textures, and glazes to show his love of the material.
BIO
Del Bey is an artist and arts educator whose work deals with the intangibility of meaning and the slipperiness of language and time. Coming from a background of documentary photography addressing social issues, she is now abstractly exploring the social issues through ceramics.
Twisted Ceramics are multi-function vessels created with organic forms in celestial tones and metallic colors. Some of the pieces themselves have layers of meaning through a juxtaposition of organic and inorganic with hand-dyed silk, chains, and charms woven through the vessel.
Each piece is twisted, woven, and marbled the way language and meaning are manipulated, even in our quotidian interactions. Whether simple misunderstanding or active deception, communications are never pure; there is always an act of translation.
BIO
Ronda Brown is an accomplished interdisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural steward based in Los Angeles. Her dynamic practice spans ceramics, painting, and digital media and is deeply rooted in her identity as an original "Black Indian" of the Americas-descended from Indigenous peoples whose traditions have endured despite centuries of erasure. For over 25 years, Ronda has honored her ancestral lineage through sacred dance, fire keeping, and land-based ceremonial practices that inform both her life and art.
With a career spanning more than three decades, Ronda has built a legacy that bridges spiritual practice, fine art, and transformative education. A master ceramicist, she led the celebrated Visual Arts Program at Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles for over 10 years. Now retired from formal education, she continues to enrich the art world through powerful works that center healing, memory, and the sacredness of land and lineage.
Ronda began her education at the historic Hampton University and earned both her BFA and MFA in Ceramics from the City University of New York. She is a recipient of numerous awards and scholarships, including the Jablonsky Award, the Mary T. Poppers Award for three-dimensional work, and the Connor Award in both undergraduate and graduate study. She currently serves as Co-Director and Consultant of the Artist Residency Program at Still-Life Studios in Santa Monica and Downtown Los Angeles, and leads the Zen Way HeArt Center, a land-based art and wellness retreat in Costa Rica.
BIO
An Oakland, CA native, Sierra Bundy is a self-taught mixed media artist with a current concentration in ceramics and collage. Works include conceptual sculpture, functional serveware and vessels, paper collages, linoleum prints, and greeting cards. Sierra was a recipient of the first BIPOC Artist Fellowship at Redbrick Studios (San Francisco, CA 2020). Since moving to Seattle in 2021, Sierra has vended at several local art markets; worked as art market coordinator at Metier Brewing (2024); participated in the apprenticeship program at Pottery Northwest (2024-2025); demoed for ACES Summer Series (2024); paneled at NWAAM’s Black Art Takeover (2025); and showcased work in Stoup Brewery and ACES Gallery (2025) and Pottery Northwest (solo exhibition 2024). Sierra currently works as a ceramics instructor and studio technician.
BIO
Japera Burres (she/they) is a ceramicist, artist, educator, caregiver, activist, musician, community organizer, videographer, photographer, mentor and friend. Japera is Black/mixed, a poet, writer, philosopher, theorist, and intellectual, homegrown in Seattle Washington.
She is based in the Capitol Hill Arts District and is an artist-in-residence at Blue Cone Studios, hosting weekly and monthly free, open-to-the-community, arts programming under the organization Forever Safe Spaces.
Curiosities and interests expressed through creativity may include but are not limited to: the feeling of pride, family, the natural world, connection, earth and ethnobotany, the body, ancestral work, the unexplained, social culture, hidden story-telling, emotion, experiment and manifestation, memory,
non-conformity, grief, the bizarre and silly, detachment, process and outcome…
BIO
Lea Cook is an artist and early childhood educator from Harlem and the Upper West Side of New York. They earned a BFA in Sculpture with a minor in Ceramics from Syracuse University and an MScEd in Early Childhood General and Special Education from Bank Street College.
As an artist, Lea works across clay, wood, fibers, and collage, treating materials—fabricated, found, or rescued—as vessels for storytelling. Their commissioned sculpture of Harriet Tubman honored Tubman’s use of song, quilting, and color as coded communication, reflecting Lea’s interest in art as a tool for memory, resilience, and activism. Lea has exhibited at Supermud Pottery, the Bank Street School for Children, and internationally in Florence, Italy, and has been recognized with awards such as the Congressional Black Caucus Visual Arts Scholarship and the Laura Adasko Lenzner Artist-in-Residence Fund. They are also the author and illustrator of The Power of Consent (2022) and I Like That Stuff! (2023), children’s books rooted in representation and equity.
In the classroom, Lea creates community-centered environments where curiosity drives collective projects—such as a compost study that grew into a rooftop garden and community restaurant. Through both art and education, they aim to cultivate creativity, critical dialogue, and belonging, empowering learners of all ages to see themselves as thinkers and changemakers.
BIO
Myia Crawford is a ceramic artist based in Memphis, Tennessee, who is dedicated to exploring the creative and transformative possibilities of clay. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Studio Arts at the University of Memphis. Myia also holds an associate degree in Culinary Arts, which serves as a foundation for her artistic inspiration and a unique lens through which she approaches her craft.
Her passion for working with clay stems from her dual background in culinary arts and science, which informs her ability to experiment with textures, forms, and functionality. This interdisciplinary perspective allows her to reimagine the traditional role of ceramics, pushing boundaries and transforming everyday materials into thought-provoking works of art. By blending technical precision with creative innovation, Myia’s creations challenge conventional expectations while remaining deeply personal and approachable.
BIO
As an interdisciplinary artist from Somerville, New Jersey, I have a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of California, Irvine, and a Master of Fine Arts in Fine Art/Illustration from California State University, Long Beach. I spent a year at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, where I traveled with the Medical Students Society and vaccinated children in South Lebanon. There I gained insight into public health, the consequences of war and the impact of community service.
My artistic aspirations rebooted during my tenure as a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia, where I taught art, science, and Spanish at a farm school and later created collaborative craft-based relationships with coffee-growing families. This experience, coupled with my contributions to the Peace Corps Health Handbook motivated me to pursue an MFA in art.
Viewing art as a means to engage and support communities, I explored various techniques to elaborate themes such as environment, politics, and abstraction. I am especially fond of metal work, ceramics, stitchery and repurposed materials. Fortunately, I was able to teach crafts for several years. Presently, I create print and book art. However, I remain committed to creating permanent art for public enjoyment and reflection.
Throughout my residency in Seattle, I have curated over 50 exhibitions in Seattle, Richland and Portland. I have participated in city, county and state selection panels; and held five solo exhibitions. My jewelry has been exhibited in Washington, Oregon, Beijing; Legnica and Gdansk, Poland; and Vilnius and Palanga, Lithuania.
BIO
Sally Gibson (b. 1997) is a third-generation Harmlemite multidisciplinary artist currently based in Inwood, NY. Her introduction to the arts began with inheriting her grandfather's Nikon F and her family’s photo archive. Through the intersection of photography, ceramics & fiber arts, Sally engages with her lineage and memory to preserve and reimagine her cultural heritage
BIO
Joanna Henry is a South Carolina-based painter, ceramist, and curator.
Joanna graduated from Winthrop University in 2011 with a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts with a concentration in painting and drawing. She also has her certification in Arts Management from the University of Massachusetts: Amherst. In addition to her studio practice, she currently works with the Catawba Indian Nation as their Artist Development Specialist in their Cultural Division, where she curates exhibits, and coordinates opportunities for tribal artisans.
Through her work, she analyzes the connection between her Caribbean heritage and African American culture. She uses contextual resources like family photos and shared oral histories to create compositions that depict the lives and cultures that influence her. Doing so she aims to reclaim the narrative of the black experience with each piece she creates.
BIO
Shirley Jackson aka LIONINTHETREES is a Black and Korean artist now residing with her beloved German Shepherd Dog in Central California after having called Northern Utah home for nearly 20 years.
Shirley holds a BFA in Visual Communications from Weber State University.
She works in both traditional and digital mediums, and has now found her true love in the world of pottery/ceramics.
Her body of work heavily incorporates wildlife and the natural world; her cultural heritage; and her own personal folklore and mythology—all the things and experiences that make Shirley who she is, is infused into her work.
Shirley is also the pioneer when it comes to running Kickstarters and crowdfunding campaigns to fund enamel pin projects. Her cutie Scrub Jay pin—which debuted in 2016 on Kickstarter—kicked off the enamel pin Kickstarter craze.
Shirley is someone who prides herself in creating authentic, human-made work that comes from her heart—it is art inspired by what she wants to create and see in the world. She strives to create modern artifacts—pieces that people can create their own meaningful connections to and will treasure forever.
BIO
Bianca MacPherson's (b. 1989) ceramic work solidifies the psychological unseen. Drawing from the complexities of American history and personal experience, her forms instigate dialogues around identity, race, and perception, forcefully pressing us to confront the tension between what is seen and what is assumed through abstraction. Originally from Buffalo, New York, her work has been exhibited nationally. MacPherson received her MFA from Penn State University and her BFA from Buffalo State University, and has participated in residencies at Penland School of Craft, Haystack Mountain School of Craft, and Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts. MacPherson has been selected to be a long term resident artist at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pamona, California.
BIO
Vina Nweke is a Nigerian multimedia artist working in performance, sculpture, sound, and textile. They hold a degree in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Williams College, and also pursued further training at the Middlebury College French School. Recently, they completed a residency with the Rainbow Serpent artist collective, and their pieces have been featured in Bunker Projects, ANMLY, and the Republic Journal. Their work has also been exhibited in the Berkshire Art Association College Fellowship Show and the Williams College Library Thesis Exhibition. They are currently based in Houston, TX, where they are developing new works integrating sculpture and live performance, continuing to explore themes of home, belonging, and being through mediums such as clay, metal, fabric, yarn— complemented with original musical compositions. Their work is informed by troubling those sticky boundaries of being often animated through the enervating processes that produce the blackened feminized body. They employ the use of tactile materials and immersive performances towards the creation of alternative modes of embodiments for this plasticized body. Currently, they are preparing for their solo debut, expanding on themes at the intersection of materiality and becoming.
BIO
Angel Ohome is an interdisciplinary artist based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, working primarily with clay to explore themes of ancestral memory, resistance, and emotional healing. Her practice is rooted in the belief that clay- earth itself- can act as a bridge between the physical and the spiritual, offering a tactile path toward self-discovery and restoration. Currently pursuing a graduate degree in art therapy and counseling, Angel integrates her artistic and therapeutic practices, seeing art as a transformative modality for investigating the inner world and reclaiming wholeness.
BIO
Deshun Peoples is a Ceramic Artist and Educator from Chicago. They/he is currently an Assistant Professor of Ceramics at Whitman College. Before Whitman, they completed a Master's Program in [Clinical] Social Work at the University of Chicago in 2024, while working as an Intern Psychotherapist at LiveOak, P.C, Lecturer at Chicago State University, and a Ceramics Studio Manager at Firebird Community Arts navigating the intersection of Trauma-Informed Community Mental Health and Visual Arts Practice. Peoples also holds a dual BA in Studio Art and Rhetoric from Bates College (2017), and an MFA in Ceramics from RISD (2021).
Peoples has shown their work widely, including a two-person exhibition at Whitman’s Stevens Gallery, and group exhibitions at Eutectic Gallery, Abel Contemporary, Lancaster Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, and The Clay Studio. His honors include a Fulbright Student Research Grant, American Craft Council Emerging Artist Cohort Grant, and NCECA Emerging Artist Fellowship.
BIO
Perri Rhoden is an abstract mixed media artist and muralist from Seattle, WA. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Arts from Howard University in 2013. Perri’s work is defined by vibrant texture, pattern, and color, often incorporating materials like acrylic paint, fabric, gel mediums, and wood. Her art explores themes of Black feminine energy, sensuality, and nature, maintaining an abstract quality that invites personal interpretations.
Deeply inspired by the natural world, Perri looks to plants, flowers, and landscapes as sources of beauty, rhythm, and resilience. She draws parallels between the curves and flow of natural forms and the sensual, fluid lines that shape her compositions. Music also plays a vital role in her creative process—guiding the movement, color choices, and emotional tone of her work. Whether it’s the pulse of a beat or the softness of a melody, music informs the energy and cadence of each piece.
Perri has exhibited in numerous local galleries, pop-up shows, and festivals, and was part of the Vivid Matter Collective behind the Black Lives Matter mural at the CHOP protest in Seattle. Her work—whether on canvas or the side of a building—is interwoven into the fabric of Seattle, from South Seattle to Ballard. Through vibrant expressions of liberation, resilience, and joy, Perri transforms both private and public spaces, leaving a lasting impact on the city and its residents.
.jpg)
BIO
Tammie Rubin is a ceramic sculptor and installation artist. Rubin's work is a meticulous exploration of the inherent power of objects as signifiers, wishful contraptions, and mythic relics. Her unique sculptures weave together familial and historical narratives of Black American citizenry, migration, ritual objects, and faith. She holds an MFA in Ceramics from the University of Washington in Seattle and a dual BFA in Ceramics and Art History from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Her recent exhibitions include venues such as Rivalry Projects, Buffalo, NY; Patel Brown Gallery, Toronto, Canada; C24 Gallery, New York, NY; Elisabeth Ney Museum, Austin, TX; the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; AGBS Christian-Green Gallery at the University of Texas at Austin, Project Row Houses, Houston, TX; Ruiz-Healy Art, San Antonio, TX; form & concept, Santa Fe, NM; and grayDUCK Gallery, Austin, TX. Rubin is a 2024 USA Fellow in Craft and the 2022 Tito’s Prize winner.
Rubin's artwork has received reviews in online and print publications such as Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, Oxford American, Art in America, Glasstire, Austin Chronicle, Sightlines, fields, Conflict of Interest, Arts and Culture Texas, and Ceramics: Art & Perception. She is a member of ICOSA Collective, a non-profit cooperative gallery. Born and raised in Chicago, Rubin lives in Austin, Texas; she is an Associate Professor of Studio Arts, Ceramics at Texas State University.
BIO
Darius Scott [BLVKLITE] is a D.C. based artist whose work centers black aesthetics and symbols of subversive resistance. Having studied Fine Art Sculpture at Howard University, BLVKLITE uses their artistry to uplift and inspire black youth as well as advocate for marginalized communities. Their work has been displayed across the national stage, at notable venues such as Art Basel Miami and the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum, among other art spaces. BLVKLITE actualizes dreams of liberation via a multitude of mediums including ceramic sculpture, mask making, and animated video.
BIO
Veronica Smith is a Seattle-based ceramic artist whose work invites moments of pause and presence. Rooted in a deep appreciation for simplicity and the beauty of everyday rituals, her pieces are designed to bring warmth, intention, and quiet joy into the home.
After losing both of her parents to cancer in her early thirties, Veronica found solace in clay. The process of shaping each vessel by hand became a meditation on impermanence - a way to honor time, touch, and the small details that make life feel precious.
Through her practice, Veronica seeks to create objects that encourage connection: a mug that makes you linger a little longer with your morning coffee, a vase that inspires you to bring home flowers for no reason at all. Each piece from Veronica Smith Ceramics is crafted with care, celebrating craftsmanship, love, and the beauty found in slowing down.
BIO
Ieisha Sweatmon is a mixed-media sculptor born and raised south of Atlanta, Georgia. She began sculpting in January 2022. Her sculptures are an expression of herself and how she views the beauty of nature and black women. She uses clay to sculpt her pieces, then, after they have been fired in the kiln, she paints them to truly bring them to life.
She has always loved art and expressing herself through her creativity. She loves beauty in things that are natural and wants to embrace that. Through her sculptures, she wants to highlight femininity and nature. She has noted that she has been inspired by the many women in her life, and she wants them to see themselves in her sculptures. She hopes that her sculptures evoke a sense of happiness and warmth for those who view them.
BIO
Willow Vergara is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work explores the neocultural intersections of her Filipino and Ghanaian heritage. Raised within multiple cultural frameworks, Vergara often experienced the tension of navigating two distinct backgrounds. Rather than seeing this as a limitation, she now embraces it as a generative space for inquiry; one that informs her art and invites dialogue about identity, hybridity, and belonging.
With a foundation in dance and movement, Vergara approaches performance as a language that communicates presence, embodiment, and cultural memory. This movement-based awareness informs her sculptural work, where the physicality of making becomes a reflection of identity in motion. Through ceramics and performance, she explores themes of cultural layering, memory, and displacement, offering a nuanced reflection of diasporic life. Her practice challenges fixed narratives and highlights the fluidity and resilience of emerging, intersecting cultural identities.
Currently pursuing her education at Santa Monica College, Vergara is actively developing her voice as both an artist and cultural activist. She has held internships at the Jean Paul Getty Center and the Santa Monica College ceramics studio, and she has presented at the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity (NCORE)—experiences that have deepened her commitment to community-based art and education. Her work continues to evolve from both the personal and political messages she feels a responsibility to carry forward.