Featured Alumni

Renata Cassiano Alvarez

2021-2024 Visiting Assistant Professor of Ceramics

Renata Cassiano Alvarez is a Mexican-Italian artist born in Mexico City and currently the Visiting Assistant Professor in ceramics at the University of Arkansas School of Art. Cassiano Alvarez works predominantly in the medium of clay, in a search for developing an intimate collaborative relationship with material and material language. Influenced by archeology and history, she is interested in the power of the object as survival - objects with a sense of permanence and timelessness, and language as transformation; specially how adopting a different language can affect the physicality of the human body, and how this translates into material. Educated in Mexico, Italy, Denmark and the US, she has had the opportunity to work in different artistic environments, a cross-cultural and multimedia experience which has lead to the belief that craft is an evolving field and something that exists in motion. Her work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in public and private collections in Mexico, Estonia, Italy, Taiwan, Germany, Denmark, Latvia, China, USA and Slovenia. She works between her studio in Veracruz, Mexico and Fayetteville, Arkansas.

renatacassiano.com

Anthony Sonnenberg

2018-2021 Visiting Assistant Professor of Ceramics

Anthony Sonnenberg was born in Graham, Texas. He holds an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Washington, Seattle in 2012 and a BA in Studio Art with an emphasis in Art History and Italian from the University of Texas, Austin in 2009. On a societal and personal level, Anthony critiques the cycle of denial and decadence through lenses of the timeless veracity of Greek myth and excessively ornate Baroque and Rococo aesthetics. Decadence is a by-product of attempting to cope with the fear of uncertainty. Crowns and candlesticks—things made in the moments just before a crash—are the subject of his work. Anthony seeks to actively engage with and bear witness to the tragic and beautiful nature of this cycle. His sculptural assemblages are made using a range of materials including ceramic, fiber, metal, papercut, drawing, performance and photography. He has been the recipient of artist residencies at venues including the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Pilchuck Glass School, Yaddo Artist Residency, Ox-Bow School, and Lawndale Artist Studio Program. He is the recipient of the 2014 RPF Grant from The New Foundation and was a 2013 finalist for the Betty Bowan Award from the Seattle Art Museum. His work has been exhibited widely across the United States and his first museum solo exhibition, Still Stage, Set Life took place in 2018 at the Art Museum of South East Texas in Beaumont, TX.

www.anthonysonnenberg.com

Raven Halfmoon

BA Studio Art, Ceramics, 2014

Raven Halfmoon (Caddo Nation) is from Norman, Oklahoma. She attended the University of Arkansas where she earned a double Bachelors Degree in ceramics/painting and cultural anthropology. Her work has been featured in multiple exhibitions throughout the U.S. as well as internationally. Raven is currently based in Helena, MT where she is a artist in residence at the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts. She is represented by Gallery FRITZ in Santa Fe, NM.

http://www.ravenhalfmoon.com/

Chase Travaille

Ceramics Post-Bac, 2015-17

Chase earned his MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2019, having previously completed a post-baccalaureate program at the University of Arkansas in 2017 and having received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2015. He has taught and exhibited nationally and internationally. With a rural upbringing, Chase Travaille’s exposure to extreme urban wealth inspired him to commemorate his personal history through his work—gloves, slingshots, the invasive Kudzu, and tools for labor are suspended in a state of disbelief that questions social class, sexuality and material impossibility. He renders ceramic objects that are emblematic and characteristic of Southern Gothic literature. Dark humor, transgressive thoughts, desires and impulses are evoked by articulated objects that reference countryside motifs. Chase is currently residing in Helena, MT and is a long term resident at the Archie Bray Foundation of the Ceramic Arts.

Zoe Eagan-Gardner

BFA 2015

zoeeagan.squarespace.com

Zoë Eagan-Gardner (b.1993 Little Rock, AR) holds a BFA in Ceramics from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville and an MFA from California College of the Arts. Eagan-Gardner has exhibited at Honos Gallery, Rome; Red Lodge Clay Center, MT; Sugar Gallery, AR; and The Shed, AR. She has been a resident artist at CRETA Rome and Red Lodge Clay Center.

Benjamin Cirgin

Resident Artist, Instructor, and Technician, 2016-2018

www.benjamincirgin.com

Benjamin Cirgin (b.1979) is a maker and educator who worked as a craftsman building furniture and renovating historic homes before earning his BFA in ceramics and sculpture from Indiana University Bloomington, and his MFA in studio art from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, California. Benjamin’s work has representation in galleries across the country, has received numerous awards and grants in the field of art and craft, and serves as an advising board member for the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts residency program. In 2015 Benjamin co-founded the artist collective One + One + Two; four professional artists aiming to strengthen the San Francisco Bay Area arts community and beyond, providing short term residency opportunities and public programing. Benjamin is currently an Assistant Professor at Eastern Kentucky University.

Chris Drobnock

MFA Ceramics, 2016

Drobnock gained his BFA in Printmaking and Ceramics from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 2008.

He writes of his recent work, "I have been investigating and making based on the idea that all objects, all things, have a preconceived understanding of object use that is culturally imprinted in our psyche; into our subconscious or even deeper our subliminal mind. The sculpture presented references the mundane, the profane, things that we come in contact with on a daily basis. These objects have been taken for granted, but in focusing on presenting these things a rarified sense of awareness is given to them. By fabricating them they become symbolic or iconic, immediately understood as having a direct purpose or referencing specific action. Functionality is a truth, historically and ultimately assumed or pronounced utility objects that, collectively, we have faith in."

http://www.drobnock.com

Aimee Odum

MFA Ceramics, 2016

During her studies, Odum curated exhibitions for the University of Arkansas student gallery, sUgAR, and launched sUgAR Vision, an online platform mimicking the proliferation of Internet images, videos, and newsfeed, by posting streams of relational content. In conjunction with the State of the Art exhibition, Odum was invited to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Symposium Local Views to speak about her work and participate in a panel discussion. Additionally, she has been an Artist-in-Residence both at Nes Studios in Iceland and Springfield Pottery in Missouri. As a recipient of the Sturgis International Fellowship, Odum was a visiting student at Iceland Academy of the Arts in Autumn 2015 exhibiting her work at Mengi and The Living Art Museum. Interested in how instinct and culture formulate perceptions of the environment, Odum tackles both the desire and tension arising through new media, travel, and ecological exploration. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

http://www.aimeeodum.com

Kensuke Yamada

Resident Artist, Ceramic Tech, and Instructor, 2013-16

Kensuke Yamada was born in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan and received his MFA at the University of Montana in 2009 and his BA from Evergreen State College in Washington in 2005. Kensuke’s exaggerated, playful figurative work has been exhibited throughout the United States in many group and solo exhibitions. He was featured as an "Emerging Artist" by Ceramics Monthly in 2012, as well as being included in Edith Garcia's recent book, Ceramics and The Human Figure. Kensuke has served as a resident artist at The Archie Bray Foundation (2010-2011), Tyler School of Art at Temple University (2011-12), and The Clay Studio in Philadelphia (2012-13). Kensuke is an Assistant Professor of Ceramics at University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

www.yamadakensuke.com

Kelly Brenner Justice

Ceramics Post-Bac, 2012-13

Kelly Brenner Justice received a Bachelor of Art in English and a Minor in Studio Art from the University of Arkansas in 2010. After graduating, she continued to take ceramics courses from the University of Arkansas while also working at the Walton Arts Center. She has participated in exhibitions in New York, Colorado, Missouri, California, Washington, Arkansas, Rhode Island and the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana. Kelly received her MFA in ceramics in 2015 from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. She currently works as the Ceramic Studio Manager at the Flower City Arts Center (formerly known as Genesee Center for Arts and Education) in Rochester, New York, where she maintains an active studio practice.

http://www.kellyjustice.com

Bryce Brisco

BFA with Honors in Painting

Bryce Brisco originally hails from rural Northwestern Arkansas. After receiving a Bachelors of Fine Arts with Honors, in Painting from the University of Arkansas, he pursued the study of functional pottery in North Carolina, and Louisiana. He attended Ohio University, where he received a Masters of Fine Arts in Ceramics. Recently, after four years of being the Artist-in-Residence at the Appalachian Center for Craft, he has moved back to Northwest Arkansas to set up a studio. Bryce writes of his work, "Handmade pottery, especially that from deeply rooted traditions, has survived our culture’s technological advancements, based on its ability to provide a meaningful aesthetic experience in concert with its delivery or containment of food and beverage. Towards this end I employ locally sourced clays and ash, as well as cullet, to situate the pots more specifically to their site of origin"