"Since the news broke about the budget crisis and the drastic measures that are now being proposed at WVU, I want to thank all of you students, alumni, friends, colleagues, and strangers who have reached out to offer support and help. You have reaffirmed that what we do matters and that art matters. Unfortunately, what is happening at WVU is not isolated, and I’m afraid it will continue as educational policies and priorities begin to shift in an era where publicly funded universities continue to receive less and less support from state legislatures." By Shoji Satake. This month's FREE article.

Trophallaxis focuses on the breast as a site of labor. In that, there is the juxtaposition of comfort and discomfort, familiar and unfamiliar: the cracking nipples and boot prints showcase bodily violence and the physical impact of breastfeeding. Fecund breasts with gold-plated areoles and nipples, constructed from terracotta, porcelain, antennae, and epoxy, suspending from the ceiling.

"Henry was beloved," said Reena Kashyap, director emeritus of the Clay Art Center. "He did his best. He was more concerned about the soul of the place than collecting rent from the artists. People who were there in those days remember it as an incredible environment."

What I learned while centering the clay and obsessing over the clay-to-water ratio in class for weeks is that clay particles are like platelets; water and earth dance around and are compressed in the process of sculpting. While the goal is cohesion, it starts as a suspension. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy, not to oversimplify it, is in suspension, as it is multiple different ideologies pulling apart rather than binding together. I learned this profound lesson from Simone Leigh’s "Jug" (2014).

The more I thought about this title, the more I puzzled over time's material mysteries. What does it look like for a form or an object to exist in the future? Does an object, like the lived experiences of the hands that built it, always appear relative to the past? How do I see time through an object?

Whether your work is rooted in environmental concerns or not, it is everyone's responsibility to be aware of how we affect the world around us. It is time for us to connect to the Earth through art.

Defining failure is an ambiguous paradox bolstered by its relationship to success. The two – failure and success – oscillate in a dichotomy without room for an alternative. They permeate normative ceramics through studios and art institutions as gatekeepers to creating in clay.

By presenting art-goers with a dazzling array of objects, they are forced to think of themselves in their own space, and the relationships that they, as consumers, have with objects of both nominal or grandiose values.

Green asks essential questions – both before and after their death – how do we care for fragile, shifting, and complex archives? And more so, how do we best care for the people, narratives, and ideas these archives represent?

. . . To work with a plan that is pre-set is one way of avoiding subjectivity. . . . The plan would design the work. . . . the artist would select the basic form and rules that would govern the solution of the problem.

To point out the act of speaking with precision can appear redundant and excessive, but within the need to overemphasize there is immense intentionality.

Haas doesn’t create traditional crockery or Asian ceramics, but he is informed by them. He isn’t making radical ephemeral sculpture, but he is informed by it. In the collide lies Haas and his evolution.

A timely reminder for those working in traditional craft disciplines that handwork can be deeply resonant beyond the categories used to define the works it produces.

Modest in appearance, simple in its curation, but big in intention; this gallery is a gem. Long may it, and shows like Tanio/Ignite, continue.