Newly Appointed Executive Director and Editor Chenoa Baker of Studio Potter
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – A LETTER FROM THE BOARD
Studio Potter is pleased to announce the naming of their new executive director and editor, Chenoa Baker.
After five years as editor and three and a half years serving first as interim and then as executive director, we extend our deepest gratitude to Randi O’Brien for her extraordinary leadership and service to Studio Potter. During her tenure, Randi expanded the breadth and diversity of voices represented in the journal and led our scrappy team through significant organizational transitions with strength, transparency, and care. We are grateful that she will remain part of the Studio Potter community as an advisory board member.
As we celebrate Randi’s contributions, we are equally excited to welcome Chenoa Baker as our new executive director and editor. Chenoa brings a rich combination of editorial, curatorial, nonprofit, and community-building experience. We look forward to the energy, ideas, and leadership she will bring as Studio Potter enters its next chapter.
We are thrilled to bring you, our readers, along with us as we explore this new chapter.
Baker will begin her service October 1st, 2026. Baker brings nearly a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and curator based in Philadelphia. She shares:
“Studio Potter found me. I approached the journal because it is a respected voice in ceramics that values critical scholarship, expanded notions of what ceramics is and can be, and spotlights various writing styles from academic to conversational to poetic.
“I am excited to roll up my sleeves in service to an organization that has given so much to me. I will prioritize capacity building by strengthening resources for expanded audiences, apprenticeships, and fresh multimedia content.”
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Biography:
Chenoa Baker is an executive, community builder, and arts leader whose work bridges the non-profit, public, and private sectors and academia. She brings rigor and cultural richness to programming, editorial content, and exhibitions.
Baker has worked on major exhibitions, including Gio Swaby: Fresh Up at the Peabody Essex Museum; Touching Roots: Black Ancestral Legacies in the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Simone Leigh at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Her writing appears in Hyperallergic, The Observer, The Brooklyn Rail, Material Intelligence, other outlets, and several print catalogues.
As the new executive director and editor of Studio Potter, Baker continues to build connections across the field while advancing her curatorial and editorial practice. Her current projects include co-curating a temporary public art project in Calgary (2028) and Ifé Franklin: Orun/Portal at the Fuller Craft Museum (March 6, 2027). Her practice has garnered Art Critics International, WBUR, and Rabkin Foundation awards.
My Studio Potter Story:
My journey with Studio Potter is marked by serendipity and intention. After a museum fellowship at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston in 2021 and a class at Harvard Ceramics, I sought a platform to share my research working on the Venice Biennale, a traveling solo exhibition, and a monograph on Simone Leigh. Through my research, Studio Potter found me. I approached the journal because it is a respected voice in ceramics that values critical scholarship, expanded notions of what ceramics is and can be, and spotlights various writing styles from academic to conversational to poetic. While Leigh was my foray into public ceramics scholarship and an extension of my interest in African diasporic craftways, Studio Potter further cemented my voice in the field.
In 2023, I received an invitation from former executive director and editor Randi O’Brien to join a gathering of writers, ceramicists, and board members in Red Lodge, Montana. It was nothing short of transformative. There I began dreaming of a future that I did not yet know would materialize in this role. During my trip, I took a photo of a standing wheel in the corner of an office space with clay slip splashed across the walls. There was a potter’s active and sacred creation space. When I shared the picture in lectures at Kaabo Clay Collective, Moore College, and Northern Illinois University, I asked: How would you describe this photo, and what stories could you imagine from this scene? When all the audiences observed the same photo, everyone had a different way of describing what was there and speculating about its possibilities. That shows the power of storytelling and the multiplicities present within ceramics.
By March 2026, I attended my first NCECA in Detroit through the Multicultural Fellowship, recommended by Lydia C. Thompson, whom I bonded with at the 2023 gathering in Montana. In Detroit, O’Brien recommended that I apply for the executive director and editor position as her tenure was coming to a close. After a journey of being part of this community, six years in the making, I am excited to lead the organization into the future.
Sincerely,
Chenoa Baker
Executive Director and Editor, Studio Potter