In Conversation: The Sustaining Presence (2023 Exhibition)

Virtual Artist Talk

Moderated by Syd Carpenter. Panelists include Earline Green, Winnie Owens-Hart, Malcolm Mobutu Smith, Bobby Scroggins, and Lydia Thompson.

Clay Art Center presents a Virtual Artist Talk, “In Conversation: The Sustaining Presence,” moderated by Syd Carpenter, with participating artists from the Online Invitational Exhibition, The Sustaining Presence: Stalwarts of African American Contemporary Clay.

Artists in this virtual talk include Syd Carpenter, Earline Green, Winnie Owens-Hart, Malcolm Mobutu Smith, Bobby Scroggins, and Lydia Thompson.

*This Virtual Event was originally aired February 8th, 2023, 7pm Eastern Time via Zoom.

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"The African diaspora has influenced globally diverse expressions in music, dance, theatre, literature and the visual arts for more than a century. From the majestic and poetic works of Dave Drake in the 19th century to celebrated works of Simone Leigh in the 21st, Black clay artists have been a consistent community of innovative clay productivity. From pure abstraction to explicit representations of the experience of being Black in America, the presence of Black artists is here represented by notable stalwarts who have continued to creatively enhance the field. Many beginning their careers in the late 60’s and early 70’s, their work reflects the ongoing vibrancy, technical brilliance and creative insight of this group of artists." - Guest Curator Syd Carpenter

Syd Carpenter

lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, James A Michener Museum, Tang Museum of Skidmore College, and Fuller Craft Museum. She is a Professor of Studio Art, at Swarthmore College, PA.

Earline Green

is a career educator and renowned ceramic artist with artwork in public and private collections. She is best known for the 2006 Public Art Commission for the Paul Laurence Dunbar Library in Dallas, Texas. She is recognized internationally through the Paragon Kilns' Ads highlighting her Legacy Ceramic Tile Murals. She has artwork published in 500 Prints in Clay, 500 Tiles: Inspiring Collection of International Work and Image Transfer on Clay books, and Pottery Making Illustrated magazine. She was featured in the video series by Veria, The Art of Living Gallery, 2007; and she is the Potter in the Intro of the TD Jakes Potter's Touch Television Ministry, 2007-08. Ms. Green is an advocate for the Empty Bowls.

Winnie Owens-Hart

is an educator, artist, filmmaker, author, and critical thinker in matters of clay, art, and culture. She has taught at Howard University for more than 37 years and has conducted research, exhibited, and presented lectures internationally. She has worked with women in a pottery village in Ghana for more than a decade. As both a published author and curator, Owens-Hart has curated exhibitions primarily focused on contemporary African American artists and has also produced documentary films, including Style & Technique-Four Pottery Villages and The Traditional Potters of Ghana-The Women of Kuli. Over more than four decades, her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with work in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, The John Michael Kohler Art Museum, universities, and private collections.

Malcolm Mobutu Smith

is Associate professor of Ceramic Art and Director of Graduate Studies in the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. He earned his MFA degree from the New York College of ceramics at Alfred University in 1996. Smith’s professional activities include workshops, lectures and residencies. His works are represented by Wexler Gallery and are in numerous private and public collections including, Museum of Fine Art, Boston, New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, and Indiana State Museum.

Smith’s works, both ceramic and drawing, are guided by improvisations that fluctuate between volume and flatness. His vessels are inspired by the intersections graffiti art, comic books and organic abstraction. Generally, his ceramics forms rely on wheel-thrown and hand-built elements, most commonly presented as abstract sculptures reconning with race and identity or in vessel morphologies focused on cups, bottles, and vases. In this practice he merges these forms with his passion for Hip Hop and Jazz as locations for invention and prompts for the unexpected. Motivated by these concerns and his own multi-faceted/multi-cultural background Smith’s work form combinations references mashing impulses to arrive at the strange and new. His decorative objects operate as signifiers of our acculturation to aestheticized things reflecting our desires, imperfections and imaginations.

Bobby Scroggins

is a multi-discipline artist, writer, and musician. He has served as professor of ceramics and sculpture at The University of Kentucky since 1990. Scroggins studied sculpture and ceramics at The Kansas City Art Institute where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1976. He received a Master of Fine Arts Degree in the field of sculpture from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville in 1980 where he was a University and Ford Foundation Fellow. Since then, his works have received numerous awards such as first place purchase award in The Atlanta Life Insurance Company’s National Art Competition. Scroggins’ ceramic vessels and mixed media sculptures have been featured in exhibitions throughout the United States and in parts of Europe and China. He taught and served as chair of sculpture and ceramics in the Visual art division of the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts from 1999-2018. He was also a founding faculty member at The Northwest Academy of Arts at Ulster University in Northern Ireland. His “Mediaramic” sculptures have been featured in books such as Contemporary Ceramics and The Craft and Art of Clay, both by Susan Peterson. His “Fertility Vessels” and “Mediaramic” sculptures are also featured in a newly published book titled Contemporary Black American Ceramic Artists By Chotsani Dean and Donald Clark.

Lydia Thompson

is a mixed media artist and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The Ohio State University and her Master of Fine Arts degree from the New York College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Her awards include a Fulbright-Hays grant where she conducted research on traditional architecture in Nigeria, a VCUarts Institutional Grant for an Artist-in-Residence at the Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Denmark. She was also an AIR at the Medalta Ceramic Center in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada. Recently, she received the 2022-2023 Windgate Distinguished Fellow for Innovation in Craft award for an AIR at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences and a 2022-23 Artist Support Grant from the Arts & Science Council of Charlotte/Mecklenburg, NC. 

Her work blends the narratives of urban and rural human migration.  Her work has been included in galleries, art centers, and museums such as the Mindy Solomon Gallery, the Society for Contemporary Crafts, the Baltimore Clayworks,The Clay Studio, Clay Art Center, the Ohr O’Keefe Museum, the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, James A. Michener Art Museum, the Crocker Art Museum, Mint Museum and Northern Clay Center.  She has completed public commissions for businesses and her work is in private and public collections in the US, New Zealand, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy. She has conducted workshops for youths and adults, given public lectures and served as a juror and curator for national and regional exhibitions. She has held various arts administrative leadership positions at universities throughout the country which include, Texas Tech University, Mississippi State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. She served on the boards for NCECA (National Council of Education for Ceramics), NCAA (National Council of Arts Administrators), Lubbock Arts Alliance, Lubbock, TX and Clayworks in Charlotte, NC.  Currently she resides and maintains her studio in Charlotte, NC and is Professor of Art in the Department of Art & Art History at UNC Charlotte.