ICAF Next Generation X RBC Emerging Artists Project
Meet the next generation of ceramic artists in Canada. Made possible through the support of the RBC Emerging Artists Project, we’re showcasing these artists virtually as a window into the innovation taking place in post-secondary Ceramics programs across Canada.
Alberta University of the Arts
Kelsey Jewel Bullock
Kelsey Jewel Bullock is a multidisciplinary artist focusing on ceramics and silk screen printing. Exploring the intersection of these mediums, Kelsey's work encompasses a dynamic range of forms, textures, and visual motifs, infusing her work with layers of meaning and symbolism. A graduate of the BFA program in Ceramics at the Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, Kelsey brings a fresh perspective and innovative approach to her practice. With 8 years of experience in ceramics, she is honing a unique artistic voice characterized by vibrant colors, intricate patterns, texture, and a playful sense of experimentation. Kelsey's philosophy is rooted in the belief that art has the power to evoke emotion, provoke thought, and inspire change. Her work invites exploration, encourages dialogue, and challenges perceptions, reflecting a deep commitment to artistic expression.
Instagram: @kelseyjewel.kb
Website: kelseyjewelbullock.com
Stephanie Arnot
Stephanie Arnot is an emerging Canadian ceramic artist originally from the west coast. She previously studied volcanology, before graduating from Selkirk College’s Ceramics program, and continuing to Alberta University of Arts to complete a BFA in Ceramics. She enjoys merging colour, material, and textures into fantastic objects, whether sculptural or functional. Her current focus is on dynamic geologic systems and the relationship between the earth and humans, using a visual vocabulary that explores natural formations and processes. Her ceramics often incorporate minerals and aggregates she has collected or created herself, bringing them to the forefront of how the viewer interacts with her work.
Instagram: @stephaniearnotart
Website: stephaniearnot.com
Concordia University
Armando Cuspinera
Armando Cuspinera is an interdiscplinary artist from Veracruz, Mexico. He is currently residing in Montreal, Canada pursuing an MFA in Sculpture and Ceramics at Concordia University. He holds an MDes in Industrial Design from UNAM and a BFA in Fine Arts from UDLAP. In 2023 he participated in the exhibition A.llegadxs at FOFA gallery in Montreal, CA. In 2022 he participated in XLII Encuentro Nacional de Arte Joven in Aguascalientes, MX. In 2021 he completed an artistic residency in ceramics at ÁnforaStudio, located in Mexico City, MX. His work seeks to make use of the language of everyday objects through traditional techniques and modern technologies in order to propose ways to relate to the world, with the ecologies that are formed and the living beings that conform it.
Instagram: @armando.cuspinera
Samuel R. Duquette
Samuel R. Duquette (they/them) is a trans-queer Québécois Canadian contemporary artist based in Tiohtià:ke | Mooniyang | Montréal, unceded indigenous land. Currently pursuing a BFA in Ceramics and Sculpture at Concordia University, Sam is also deeply engaged in ceramic research and development at the Kinawind lab. Their artistic practice navigates the nexus of tradition and technology, delving into the materiality of the earth, gender fluidity, and archaeological heritage. They are currently involved in the collective Everything Already Present which focus their research work on exploring locally sourced earth materials and alternative ceramic techniques. Sam's artistic journey includes a transformative month-long field school residency at the Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Denmark where they immersed themselves in diverse wood firing techniques. Their work has recently graced group exhibitions at Art Mûr, Eastern Bloc, Jano Lapin gallery, Espace Loulou, and Atelier Galerie 2112.
Instagram: @studio_samuel
Website: studio-samuel.com
Emily Carr University of Art + Design
Bella Blanca
Bella Blanca’s ongoing series of works entitled “Face Pots'' explores narrative and selfhood through personification of vessel forms. Each piece is improvised, allowing the artist to form a material partnership by way of intuitive building. Bella creates vessels with a gentle yet commanding presence in a variety of scales, articulating her sensorial fascination with clay through texture created by pinching coils together. Her current body of work investigates the idea of coming into being, and all the ambiguity that comes with it. In her practice, Bella employs and alters traditional methods of wheel-throwing, hand-building, and glazing. By deviating from the norms of making she is able to explore the animate qualities of clay, and create works which depict a tactile conversation between herself and the material. This process has created a space to express her experience as a woman of mixed ethnic and cultural identity through the use of visual metaphor.
Instagram: @bellablancastudio
Website: bellablanca.myportfolio.com
Sarah Montroy
Sarah is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Vancouver, BC, whose work integrates textile forms and textures with clay and other mediums, engaging with themes of brokenness, generational traumas and traces, and making as a method of mending and healing. After beginning her studies in Interior Design, Sarah switched her focus to fine arts, completing a diploma at Langara College, followed by a BFA at Emily Carr University. Her current series of works explores the patchwork quilt as a cultural motif & tradition, creating wall installations of aged, fabric-like fragments crafted out of paper clay, made from her own shredded writings and the collected writings of family members. Sarah employs the quilt as a vessel of memory and multiplicity, with each clay remnant holding the laughter, tears, and hopes of the maker, bringing the pieces together in an attempt to acknowledge what is broken, and stitch together something new.
Instagram: @s_montroy_art
Website: sarahemontroy.wixsite.com
New Brunswick College of Craft & Design
Alex Fieldhouse
Alex Fieldhouse grew up in Chatham, Ontario. Her first experience working with clay came while slab building a set of mugs in high school. After being introduced to the medium, she began spending all of her lunch breaks in the art room working with clay. She then purchased a kiln and established the small business Alex’s Ceramics soon after, starting out as a hand builder. At nineteen, she moved to New Brunswick to pursue a full-time ceramics program at NBCCD (New Brunswick College of Craft & Design) where she learned how to throw on the wheel. She is now proficient in both hand building and wheel throwing. Alex’s creative spirit often leads her to push the boundaries of functional work, evident in her recent foray into crafting lamps that echo the breathtaking beauty of the natural world.
Instagram: @alexsceramics
Website: alexsceramics.com
Bryn Haines
Bryn Haines is a twenty-two-year-old from New Brunswick who discovered her unwavering passion for ceramics while pursuing a Bachelors of Applied Arts Degree at the University of New Brunswick Fredericton and The New Brunswick College of Craft and Design. Growing up near the East Coast waters, Bryn's love for nature grew strong. The influence of rocks, tides and the textures found on the coast play a significant role in many of her pieces. Bryn's work reflects the dramatic effects of meticulous glaze application, inviting viewers to feel the energy she infuses into each creation. Describing herself as an easygoing, yet slightly chaotic human, Bryn aims for her art to embody both calm and storm, offering a unique contrast that mirrors her inner self. Firmly believing in the transformative power of doing what one loves, Bryn's pottery becomes a conduit for shared experiences—imbued with time, energy, and passion.
Instagram: @brynsconceptions
Nova Scotia College of Art & Design
Mykaela Shandro
Mykaela Shandro (b. 2000) is a multidisciplinary artist from the prairies of Alberta who unravels the complexities of memory, family history, and narrative time through ceramics, printmaking, and textiles. Her ceramics practice is elemental and ephemeral, processing found materials from significant locations and times in her life. She also draws inspiration from old family photographs and her mass of collected “memorabilia garbage” to construct two and three-dimensional works that deal with the range of emotions that memories hold for her. In her craft practice, she engages traditional methods of making with her found materials to create narrative work that ebbs and flows between familiar and unknown. As she creates, Shandro is focused on capturing the small details that stand out in a memory; a worn quilt’s faded pattern, the bristliness of laying in dry grass, the bittersweetness of knowing the old ways of things, never to be again.
Instagram: @cera.myk
Sam Holyk
Sam Holyk (she/her) is a ceramic artist based in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, NS). Holyk finds inspiration through a deep emotional connection with clay, and the ceramic process. Only recently in adulthood being diagnosed with ADHD, dyscalculia, and anxiety; Holyk has had a lifelong struggle to find where she fits in and where she excels. Her first ceramic project in high school art class would be one of the first times she felt like she could exceed at something. Holyk will be graduating in spring of 2024 from NSCAD University with a bachelor of fine arts majoring in ceramics. Holyk currently finds interest in the labor-intensive process of making handbuilt (pinched) ornamented vessels, that play off of aesthetics from her early 2000s childhood. Holyk finds satisfaction in producing vessels with juicy colors, and tactile surfaces. She aims to evoke feelings of joy, excitement, and nostalgia in anyone who interacts with her work.
Instagram: @sammmanthaholyk
Sheridan College
Natalia Lopez
Natalia Lopez is a Colombian Industrial designer based in Canada who discovered ceramics as a medium to communicate wonder. She uses contrast, movement, and surface design to converge memories, worldviews, and imaginarium.
Veronica Sarata
Veronica Sarata was born and raised in London, Ontario. There she attended H.B. Beal’s advanced art program for two years, after which she continued her studies at Sheridan College in the Craft and Design program, specializing in ceramics. She has now finished her third year. Veronica focuses on sculptural ceramics, specifically animal figures. Her work revolves around the idea of contained emotion, using animals as symbols for emotions and relationships between people. When creating, Veronica typically uses innocent and carefree animal figures and takes time to sculpt their faces and give them human emotions of fear, anxiety, and discomfort. The animals are posed in uncomfortable ways, squirming to get out of the situations they are placed in. Through this, Veronica aims to showcase the universal experience of emotion.
University of Manitoba
Netsanet Shawl
Netsanet Shawl is originally from Ethiopia, now living, studying, and working in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on environmental issues, memory, place, nature, and culture. Her preferred mediums are ceramics, painting, and textiles. Netsanet graduated with Honours from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2022 and is currently in the first year of a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Manitoba. Balancing her passion for art with her roles as a wife and mother of two is a fulfilling journey that adds depth and inspiration to her creative process.
Instagram: @netsanet4784
Takashi Iwasaki
Born in Japan in 1982, Takashi Iwasaki has been based in Winnipeg for the past 20 years. Primarily working with painting, embroidery, woodworking, and large-scale public artworks, he discovered clay while in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Manitoba. With its unique malleability and materiality, clay provides a new means to express his world and his vision. Iwasaki's main interest is to capture pleasurable moments through his artworks.
Instagram: @takashi.iwasaki.art
Website: takashiiwasaki.info
University of Regina
Ayal Heinrichs
Ayal Heinrichs is a ceramic artist currently working towards a BFA in Ceramics at the University of Regina. Having grown up along the rainy west coast of British Columbia, her work, both functional and sculptural, is heavily influenced by the landscapes that have surrounded her. Ayal is interested in the roles functional pottery has played throughout history and its potential to provoke thought while bringing beauty into our domestic daily rhythms. Her sculptural ceramic works explore themes of belonging, place, and personal growth. In 2021, she received a Certificate in Ceramics from Kootenay School of the Arts in Nelson, BC. Before moving to Saskatchewan to complete her BFA, Ayal apprenticed with several ceramic artists throughout BC, gaining practical experience and mentorship. She has participated in several group shows, including “Smoke and Fire” (2023), “Forged in Flame” (2023), and “Murmurations” (2024).
Instagram: @ayalceramics
Website: ayalceramics.com
Sabine Wecker
Sabine Wecker was raised in Germany where she completed a five year education in the ceramic arts with a Master-Craftsmanship Diploma. After a twenty-year break, Wecker dove back into clay at the University of Regina completing a BFA in Visual Arts in 2021. In 2020, she was awarded the C.D. Howe Scholarships for Art and Design by the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. In the fall of 2021, Wecker started her MFA program with a ceramic focus under the supervision of Ruth Chambers at the University of Regina with a Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Canadian Graduate Scholarship.
Instagram: @weckerami
