In the PROFILES section: 7 ceramic artists from Switzerland, Germany, USA, Austria, Czechia. Coverage of EXHIBITIONS and EVENTS in Germany, GB, USA, Romania, Finland, Cameroon, Greece, Cuba, China, France, Algeria, China. In the section ARTIST JOURNAL, we present Irén Tété – USA / Bulgaria. And we also have interviews with artists IN STUDIO as well as listings of Dates, Courses, Seminars and Markets.
NEWS
PROFILES
Rita de Nigris – Switzerland
Heidrun Bastian – Germany
Barbara Lienhard – Switzerland
Robert King – USA
Bianca Tschaikner – Austria
David Metaxas – Czechia / Isle of Man
EXHIBITIONS / EVENTS
Ceramics Market – Höhr-Grenzhausen – Germany
Vibrant Joie de Vivre – Höhr-Grenzhausen – Germany
Refigured – London – GB
26th Competition and Symposium – San Angelo – USA
Gloria Grati – Bucharest – Romania
Diagonale11 – Posio – Finland
King of Bamoun Part 1 – Bamoun – Cameroon
Biennale of Contemporary Keramics – Rhodes – Greece
Elena Arosio – Oldenburg – Germany
Fernando Velázquez Vigil – Havana – Cuba
Birthplace of Chizhou Ware – Pengcheng – China
Ceramics Generation – Limoges – France
Sahara Clay Project – Tindouf – Algeria
AIC/IAC Conference – Jingdezhen – China
BOOKS
New literature
ARTIST JOURNAL
Irén Tété – USA / Bulgaria –Monika Gass
IN STUDIO
Claudia Biehne – Evelyne Schoenmann– Interview / Developing Skills
DATES / Exhibitions / Galleries / Museums
COURSES / SEMINARS / MARKETS
ADVERTISEMENTS
PREVIEW
LET’S PARADISE
In Biel, where the COSMOS company once manufactured bicycles for the Swiss Army’s tradition-steeped cycling unit, then producing mobile hospital furniture in peacetime, since 2015 Rita De Nigris’s workshop has been located in the basement. Such places of transformation hold a special fascination for her. Next door to the Officina Helvetica association – a workshop for typesetting, printing, lithography, art and graphic design, where historic machines and equipment from Biel’s printing workshops bring together people who are passionate about the former crafts of typesetting, printing and lithography – the artist feels right at home. Her word-based works point the way to her studio: oval serving platters, densely decorated in blue and white with emotive words such as LOVE, CARE, ACT, RUN, EXIT, ODEM, LOST PARADISE – impressions of large wooden letters from the collection of the neighbouring print workshop. They reflect the artist’s inner world, caught between world-weariness and a longing for paradise lost, between life, love and death.
(Maria Schüly)
Rita De Nigris
Heidrun Bastian’s studio stands in the heart of the countryside. She has created a space for herself to work in a village that has been incorporated into the city of Cottbus. A “Fliess” – the name given to the natural watercourses to which the Spreewald owes its distinctive character – frames the property. For Bastian, this setting is both a source of inspiration and a source of energy. Her works bear the imprint of Sorbian, the ancient language and culture of the Western Slavs, which has been preserved there for centuries. Her grandmother still spoke Sorbian, but she herself never learnt it. The texts emerge from the depths of the vessel’s surface, layer by layer. It was once scarcely a subject of interest, but today she engages with this unique culture and draws important inspiration from it. Vergangene Schrift (“Bygone Script”) or Schriftfragmente (“Script Fragments”) are the titles of sculptural objects which, through the handwritten texts applied using screen printing, symbolise individuality and the uniqueness of the written word – its beauty and fragility. Heidrun Bastian draws upon the uniqueness of her homeland to transform it into the here and now.
She constructs her works from slabs of clay. Her vocabulary of forms is often inspired by organic phenomena, but is never a mere reproduction. The sculptures follow their own path, moving away from symmetry to find their own unique momentum.
(Doris Weilandt)
Heidrun Bastian
In her historic farmhouse in Oberglatt, near Zurich, Switzerland, ceramict Barbara Lienhard creates vessels characterised by glazes she has developed herself, salt, ash and the unpredictability of wood-firing. A conversation about the magic of various materials and techniques, the constant process of learning, and the role of other creative people in her own artistic process.
You grew up in a family of artists. How did that shape you?
My mother was a painter, my father a copywriter and satirist. Creativity was part of everyday life in our home. Working with materials, shapes and colours, and personal expression came naturally to me from a very young age, which has had a lasting influence on my view of aesthetics and quality.
And yet you didn’t become a potter straight away.
Why was that?
When I was younger, people used to say, “First train for a job that will earn you a living. You can always be creative afterwards.” So I took a detour before I was able to pursue the career I have today.
(Julia Heim)
Barbara Lienhard
The Hindu Kush Notebook:
Journey to a Forbidden Land
I first heard about the secret, rebellious poetry of women in the Hindu Kush in 2019 in Lahore, Pakistan.
I was invited to be an artist-in-residence at the Lahore University for Arts and stayed with Professor Sajida Vandal in Lahore.
Professor Vandal was a remarkable figure. Not only was she a cofounder of the university, but as an architect, educator and expert in cultural heritage, she possessed a wealth of knowledge which she was happy to share with me. She also had a keen sense of humour and an appreciation for the subversive, and in the evenings she would happily regale me with stories and anecdotes at the kitchen table.
And one evening she told me about the secret, rebellious poetry in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. I was fascinated – and I knew immediately that I had to travel there. We began to make plans.
Then the pandemic struck, and we had to wait another three years for our exploratory trip, but in the spring of 2022 the time had finally come.
Bianca Tschaikner
On September 29, 2025, I received an invitation letter from the Sultan King of the Bamoun. In the letter the King expressed his desire to establish good relations between the museum and our organization, the International Academy of Ceramics. Back in late April 2025, I was invited to participate in the ARTMIABO International Arts Festival in Lagos, Nigeria.
West Africa boasts a rich cultural heritage, and Nigeria alone has been the site of several highly developed ancient African civilizations. One example of many is the Nok culture (1500 BCE – 500 CE), renowned for its numerous terracotta head sculptures. The Kingdom of Benin emerged around the 11th century CE. Its various sculptures, including bronze, ivory and wood carvings, are considered extremely impressive. Of particular note are the numerous lost-wax cast bronze artefacts, some praising the glory of the king and others recording Benin court life and ceremonies. During the 14th century, the Kingdom of Ife (c.1200-1420) was once one of the largest urban centers in West Africa. It is known for the Ife heads, life-sized, naturalistic heads made of pottery, stone and metal, which made an international impact when unearthed. While in Nigeria, I also visited the National Museum and the Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art at the Pan-Atlantic University.
(Guangzhen Zhou)
Nok style sculptures
CERAMICS BY ELENA AROSIO
Exhibition runs until 6 September 2026 at Oldenburg State Museum of Art & Culture
Damm 1, 26135 Oldenburg, Germany, www.landesmuseum-ol.de
Elena Arosio is Italian – from Sand in Taufers in South Tyrol. She began her training in ceramics in Monza, at the Experimental Art School, went on to obtain a Bachelor’s degree from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, and went on to undertake further training at the ceramics school in Montelupo, near Florence, as well as residencies and collaborations at renowned ceramics studios. She has recently undertaken residencies in Italy and China. The artist’s highly distinctive style clearly reflects her professional yet inspired approach to materials and fire in the ongoing development of her visually and tactilely sensitive, multilayered “visions”.
Each of her spherical vases, her Moon Jars, and the deep-sided bowls crafted on the wheel bears a painterly, detailed yet tactile imprint of the fire, which leaves its mark during the saggar firing – in a smoky and difficult-to-control fiery atmosphere. Delicate and powerful zones – brown, lacquer-black, gleaming gold and pure white – create timeless landscapes. Space for the imagination.
(Monika Gass)
Exhibition opening at Schloss Oldenburg
Landesmuseum für Kunst & Kultur
About 500 members of the AIC/IAC and non-members participated in this well organized Congress and enjoyed a full bunch of lectures and excellent presentations about ceramics from speakersandprofessinals – who came from all over the world!
With this 52nd Congress and the General Assembly of the International Academy of Ceramics in this well known historic city and famous center of porcelain in China, the international ceramics community celebrated ceramics: in a wide network, spanning continents and different cultures in or with ceramics art, crafts, curating, writing, technical and environmental aspects, from tradition to future, from exhibition to firing, from experiment to finesse, – including all the lovely ways of „making“.
“Inheritance and Innovation”, the theme of this Congress, intended to explore the dialogue between tradition and innovation in ceramics and considering its cultural, economic and technological relevance in the modern era.
Jingdezhen, known for its 2,000 years of pottery-making history, including more than 1,000 years of royal kiln production, represents the essence of Chinese ceramic heritage.
(Monika Gass)
Lauren Mabrey, USA Glaze Flow Cylinder No. 2
Irén Tété USA / Bulgaria
EMERGING ARTIST, NCECA 2026, Detroit
“My ceramic sculptures entangle the permanent and fleeting”
The EMERGING ARTISTS EXHIBITION at the NCECA is one of the most interesting events every Saturday after the conference. In 2026 in Detroit, I saw Irén’s work on plinths and walls in her boot and then her presentation: it deeply impressed me.
Irén Tété, born 1990 in Sofia, Bulgaria, now living in San Diego, CA, is a sculptor whose practice centres on ceramics, architecture and language. She describes her work as an amalgam “between industrial-infrastructural and human-organic vocabularies, questioning boundaries of belief, structure, language, belonging”. As a woman and an immigrant, born in Bulgaria during the fall of communism, her experiences are shaped by the tension between personal history and collective memory.
In 2009-2013 she did her Bachelor of Science – BSC, Kinesiology and Health Sciences, Art Minor, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, and in 2016-2019 her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE.
Tété is a researcher: expected roles of ceramic, of language, of women, of identity, embracing a pluralistic approach in developing forms and installations and her career. She examines the materials she uses in every forming process, analyses cracking, risks adding dry clay into wet, and tests glaze recipes in case she wishes to find and to use colours linked to her ideas for a special piece of work. Her ceramics is architecture, true, hard labour but a space to be, a poetic language as well.
(Monika Gass)
Irén Tété
Claudia, I like to start my interviews by asking about your training. How did you get started as a ceramist?
I developed an interest in ceramics at a very early age.
Having attended traditional pottery classes while I was at school, I came across an advert in New Ceramics placed by a woman from Luxembourg [Marylene Schmit], who was looking for an au pair who would also like to use her ceramics studio. I went to see her and we hit it off straight away.
During the year I spent there, I also had the opportunity to take courses at the École des Beaux-Arts. I wasn’t primarily thinking about a career at the time, but the desire to do something creative began to take shape.
Once I’d been captivated by three-dimensional work, back in Leipzig, I began an apprenticeship as a thrower. The ability to throw on the wheel then proved to be a good foundation for my glass and ceramics degree at Burg Giebichenstein in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt. I was also able to work asymmetrically there and broaden my awareness in subjects such as colour, light and space, as well as interactive design and nature studies. Glass was also a focus. I concluded my time in Halle with a two-year postgraduate programme and moved into my studio at the Leipzig Baumwollspinnerei art complex, which was still under construction at the time.
(Evelyne Schoenmann)
Claudia Biehne
