The Chehalem Ceramic Studio is thrilled to begin accepting applications for our third round of Ceramic Studio Residencies! Applications will be accepted through September 2025.
Our goal is to support emerging and established ceramic artists who are interested in building community engagement alongside furthering their own clay practice. This Artist Residency is supported by the Oregon Cultural Trust and the Yamhill County Cultural Coalition.
The Chehalem Cultural Center has been home to many national and international ceramic exhibitions as well as the host to the North West Wood Fired Ceramics Conference in May 2022. As a Resident Ceramic Artist you’ll have access to:
Pugmill
Slab roller
7 Wheels including Brent C
Glaze Spray Booth
2 Skutt Electric Kilns
Midrange Glaze Selection
Designated Storage
Molds, Forms, Texture tools, Small Resource Library
(Opportunity for more - communicate with the Studio Manager about any special needs)
We’ll also support you in community building through scheduled Community Studio Time, the opportunity to teach a Workshop or hold an Artist Talk (Opportunity for additional income!) and feature your work in our Annual Chehalem Ceramic Artist Showcase post residency.
Those accepted into the Ceramic Studio Artist Residency program will receive a $1,000 Stipend + $250 materials budget. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis through September 2025 (or until filled).
Expectations of our residents:
Residence will assist our studio manager with kiln loading and tidying in the studio.
Artists will attend a minimum of 5 open studio hours per week during their residency, when they will be present and willing to work alongside our students and users. Studio hours are available and planned around the open hours of the CCC building and ceramic classes. If residents would like to be present during any and all classes that would be welcomed.
Residents will offer one class, workshop, artist talk, or similar activity for the community. This could be free or paid, depending on the artist's preference. If assistance is needed, CCC staff can help with this process and offer suggestions.
At the end of the residency, the artist will allow our Studio Manager, Pilar Swanson, or or Exhibition Curator, Katie Spain, to select work(s) completed during the residency to display in our "Annual Chehalem Ceramic Showcase." The artist can decide if their selected work will be available for sale at the year-end show.
Residents are expected to provide their own housing and transportation to and from the studio.
If you have any questions about the application process or the residency, please contact Ceramic Studio Manager at ceramics@chehalemculturalcenter.org or our Exhibition Coordinator, Katie Spain at galleries@chehalemculturalcenter.org.
PAST STUDIO RESIDENTS
COURTNEY MAULDING (2024)
Courtney Maulding is a ceramic artist who loves to combine her ceramics and photographs to create an alternative media melding. She is specifically drawn to the cyanotype, a blue print process that requires sunlight or UV rays. Courtney discovered this process as an undergrad and received a BFA in art and design at University of Houston - Clearlake in 2021. Courtney has exhibited at the UHCL art gallery in 2023 and at the Glassell Museum of Fine arts this year. She is currently a clay educator at HTX Clay, a ceramic instructor at the Glassell Junior School, and a studio assistant in ceramics at University of Houston - Clearlake.
EMILY JUNG MILLER (2024)
I have spent my life on the coast, and all my artwork has its roots in my love of the sea. I am a mixed- race Chinese-American artist based in Forest Grove, Oregon, with history and family on Kauai and Downeast Maine. I explore these identities by centering reclaimed materials and their histories in an immersive process of transformation. I have been a professional artist since 2002, with a focus on environmental stewardship and community engagement. My work ranges from interactive installations and mixed-media sculpture to landscape painting and functional ceramics.
MYA CLUFF (2024)
Mya Cluff is a studio artist living and working in Belgrade, Montana. Born and raised in Oregon, she moved to Montana in 2017 after graduating from the Oregon College of Art and Craft where she received a BFA in Craft with an emphasis in Ceramics. The birth of Mya’s firstborn daughter in the middle of her BFA was the catalyst of her investigation of the maternal through her art practice. Mya is intrigued with the psychological, political and interpersonal ramifications of motherhood, and uses her own experience as inspiration, as well as the stories of her peers, written accounts of motherhood, and maternal feminist theory to inform her work. Mya strives to give visual form to the intimacy and complexity of motherhood that is often lost through essentializing archetypes.
DARAH LUNDBERG (2023)
Darah was born in 1979 in the Midwest and was a maker from a very young age. am currently a studio potter living in Portland. I spent a large majority of my youth with her grandmother who taught me everything from needle point to tanning hides. I worked with clay in my teenage years and into my early twenties.
After a hiatus, I once again have been working with clay since 2012 and have been teaching since 2016. I am very unconventionally taught. I have refined my skills amongst and with the rich Minnesota and Wisconsin ceramics community. As an explorer and curious human, I glean inspiration from everyday life, to marry contemporary form and function, to create pots free of pretense, conformity or contentment. I love to enrich them with an atmospheric unpredictable firing. I strive for inviting and thoughtful pots for all to touch and enjoy.
ERICK MARTINEZ (2023)
Erick Martinez is a figurative sculptor
fascinated by the human figure and the
complexity of emotions. He began his art
journey in 2019 after moving to The United
States from Bogotá, Colombia. Life
experiences inspire his artwork. His
sculptures seek to transmit that all emotions
have a purpose, even those labeled as
negative.
His sculptures have been exhibited in
galleries in Oregon and Washington State. He
currently lives in Portland, OR, where he is
pursuing a degree in human services and
addiction counseling.
SARA HENSEL (2023)
A potter and ceramics instructor living her hometown of Portland, Oregon. She currently teach all levels of wheel and hand building at a few studios in Portland.
Sara earned a BFA in ceramics from University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2018. In Fairbanks, the unique “potluck culture” that so celebrated the abundance of the Alaskan landscape and community kept her chasing ideas of generosity and service in my “Make Home” thesis pieces. Summer opportunities to teach ceramics to youths while in the BFA program nurtured an ethic of playfulness in my work. To this day, her work is still very much about sharing the harvest around and within.
She strives to imbue her work with humor, curiosity, and observation, and hope to reach out to users through the fingerprints, scrapes, and smears that mark her process.