Ceramics Program

Program development, supervision, and coordination.

• Nancy Selvage , Ceramics Program Director

• Shawn Panepinto, Ceramics Program Coordinator

• Ji-Eun Kim, Ceramics Program Staff Assistant

Instructors (Summer '09)

• Wasma'a Chorbachi
  PhD in Art History, Harvard University; artist, former Teaching Fellow and Research Fellow at Harvard University; extensive research and writing on Islamic Design and her cultural experience are vital resources for her paintings, plates, tiles, and murals. Her work is in many museum collections including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

• Wayne Fuerst
  Studio potter, instructor at U. Mass Dartmouth and Mudflat Pottery School. His fresh and spontaneous approach to altering forms and glaze painting creates lively sets of wheel thrown functional pots. His expertise in a wide range of firing techniques includes a focus on wood-fired ceramics.

• Pam Gorgone
  BFA , Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Pam is a Ceramics Program instructor and a Non-Resident Tutor and Instructor at Harvard's Mather House. Her small scale sculptural work, often focusing on sets and serial objects, has been described as quiet, meditative, and elemental.

• Hamada, Tomo'o
  The grandson of Hamada Shoji, "National Living Treasure" and major figure of the mingei folk-art movement, Hamada, Tomo'o, has used his strong background in mingei ceramics to create more complex shapes and glaze painting.

• Lisa Houck
  MFA Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Lisa is interested in creating a world of color and pattern, with compositions that are complex enough to suggest something new each time you view the artwork. Clay and mosaics are her media for public art projects.

• Kristen Kieffer
  Kristin Kieffer is a full-time studio potter with an active schedule of workshops and teaching. She has a BFA from Alfred University, an MFA from Ohio University, and teaches classes at the Worcester Center for the Crafts. The forms and surface ornamentation of her sculptural vessels, influenced by historic clothing and metalworking, share visual associations and construction techniques with 18th century porcelain table pieces. "While my work aligns itself with the detail, sophistication and beauty of a bygone era, my desire is to evoke an air of 21st century extravagance."

• Kusakabe, Masakazu
  Kusakabe, Masakazu has researched, designed, and built many smokeless and efficient wood-fired kilns that produce traditional ash-glazed surfaces in relatively short firing cycles. He is coauthor of "Japanese Wood-Fired Ceramics", Krause Publications, 2005, and author of the meditation "I am a Teabowl".

• Dennis McLaughlin
  Dennis McLaughlin spent twenty years working as a studio potter in southwestern Minnesota, often using the local clays and minerals to make his vessels. His interest in a variety of folk traditions continues to influence his stoneware forms and surfaces.

• Allison Newsome
  MFA Rhode Island School of Design; recent artist in residence at Beatice Wood Center for the Arts, Ojai California. Through her work Allison explores fundamental, utilitarian methods implemented on our land and water.

• Shawn Panepinto
  Ridgewood College of Art Diploma; Boston Museum School Diploma; former instructor at Boston Museum School. Shawn's work is the direct result of her observations and reactions and typically shows her background in painting, sculpture, and graphic design while revealing her unique sense of humor.

• Crystal Ribich
  Participant in national and international workshops, kiln-building sessions, and specialized firings with a wide range of artists throughout the United States. Workshop instructor at Castle Hill, Truro, MA. Soda firing instructor and glaze researcher at the Ceramics Program, Office for the Arts at Harvard.

• Nancy Selvage
  MFA in Sculpture, Boston Museum School-Tufts University; former instructor at Boston Museum School, Rhode Island School of Design, Ewha University, and Mass. College of Art. Nancy creates work in response to the context of a specific site or situation.

• Forrest Snyder
  MFA, Alfred University, NY. Forrest Snyderfs artistic interests include history, technology, architecture, sculpture, mixed media and all those funny places they intersect. He is the founder and editor of the online journal Critical Ceramics. http://www.criticalceramics.org.

• Kathi Tighe
  Raku workshop instructor, at the Ceramics Program, Office for the Arts at Harvard. Kathi has worked as a studio potter with a focus on raku firing for over twenty years. Since 1988 she has led many workshops and has been recognized for her finely-tuned raku-fired ceramic ocarinas.

• Delanie Wise
  Since her BS in Mathematics from Virginia Commonwealth University, Delanie Wisefs has focused on studio art at Massachusetts College of Art and the Ceramics Program at the Office of Arts at Harvard - where she has worked as a teaching assistant and course instructor. She throws and alters her work in unexpected and whimsical ways and has shown her teapots nationally for the last five years.

• Pao-Fei Yang
  Resident artist at the Ceramics Program, Office for the Arts at Harvard. For the past decade Pao-Fei has created imagery and patterns in a vibrant range of colors with her inventive use of saggar firing. With her training as a painter, Pao-Fei uses clay tiles as her canvas and copper wire as her drawing tool.

• Stephanie Young
  BFA in Sculpture, Art Institute of Boston, Ceramics studio manager and instructor New Art Center, Newton, MA. Instructor at Wheelock College. Stephanie creates functional vessels and sculpture with a wide range of clay materials, hand building and wheel throwing techniques and firing methods.