The 2024 Alabama Clay Conference
will be in Orange Beach, AL
from February 15th-18th.

The 39th Annual Alabama Clay Conference

Perdido Beach Resort will be the premier location for most conference activities and accommodations, directly on the Gulf of Mexico in Orange Beach.

I would like to extend a very special thank you to the City of Orange Beach for the generous use of the Coastal Arts Center, for hosting exhibitions and pre and post conference workshops, to the hardworking staff at the Coastal Arts Center that assist in making the conference possible, and to the tireless efforts of the Alabama Clay Conference Steering Committee.

Maya Blume-Cantrell

Host of the 2024 Alabama Clay Conference

Our 2024 Featured Presenting Artists include Osa Atoe, Jennifer McCurdy, Candice Methe, and Taylor Robenalt.

2024 Curtis Benzle Distinguished Artist Lecture speaker will be Joey Brackner.

Now approaching its 39th year, the Alabama Clay Conference is the longest running program of the Alabama Visual Arts Network. The conference site and host change annually. The event celebrates and promotes the timeless artistry of ceramics by offering a balance of exhibition and educational programs intended to increase professionalism, inform technique, and inspire artistic expression in Alabama and beyond. Stay tuned for updates and special announcements about our 2024 conference in Orange Beach. Registration opens October 1st!

Mission of the Alabama Clay Conference

The Alabama Clay Conference, as an initiative of the Alabama Visual Arts Network, serves practitioners and students of the ceramic arts. The conference celebrates and promotes the unique flavor of ceramics in Alabama by offering a balance of exhibition and educational programs intended to increase professionalism, inform technique, and inspire artistic expression of all participants.

The Alabama Clay Conference is made possible through registrations and sponsorships and through our vendors from the following. Please be sure to visit their websites for more information on our generous donors and sponsors:

2024 FEATURED PRESENTERS

Osa Atoe

Osa Atoe, born November 27, 1978 in Blacksburg, Virginia, is a first generation Nigerian American ceramicist who lives and works in Sarasota, Florida. She got her start when she took a wheel throwing class at a community studio in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she was living at the time. Before becoming a potter, Atoe was a musician. She holds a degree in Sociology and completed a post-baccalaureate certificate in ceramics from Louisiana State University in 2018.

I am curious about the qualities that make an object’s beauty transcend time and culture. With my pottery, I add myself to the archaeological continuum along with every pot ever made and I do that by referencing historical forms. The processes of colonization, geographical displacement and globalization have left many of us without traditional practices. I am presently in the process of creating a vocabulary of forming, decorating and firing techniques that link my work to a lineage of potters both contemporary and historical, extending back to Nigeria where my parents immigrated from in the 1970s. In this way, the pottery I make reflects the values I was raised with, namely, respect for the wisdom of elders and the identification of oneself within family and community.

https://potterybyosa.com

Jennifer McCurdy

Jennifer McCurdy has been working with porcelain for over forty years.   She loves porcelain because it has a beautiful surface, and it conveys the qualities of light and shadow that she wishes to express. After throwing her vessel on the potter’s wheel, she alters the form to set up a movement of soft shadow. When the porcelain is leather hard, she carves patterns to add energy and counterpoint. It is fired to cone 10, where the porcelain becomes non-porous and translucent.

Jennifer’s work resides in the collections of museums and patrons around the world, including the Smithsonian Museum’s Renwick Gallery, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Everson Museum of Art. She resides with her husband on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.

https://jennifermccurdy.com

Candice Methe

Originally from Falmouth, MA., Candice Methe is a studio artist and educator. She has been working in clay for twenty-five years and is a current resident at the Roswell Artist in Residence Foundation in Roswell, NM. She received her BFA in Ceramics and Art History from Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ. and her MFA from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Inspired by historical objects and traditional ways of making, she has traveled to Japan, Ghana, Nicaragua, Mexico among other places to study the traditional practices of artisans working in clay. In pursuit of her artistic, peripatetic practice she has done residencies long-term and short-term at Santa Fe Clay, Red Lodge Clay Center and the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts. When not in the studio, you can find her outside exploring ghost towns, ruins, road-side museums, mountains and rivers with her two dogs Loulee Streetfighter and Deming Sledgehammer.

Form is the element that makes my pieces interesting and engaging, drives my ideas and creative practice forward and is the foundation of my work and aesthetic. My way of creating work is rudimentary- using the coil and pinch method with many of my inspirations and ideas for form coming from historical pots, traditional ways of making, notions about labor, the cultures associated with those objects and cultures that subsist and have spiritual relationships with the land and places they live. My work is a way to cope with the overwhelming speed of the world.

The work I make is my soliloquy of simpler times. 

I turn the soil.

I plant the seeds.

I grow the wheat.

I harvest the grain.

I grind the flour.

I trade for the salt.

I collect the water.

I knead the dough.

I coax the fire.

I bake the bread.

Nourishment comes in many forms-labor, vulnerability, connectedness, and desire.  The vessels of clay I make are for sustenance. They are documentation of my intent and signifier of my connection to this life, both past and present. Having the hand present in my work is critical. It is through the element of touch I am able to honor honesty, vibrancy, energy, and humility.

https://www.candicemethe.com

Taylor Robenalt

Taylor Robenalt attended Southern Methodist University for her BFA in bronze casting and stone carving. She then received a graduate assistantship at the University of Georgia accomplishing her MFA in ceramics in May 2011. She is a full-time professor at Ringling College of Art and Design and has taught at State College of Florida, Auburn University and Columbus State University as an adjunct professor. Taylor was a long-term artist resident at Odyssey Clayworks. In addition, Taylor has participated in many national and international ceramic shows. She has been part of multiple panels at NCECA as well as participated in many NCECA shows. She has co-taught a workshop at Penland School of Crafts, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts and has been a visiting artist at many Universities. Taylor won the NCECA International Residency Award in 2019 and studied at A.I.R. Vallauris, France for a month.  In 2020 and 2021, Taylor won the Halo Fellowship Award to help her install her first solo museum show at the Canton Museum of Art and travel to a residency program in Skopelos, Greece. Last year, Taylor curated two large ceramic shows, one at Blue Spiral Gallery in Asheville, NC, and a large animal themed show at the Canton Museum of Art in Ohio. This year she has participated in three gallery groups shows and was a demonstrator at the booth for Standard Clay Company at NCECA. At the end of the year Taylor will have a solo show at the Appalachian Center for Craft.

Storytelling has been apart of our culture since the beginning of human existence, from the cave paintings of Lascaux and the fertility figure of Venus of Willendorf.   I, in my own way want to be apart of this storytelling by making detailed porcelain sculptures that explore the figure, flora and fauna.  I create narratives using personal experience combined with animal interactions and semiotics. Art helps me understand the relationship between humans in the natural world, myself, and my place in the contemporary world. I strive to reveal human and animal commonalities, by exposing both the light and the shadow that blind us together. 

Clay is a fantastic material that allows me to create whatever surface I want to help enhance my narratives.  It is so versatile and both the additive and subtractive qualities make it easier for me to manipulate. The history of clay dates back to the beginning of humans and has been a tool for helping humanity survive and tell stories on its surfaces and through sculptures. It is a medium that unites every culture.

I have chosen porcelain because it is a beautiful, pure material. I often leave it in its raw state, which has a skin like quality. Most of the imagery that I utilize has specific meaning that relates to my personal emotions and creates a narrative: dogs represent loyalty and unconditional love, birds represent vibrancy and freedom, and swans represent purity and bunnies fertility. Flowers represent the cycle life and rebirth. I view the work as a metaphor for how life is always transforming itself – constantly bringing forth a new chapter of unforeseen existence.

https://www.taylorrobenaltceramics.com

Joey Brackner

Joey Brackner was hired as Alabama's state folklorist in 1985. He retired in 2022 as the director of the Alabama Center for Traditional Culture, the folklife division of the Alabama State Council on the Arts. He is the author of Alabama Folk Pottery (2006) and Of Mules and Mud: the Story of Alabama Folk Potter Jerry Brown (2022) both published by the University of Alabama Press. Since 2013, he has been the host of the Alabama Public Television series Journey Proud. His research interests include Alabama folk pottery, traditional graveyard decoration and southern horticultural traditions.   

Joey Brackner is a native of Fairfield, Alabama. He received a B. A. in Anthropology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1977 and a M. A. in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981. He was Humanities Scholar in Residence at the Birmingham Museum of Art prior to being hired as state folklorist in 1985. 

Joey Brackner will be speaking on Alabama's pottery making heritage, Friday, February 16, 2024 at 5:30 PM

In addition to our featured artist presentations and workshops, these special events are part of our conference each year: