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| From the Editor
I’m sitting at my kitchen table as I write this, looking at the season’s first daffodils collected in a George Lowe vase in the center of the table. For those who don’t know, daffodils are a naturalizing plant, which basically means they multiply and spread from year to year. Also, the energy stored in their stems and leaves throughout the growing season returns to the underground bulbs in the fall, ensuring healthy growth for the next season. Short of a little water and sun, and maybe spreading them out every few years, I don’t really need to do much of anything except enjoy them. And I love that they are the first promise of the new season. They remind me of the fact that days are getting longer, the sky will become more blue and less gray, and I can start making plans for the big planters I’ve been throwing.
Our version of spring here at the magazine is to publish our annual Emerging Artists feature in the May issue. Spring, after all, is a time of emergence. It brings promise, expectation and hope, and I think you’ll see evidence of that in the works of those featured in our Emerging Artists coverage. These artists are the next season’s growth, but you know as well I do—and as well as they do—that they were fed and bolstered by those of previous seasons. And while many of them, in the materials they submitted, credited those teachers and institutions without whom they would not have made it this far, there was simply not enough room to include those thanks and credits individually. At the risk of being presumptuous, I’d like to extend a collective thank-you on behalf of those featured in this years Emerging Artists to their instructors, mentors, peers and the many institutions that provide valuable studio space, professional development and exhibition opportunities for these and many other ceramic artists.
If you would like to thank someone for all the help they have given you in your artistic pursuits, give them a gift of Ceramics Monthly.
To push this springtime promise, expectation and hope—as well as this metaphor—all the way through the summer, we are announcing a new call for entries open to undergraduate ceramics students—a focus on “emerging undergrads,” if you will. Juried by the Ceramics Monthly editorial staff and advisory board, the purpose will be to highlight some of the best of what is happening in undergraduate ceramics. Results will be published in the September issue, just in time for the fall term. To download a PDF of the prospectus, click here.
So, with Jenny Mendes’ Dance Hall Queens on the cover setting a celebratory tone, a new group of artists “blooming” in this month’s focus, and the season’s first daffodils brightening my table, I extend an invitation to all of you to notice the incredible number of positive things happening in studio ceramics—and to be a part of them. Do what you can to support, share, teach and feed ceramic endeavors. Become the energy for next season’s growth.
—Sherman Hall
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