🎧 2025 Emerging Artist: Maxwell Henderson, Red Lodge, Montana Ceramics Monthly

Appears in the May 2025 issue of Ceramics Monthly.

The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.

Ceramics Monthly: What topics are central to your work and research as an artist and why?

Maxwell Henderson: I grew up in poverty in a single-parent household where I witnessed drug abuse at an early age. Instability was normal, and many of my childhood friends were trapped in the same circumstances. But as we got older, I watched some fall to addiction, overdose, and even suicide. I truly believe that without clay, that could have been me. The first time I made a pot at fifteen, I felt something I had never felt before: a conviction in my self-worth. I realized I had the power to create something I wasn’t afforded—something beautiful, something valuable. It didn’t just change my life, it saved it.

Being biracial, I struggled to feel a sense of belonging. I never fit neatly into a group, and that isolation led me to mask myself just to fit in. Whether with my peers, my grad school committee, or a gas station attendant, I spent so much time conforming to what I felt was expected of me, I never explored who I was. Ceramics became a way to start figuring that out.

That’s why my work is about systems that confine us and the ways we push back. The vessels I make are rigid, structured, heavy, coated in an impenetrable black glaze—seemingly unshakable, like oppressive systems. The perforations are deliberate in their uniformity, designed to dictate where the glaze logs fit. But once exposed to transformative forces like heat, they refuse containment. Some quietly soften, others leap from their molds, bending, pulling, stretching, reshaping the vessel altogether.

I’m interested in collective power. When you grow up feeling powerless, you’re taught to believe you have no say. But that’s a lie. Systems don’t change on their own—people force them to. My work isn’t about manufactured division or passivity—it’s about strength in resistance, collaboration, and celebrating humanity.

CM: How do you develop the forms or surfaces that are prevalent in your work?

MH: Using stoneware, I wheel throw my vessels in segments, attach them, then perforate the form using a spade bit or hole saw. I spray the vessels with a cone-6 black glaze and fire in oxidation. For the gloop, I first determine the color palette and calculate how much glaze I need based on the number of perforations. I add Mason stains to a gloop base that’s pre-mixed to the consistency of clay, then roll the mixture into glaze logs sized to fit the openings. The vessel is then re-fired to bisque temperature, allowing the gloop to bend, pull, and stretch.

CM: What is one piece of advice you would offer to others pursuing ceramics?

MH: If I were to offer one thing—it’s that if ceramics is something you truly want to pursue for the rest of your life, you can’t give yourself a plan B. 

For me, over the last thirteen years working in clay, there have been a lot of terrifying moments of uncertainty. But despite it all, when I’m asked, if you had all the money in the world, how would you spend your time?—I’m fortunate to say, “The same way I’m spending it now.”

Learn more on Instagram @mh_pottery.