The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.
I was excited to learn of NCECA’s feature exhibition, “Beacon,” before it even took form in Salt Lake City, Utah, in March 2025. I tracked down curator Martina Lantin at the conference, and later I sat down with her to get inside her motivation and thinking around this deeply nuanced and emotionally charged exhibition. I learned that the kernel idea for Beacon grew out of one of Lantin’s Covid undertakings: she had made and sold candlesticks, and donated half the proceeds to missing and Indigenous women. She began to notice that others were making candle holders, also metaphorically shining a light in a world where hope seemed to be scant at best. She decided to shine a spotlight on those actively and vocally seeking to make a difference in the bleakness through their work.
Lights in the Darkness
The focus of Beacon is on the work of artists who “hold the light so that others may see or feel seen.” Lantin chose artists who, through their work, their activism, and advocacy, are ‘lights in the darkness’ for others as advocates and allies. When I virtually sat down with Lantin, she spoke to me about wishing to honor the risk people were taking in being vocal and vulnerable about their political and/ or social justice beliefs. She was interested in spotlighting artists who are taking a stand, pulling on the ties of the straitjacket of political correctness in which many of us tend to abide.
More and more, I am seeing curators invite artists to invite another artist to exhibit. I admire this practice. With Beacon, the act of inviting another artist to the exhibition extends the metaphor and expands the playing field of awareness, building community and solidarity among like-minded makers. Lantin had not previously come across the works of Gerald Brown, Isissa Komada-John, Joel Nichols, and Pam Totah, and was pleased to grow the circle.
Lantin invited fellow Canadian, PJ Anderson, a Winnipeg-based artist, who chose to include a work that is part of her weaponization series. This series underscores where the media and society have altered our relationship with mere things, making them into objects of fear and terror. For Anderson, her weaponization series explores the power dynamics between those who have and those who have less. In this work, Spike Lidded Vessel, Anderson invokes “a rallying cry that can imply violence but can also unify people behind it.” Anderson in turn, invited Joel Nichols, offering a platform for a young, queer artist of color, also of mixed Jamaican heritage, whose work she greatly admires. Nichols reminds Anderson of herself when she was younger, and her intention was to offer him what he had needed/wanted but had not received at the time.
Nichols presents a grayscale 2D print, ethereal and other-worldly. He forefronts the body’s influence on the soul and asks us to consider that, “Our bodies are not just vessels, they are precious, beautiful, and hold immense agency over our identity and our journey.”
Perhaps the most quiet and unassuming piece is by Canadian Julie Moon. I find beauty in its seeming simplicity. The butterfly form draws attention to the forced detainment in the US of Syrian-born, American pro-Palestinian activist, Mahmoud Khalil. It is intensely specific and personal, while simultaneously speaking out against the plight of a people, the ongoing genocide and dehumanization of Palestinians in Gaza. “Free Mohamed Kahlil” is embossed and emboldened on the wings of Moon’s butterfly, notably a traditional symbol of the soul that signifies immortality and the spirit’s journey. Moon’s work has presence, it has meaning, but it also asks the viewer to ask questions, to take note, to consider, and to quite possibly take action. Moon’s work is aptly named, Even Nature Demands It.
Lived Experiences and Struggles
Another Canadian, Carole Epp’s shining light on truth reveals hope, is a testament to post-modern mural-like art. The large inverted vessel-like candle holder was thrown by collaborator, Ken Wilkinson, as a canvas for Epp’s deft illustrative skills. Epp describes her work as a non-linear graphic novel; collaged stories that spin the story of her lived experience and personal iconography.
Prevalent themes in her detailed tableaux include skulls, florals, women whose arms grow into branches or root systems, halos, rainbows, hearts, cats, and angels. Epp begins by line drawing, using the ancient Korean mishima technique. She then animates the drawing with colorful underglaze, cold-finish acrylic, graphite, and seals the painting with varnish. In Epp’s own words, “these maximalist surfaces aim to portray grief, joy, and the absurdity of each surreal moment of being alive in such a chaotic world . . . [and] act as a resistance to the oversimplification of our existence and in particular of our struggles.”
Relationships and Identity
I find the simplicity and solidity of Amy Shindo’s piece to be irresistible. It is a replica of a stone lantern that used to stand as a beacon in front of her family’s Japanese restaurant in Toronto. The work reminds me of the piles of stones that people tend to leave as records of their presence on an otherwise uninhabited landscape: Inukshuks, the practice of piling stones in often human-like abstract figurative shapes. In Japanese culture, stone lanterns hold deep symbolic meaning, representing illumination and guidance. With connections to both Buddhist and Shinto traditions, they are often used to light pathways, and create sacred spaces. Their solid forms have multi-tiered bases, open fireboxes, and wide curved roofs. Enduring the elements, they develop a weathered patina, with surfaces eroding and softening over time. Shindo “hoped to capture a sense of their aesthetic and perseverance, envisioning my lantern casting a protective, grounding light.”
Shindo was invited by Lauren Sandler, her former instructor/ mentor at Temple University. Sandler’s work is viscerally comforting. We can see her fingerprints in the making of the candle holders, the raw red earthenware peeks through the breaks in its shiny white coat. Sandler’s relationship to objects is multi-faceted—working from an expansive contextual viewpoint. Sandler incorporates the personal, social, cultural, migratory, economic, historical, colonial, and imperial aspects of an object. For this piece, Sandler was thinking about the history of candelabras through oil lamps as a cross-cultural object with ties to Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and Judean culture.
Julian Miholics’ work, We Have Always Survived, depicts a ram. This playful creature seems out of place until the viewer is invited into the allegory. In a clever play on words, the ram is the scapegoat—the sacrificial lamb, that symbolizes the plight of the LGBTQ2+ trans individual. Miholic situates the trans individual “in a state of profoundly artificial hypervisibility.” The flame within its chest pays homage to those who came before, those we lost, those who are with us now, and those who are yet to be.
Karina Yanes self-identifies as a mixed Puerto Rican-Palestinian- Midwesterner. Her work, The Warmth I’ve Always Known, evokes a sense of home, safety, and shelter while at the same time it teeters on the edge of the end of civilization. It is an abstract representation of a white slice of watermelon, with the red flesh of the fruit on the inside. This fruit has become an international symbol of pro-Palestinian solidarity. It is a bold and beautiful work, functional with a strong message. Yanes underscores motifs of her own culture in an otherwise predominantly white American culture. She questions, “How [do] we hold onto traditions and stories and how [do] we create our own, new iterations through time, as cultures naturally shift and change in diaspora?” These are increasingly complex questions to ask as the tectonic plates of democracy and freedom continue to shift underneath our feet.
Multi-Layered History
Pam Totah literally and metaphorically stitches together cultural memory. Her untitled ‘mountainscape’ is a layered landscape of translucent porcelain panes. Each carries the patterns of tatreez, a classical Palestinian embroidery art form that threads stories of place, identity, and cultural history into the cloth it adorns. I was drawn to this work, its intimacy and its intricacy. Each layer tells a lifetime of stories, yet each is a snapshot of Totah’s emotional landscape, frozen in time. Illuminated in a layered light box, hand-crafted by the artist’s father, a crack in a pane becomes more visible through the light. Totah chooses not to hide the flaw, because, in her words, “Light has a way of revealing even the smallest of fractures” and “reminds us that we must see them in order to mend them.” She goes on to offer sage counsel that, “Only by acknowledging the brokenness can we begin to heal.”
Adero Willard’s work commands a domineering presence in the gallery. Standing tall, it presents a duality of darkness and light, solemnity and play. Willard describes this body of work as spinning a narrative that fluctuates between revelation and concealment. Her process is multi-faceted and multi-layered. She leans into her mixed Black heritage, drawing on her female ancestors, both North American and West African, who have forged a path before her. Willard shines a beacon through her craft and seeks to “inspire others to embrace their unique narratives and find solace in the interplay of chaos and order, unveiling the vibrant tapestry of our collective existence.”
These are nearly half of the artists in the exhibition. Other artists, equally deserving of mention, in this powerful constellation of makers voicing dissent include PJ Anderson, Gerald Brown, Wesley Brown, Gloria Jue-Youn Han, Bryan Hopkins, Kristen Kieffer, Isissa Komada-John, Shaun Mallonga, and Amal Tamari.
the author Heidi McKenzie is an artist, author, and curator living in Toronto, Canada. Learn more at www.heidimckenzie.ca.
1 Conversation with the curator, July 9, 2025. 2 Text exchange with the artist, February 11, 2026. 3 Sourced from email correspondence with the artist by the author, February 8, 2026. 4 Ibid. 5 Email correspondence with the artist, February 15, 2026. 6 Sourced from email correspondence with the artist y the author, February 6, 2026.
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The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.
I was excited to learn of NCECA’s feature exhibition, “Beacon,” before it even took form in Salt Lake City, Utah, in March 2025. I tracked down curator Martina Lantin at the conference, and later I sat down with her to get inside her motivation and thinking around this deeply nuanced and emotionally charged exhibition. I learned that the kernel idea for Beacon grew out of one of Lantin’s Covid undertakings: she had made and sold candlesticks, and donated half the proceeds to missing and Indigenous women. She began to notice that others were making candle holders, also metaphorically shining a light in a world where hope seemed to be scant at best. She decided to shine a spotlight on those actively and vocally seeking to make a difference in the bleakness through their work.
Lights in the Darkness
The focus of Beacon is on the work of artists who “hold the light so that others may see or feel seen.” Lantin chose artists who, through their work, their activism, and advocacy, are ‘lights in the darkness’ for others as advocates and allies. When I virtually sat down with Lantin, she spoke to me about wishing to honor the risk people were taking in being vocal and vulnerable about their political and/ or social justice beliefs. She was interested in spotlighting artists who are taking a stand, pulling on the ties of the straitjacket of political correctness in which many of us tend to abide.
More and more, I am seeing curators invite artists to invite another artist to exhibit. I admire this practice. With Beacon, the act of inviting another artist to the exhibition extends the metaphor and expands the playing field of awareness, building community and solidarity among like-minded makers. Lantin had not previously come across the works of Gerald Brown, Isissa Komada-John, Joel Nichols, and Pam Totah, and was pleased to grow the circle.
Lantin invited fellow Canadian, PJ Anderson, a Winnipeg-based artist, who chose to include a work that is part of her weaponization series. This series underscores where the media and society have altered our relationship with mere things, making them into objects of fear and terror. For Anderson, her weaponization series explores the power dynamics between those who have and those who have less. In this work, Spike Lidded Vessel, Anderson invokes “a rallying cry that can imply violence but can also unify people behind it.” Anderson in turn, invited Joel Nichols, offering a platform for a young, queer artist of color, also of mixed Jamaican heritage, whose work she greatly admires. Nichols reminds Anderson of herself when she was younger, and her intention was to offer him what he had needed/wanted but had not received at the time.
Nichols presents a grayscale 2D print, ethereal and other-worldly. He forefronts the body’s influence on the soul and asks us to consider that, “Our bodies are not just vessels, they are precious, beautiful, and hold immense agency over our identity and our journey.”
Perhaps the most quiet and unassuming piece is by Canadian Julie Moon. I find beauty in its seeming simplicity. The butterfly form draws attention to the forced detainment in the US of Syrian-born, American pro-Palestinian activist, Mahmoud Khalil. It is intensely specific and personal, while simultaneously speaking out against the plight of a people, the ongoing genocide and dehumanization of Palestinians in Gaza. “Free Mohamed Kahlil” is embossed and emboldened on the wings of Moon’s butterfly, notably a traditional symbol of the soul that signifies immortality and the spirit’s journey. Moon’s work has presence, it has meaning, but it also asks the viewer to ask questions, to take note, to consider, and to quite possibly take action. Moon’s work is aptly named, Even Nature Demands It.
Lived Experiences and Struggles
Another Canadian, Carole Epp’s shining light on truth reveals hope, is a testament to post-modern mural-like art. The large inverted vessel-like candle holder was thrown by collaborator, Ken Wilkinson, as a canvas for Epp’s deft illustrative skills. Epp describes her work as a non-linear graphic novel; collaged stories that spin the story of her lived experience and personal iconography.
Prevalent themes in her detailed tableaux include skulls, florals, women whose arms grow into branches or root systems, halos, rainbows, hearts, cats, and angels. Epp begins by line drawing, using the ancient Korean mishima technique. She then animates the drawing with colorful underglaze, cold-finish acrylic, graphite, and seals the painting with varnish. In Epp’s own words, “these maximalist surfaces aim to portray grief, joy, and the absurdity of each surreal moment of being alive in such a chaotic world . . . [and] act as a resistance to the oversimplification of our existence and in particular of our struggles.”
Relationships and Identity
I find the simplicity and solidity of Amy Shindo’s piece to be irresistible. It is a replica of a stone lantern that used to stand as a beacon in front of her family’s Japanese restaurant in Toronto. The work reminds me of the piles of stones that people tend to leave as records of their presence on an otherwise uninhabited landscape: Inukshuks, the practice of piling stones in often human-like abstract figurative shapes. In Japanese culture, stone lanterns hold deep symbolic meaning, representing illumination and guidance. With connections to both Buddhist and Shinto traditions, they are often used to light pathways, and create sacred spaces. Their solid forms have multi-tiered bases, open fireboxes, and wide curved roofs. Enduring the elements, they develop a weathered patina, with surfaces eroding and softening over time. Shindo “hoped to capture a sense of their aesthetic and perseverance, envisioning my lantern casting a protective, grounding light.”
Shindo was invited by Lauren Sandler, her former instructor/ mentor at Temple University. Sandler’s work is viscerally comforting. We can see her fingerprints in the making of the candle holders, the raw red earthenware peeks through the breaks in its shiny white coat. Sandler’s relationship to objects is multi-faceted—working from an expansive contextual viewpoint. Sandler incorporates the personal, social, cultural, migratory, economic, historical, colonial, and imperial aspects of an object. For this piece, Sandler was thinking about the history of candelabras through oil lamps as a cross-cultural object with ties to Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and Judean culture.
Julian Miholics’ work, We Have Always Survived, depicts a ram. This playful creature seems out of place until the viewer is invited into the allegory. In a clever play on words, the ram is the scapegoat—the sacrificial lamb, that symbolizes the plight of the LGBTQ2+ trans individual. Miholic situates the trans individual “in a state of profoundly artificial hypervisibility.” The flame within its chest pays homage to those who came before, those we lost, those who are with us now, and those who are yet to be.
Karina Yanes self-identifies as a mixed Puerto Rican-Palestinian- Midwesterner. Her work, The Warmth I’ve Always Known, evokes a sense of home, safety, and shelter while at the same time it teeters on the edge of the end of civilization. It is an abstract representation of a white slice of watermelon, with the red flesh of the fruit on the inside. This fruit has become an international symbol of pro-Palestinian solidarity. It is a bold and beautiful work, functional with a strong message. Yanes underscores motifs of her own culture in an otherwise predominantly white American culture. She questions, “How [do] we hold onto traditions and stories and how [do] we create our own, new iterations through time, as cultures naturally shift and change in diaspora?” These are increasingly complex questions to ask as the tectonic plates of democracy and freedom continue to shift underneath our feet.
Multi-Layered History
Pam Totah literally and metaphorically stitches together cultural memory. Her untitled ‘mountainscape’ is a layered landscape of translucent porcelain panes. Each carries the patterns of tatreez, a classical Palestinian embroidery art form that threads stories of place, identity, and cultural history into the cloth it adorns. I was drawn to this work, its intimacy and its intricacy. Each layer tells a lifetime of stories, yet each is a snapshot of Totah’s emotional landscape, frozen in time. Illuminated in a layered light box, hand-crafted by the artist’s father, a crack in a pane becomes more visible through the light. Totah chooses not to hide the flaw, because, in her words, “Light has a way of revealing even the smallest of fractures” and “reminds us that we must see them in order to mend them.” She goes on to offer sage counsel that, “Only by acknowledging the brokenness can we begin to heal.”
Adero Willard’s work commands a domineering presence in the gallery. Standing tall, it presents a duality of darkness and light, solemnity and play. Willard describes this body of work as spinning a narrative that fluctuates between revelation and concealment. Her process is multi-faceted and multi-layered. She leans into her mixed Black heritage, drawing on her female ancestors, both North American and West African, who have forged a path before her. Willard shines a beacon through her craft and seeks to “inspire others to embrace their unique narratives and find solace in the interplay of chaos and order, unveiling the vibrant tapestry of our collective existence.”
These are nearly half of the artists in the exhibition. Other artists, equally deserving of mention, in this powerful constellation of makers voicing dissent include PJ Anderson, Gerald Brown, Wesley Brown, Gloria Jue-Youn Han, Bryan Hopkins, Kristen Kieffer, Isissa Komada-John, Shaun Mallonga, and Amal Tamari.
the author Heidi McKenzie is an artist, author, and curator living in Toronto, Canada. Learn more at www.heidimckenzie.ca.
1 Conversation with the curator, July 9, 2025.
2 Text exchange with the artist, February 11, 2026.
3 Sourced from email correspondence with the artist by the author, February 8, 2026.
4 Ibid.
5 Email correspondence with the artist, February 15, 2026.
6 Sourced from email correspondence with the artist y the author, February 6, 2026.
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