The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.
It’s not often you walk into an exhibition at the National Conference for the Education of Ceramic Arts (NCECA) where all the overhead lights are off, and the only illumination comes from the work itself. In fact, the only other time in my memory was in 2019, as a part of “Wet” at Squirrel Haus Arts, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Habiba El-Sayed was performing Destruction of a Chaise Lounge, a gripping projection- and ceramic-based work. “Clay Currents,” held in the darkened rooms of the Hatch Art Gallery in Detroit, Michigan, as part of NCECA’s 2026 Volumes conference, was lit exclusively by glowing neon and LED elements embedded in and around ceramic sculptures. There is an unanticipated sense of tranquility that comes with the simultaneously intense, yet soft, light produced from gas-filled glass tubes, each individual color dissolving into the next. Ceramic forms variously absorbed or reflected the light, adding further dimension to the relatively small gallery and making the space feel voluminous. This isn’t to say the exhibition is in any way boring. In fact, it’s electric (pun intended)—the faint buzz in the air from noble gases conducting electric currents also held the excitement of a crowd discovering a new-to-them union of mediums.
Curated by Michael Takahata, a recent Cranbrook MFA graduate and first-time curator, the show originated in the back seat of an Uber during the 2025 NCECA conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, in a conversation with Clay Currents artists David Morrison and Alex Paat, both of whom were already incorporating neon into their sculptural work. The three artists wanted a chance to showcase the spectrum of innovation this balancing act of mediums creates. While Clay Currents is not the first appearance of neon art at an NCECA conference, it’s the first confluence of such work by multiple artists coming together, both from ceramics-first and glass-first perspectives, presenting its audiences with a glowing surfeit of this unique fusion.
Foundational Moments
Neon lighting as we know it today was first presented to the public by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show in 1910, and first made its way to the US via two red Packard signs at a car dealership in Los Angeles. Various noble gases, often combined with phosphor coatings, provide a rainbow of colors. A hundred years later, it’s fitting to celebrate the art form in Detroit, Motor City itself. Neon and ceramic have never been strangers; most modern electronics have ceramic material components. Porcelain housings, bushings, and tube supports can be found in many neon signs, particularly vintage, providing a safe and stable high-voltage connection point, cable routing, and tube holder.
Alfred-based British neon artist Sarah Blood, who has degrees in both ceramics and glass, is likely the first in contemporary fine art to mix mediums in this way. She began working this way after graduate school around 2003; she was teaching both and so had access to materials and equipment for the perfect price: free. We Will Not Go Gentle, located along the back wall of Hatch’s primary gallery, features a variety of white ceramic forms that resemble enlarged combination chess pawns/bowling pins with rounded bottoms on the edge of toppling over if it weren’t for the three full-length glass tubes they’re supporting. These tubes, lit in primary red (neon), blue (argon), and green (phosphor + argon), are suspended precariously between the ceramic pieces, replacing traditional porcelain tube supports. With shapes that echo the curves of a female body, there are clear references here to the concept of invisible labor—the work that, like those tube supports, prop up everything from galleries to society as a whole, but mostly remains unseen. One on its own can’t shoulder the load, but working together, collective tension holds it all up, while the matte white forms provide a canvas for the interplay of light and color.
Born in Hong Kong, a neon haven rivaling Las Vegas, Ling Chun added neon to her eclectic mixed-media practice as another way of exploring themes of nostalgia, ephemerality, memory, and being someone who inhabits a space of being in-between. Working in disparate mediums—both fragile in different ways but with entirely different working vocabulary—echoes what it’s like to live cross-culturally, speaking multiple languages, and frequently code-switching. The Flowing Glacier captures this liminal existence, the transient neon (argon blue) a juxtaposition to the permanence of the ceramic form. It’s one of the quietest pieces I’ve seen from Chung, who usually prefers unconventional color combinations, but its subtleties allow the viewer to take in smaller details, such as a variety of glaze textures and layers, touches of gold luster, and how the crackle of electricity appears to flow almost like water through the glass tube and in subtle, rippled reflection on the glazed surface.
Signs of the Times
Of course, a show about neon can’t leave out some classic text. Hannah Pierce’s Deeper and Kate Schroeder’s Wake Up And Smell The Fascism both provide different glimpses into the medium’s historic past: Pierce’s handwritten script reminiscent of Glenn Ligon and Tracy Emin, and Schroeder’s stylized sculpture resembling ‘50s roadside motel and diner signs. Conceptually, the two seem to exist in opposition, but Pierce’s dreamy china-painted figures floating in a desert pool and Schroeder’s assertive political commentary aren’t that different when you realize those figures are nude women in a vulnerable state, women and their sexuality historically being a targeted demographic of fascist regimes.
Here, I will note that Schroeder’s work utilizes LED in place of traditional neon, as do several other pieces in the show. Many neon artists are purists but Wake Up demonstrates ways LED is justifiable — at that size, glass would be impossible. Similarly, Marissa Childers’ trompe-l’oeil vintage radio, A Familiar Channel, is such an exacting fit that rendering it in ceramic and neon would be a true feat of skill. One would need painstaking measurements for clay shrinkage and perfect precision for glass bends, both finicky materials already. LED exists as an easy solution, which, while it doesn’t have the same presence as true neon, fits the bill and is accessible to artists new to this combination like Childers.
Connected Landscape
A standout moment in the show may or may not have been intentional; looking at David Morrison’s Expanded Landscape, the window to the right shows a reflection of Alex Paat’s Elder and its bright yellow smiling sun. The contrast between Morrison’s abstract, found object assemblage resembling a junkyard landscape and Paat’s precise, tight bends and effusive happiness is pitch-perfect in a show that could have been a mess of disparate work. It’s moments like this, where the light work functions to connect diametrically opposed concepts, that Clay Currents provides proof of concept in creating a conversation about material, light, space, and form, both pushing the boundaries of material use in their own ways.
A curator’s job is to choreograph the exhibition much like a ballet, balancing personalities and works like pirouettes and pas de deux; something incredibly complex and demanding, appearing effortless, cohesive and fluid. That is what is exhibited in Clay Currents—substantial effort that pays off as each glowing work dissolves into the next, bringing a whole new medium into the conversation of the largest gathering of ceramic artists on the planet, and hopefully making it accessible and furthering its credibility as an artistic medium.
the author Amanda Barr is an artist, educator, curator, and author who started bending neon in 2020. She holds an MA in Modern Languages-Spanish, an MA in Art History, and an MFA in Studio Art. Currently, she is the Assistant Professor of Ceramics and Art History at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico. To learn more about Barr and her work, visit www.amandambarr.comor follow her on Instagram @amandambarr.
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The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.
It’s not often you walk into an exhibition at the National Conference for the Education of Ceramic Arts (NCECA) where all the overhead lights are off, and the only illumination comes from the work itself. In fact, the only other time in my memory was in 2019, as a part of “Wet” at Squirrel Haus Arts, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Habiba El-Sayed was performing Destruction of a Chaise Lounge, a gripping projection- and ceramic-based work. “Clay Currents,” held in the darkened rooms of the Hatch Art Gallery in Detroit, Michigan, as part of NCECA’s 2026 Volumes conference, was lit exclusively by glowing neon and LED elements embedded in and around ceramic sculptures. There is an unanticipated sense of tranquility that comes with the simultaneously intense, yet soft, light produced from gas-filled glass tubes, each individual color dissolving into the next. Ceramic forms variously absorbed or reflected the light, adding further dimension to the relatively small gallery and making the space feel voluminous. This isn’t to say the exhibition is in any way boring. In fact, it’s electric (pun intended)—the faint buzz in the air from noble gases conducting electric currents also held the excitement of a crowd discovering a new-to-them union of mediums.
Curated by Michael Takahata, a recent Cranbrook MFA graduate and first-time curator, the show originated in the back seat of an Uber during the 2025 NCECA conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, in a conversation with Clay Currents artists David Morrison and Alex Paat, both of whom were already incorporating neon into their sculptural work. The three artists wanted a chance to showcase the spectrum of innovation this balancing act of mediums creates. While Clay Currents is not the first appearance of neon art at an NCECA conference, it’s the first confluence of such work by multiple artists coming together, both from ceramics-first and glass-first perspectives, presenting its audiences with a glowing surfeit of this unique fusion.
Foundational Moments
Neon lighting as we know it today was first presented to the public by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show in 1910, and first made its way to the US via two red Packard signs at a car dealership in Los Angeles. Various noble gases, often combined with phosphor coatings, provide a rainbow of colors. A hundred years later, it’s fitting to celebrate the art form in Detroit, Motor City itself. Neon and ceramic have never been strangers; most modern electronics have ceramic material components. Porcelain housings, bushings, and tube supports can be found in many neon signs, particularly vintage, providing a safe and stable high-voltage connection point, cable routing, and tube holder.
Alfred-based British neon artist Sarah Blood, who has degrees in both ceramics and glass, is likely the first in contemporary fine art to mix mediums in this way. She began working this way after graduate school around 2003; she was teaching both and so had access to materials and equipment for the perfect price: free. We Will Not Go Gentle, located along the back wall of Hatch’s primary gallery, features a variety of white ceramic forms that resemble enlarged combination chess pawns/bowling pins with rounded bottoms on the edge of toppling over if it weren’t for the three full-length glass tubes they’re supporting. These tubes, lit in primary red (neon), blue (argon), and green (phosphor + argon), are suspended precariously between the ceramic pieces, replacing traditional porcelain tube supports. With shapes that echo the curves of a female body, there are clear references here to the concept of invisible labor—the work that, like those tube supports, prop up everything from galleries to society as a whole, but mostly remains unseen. One on its own can’t shoulder the load, but working together, collective tension holds it all up, while the matte white forms provide a canvas for the interplay of light and color.
Born in Hong Kong, a neon haven rivaling Las Vegas, Ling Chun added neon to her eclectic mixed-media practice as another way of exploring themes of nostalgia, ephemerality, memory, and being someone who inhabits a space of being in-between. Working in disparate mediums—both fragile in different ways but with entirely different working vocabulary—echoes what it’s like to live cross-culturally, speaking multiple languages, and frequently code-switching. The Flowing Glacier captures this liminal existence, the transient neon (argon blue) a juxtaposition to the permanence of the ceramic form. It’s one of the quietest pieces I’ve seen from Chung, who usually prefers unconventional color combinations, but its subtleties allow the viewer to take in smaller details, such as a variety of glaze textures and layers, touches of gold luster, and how the crackle of electricity appears to flow almost like water through the glass tube and in subtle, rippled reflection on the glazed surface.
Signs of the Times
Of course, a show about neon can’t leave out some classic text. Hannah Pierce’s Deeper and Kate Schroeder’s Wake Up And Smell The Fascism both provide different glimpses into the medium’s historic past: Pierce’s handwritten script reminiscent of Glenn Ligon and Tracy Emin, and Schroeder’s stylized sculpture resembling ‘50s roadside motel and diner signs. Conceptually, the two seem to exist in opposition, but Pierce’s dreamy china-painted figures floating in a desert pool and Schroeder’s assertive political commentary aren’t that different when you realize those figures are nude women in a vulnerable state, women and their sexuality historically being a targeted demographic of fascist regimes.
Here, I will note that Schroeder’s work utilizes LED in place of traditional neon, as do several other pieces in the show. Many neon artists are purists but Wake Up demonstrates ways LED is justifiable — at that size, glass would be impossible. Similarly, Marissa Childers’ trompe-l’oeil vintage radio, A Familiar Channel, is such an exacting fit that rendering it in ceramic and neon would be a true feat of skill. One would need painstaking measurements for clay shrinkage and perfect precision for glass bends, both finicky materials already. LED exists as an easy solution, which, while it doesn’t have the same presence as true neon, fits the bill and is accessible to artists new to this combination like Childers.
Connected Landscape
A standout moment in the show may or may not have been intentional; looking at David Morrison’s Expanded Landscape, the window to the right shows a reflection of Alex Paat’s Elder and its bright yellow smiling sun. The contrast between Morrison’s abstract, found object assemblage resembling a junkyard landscape and Paat’s precise, tight bends and effusive happiness is pitch-perfect in a show that could have been a mess of disparate work. It’s moments like this, where the light work functions to connect diametrically opposed concepts, that Clay Currents provides proof of concept in creating a conversation about material, light, space, and form, both pushing the boundaries of material use in their own ways.
A curator’s job is to choreograph the exhibition much like a ballet, balancing personalities and works like pirouettes and pas de deux; something incredibly complex and demanding, appearing effortless, cohesive and fluid. That is what is exhibited in Clay Currents—substantial effort that pays off as each glowing work dissolves into the next, bringing a whole new medium into the conversation of the largest gathering of ceramic artists on the planet, and hopefully making it accessible and furthering its credibility as an artistic medium.
the author Amanda Barr is an artist, educator, curator, and author who started bending neon in 2020. She holds an MA in Modern Languages-Spanish, an MA in Art History, and an MFA in Studio Art. Currently, she is the Assistant Professor of Ceramics and Art History at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico. To learn more about Barr and her work, visit www.amandambarr.com or follow her on Instagram @amandambarr.
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