The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.
Standing alone in the Holocaust Tower, also known as the “Voided Void,” at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Wade MacDonald felt for the first time the transforming power of contemporary architecture. “It was a moment where I felt like architecture could speak.” Surrounded by darkness, the Tower’s angled walls travel upward revealing a narrow slit to the outside. “A beam of daylight pierces through the cold darkness,” he recalls. “It is a way out, an end to suffering.” The experience marked MacDonald. “It was similar to the feeling of being in a cathedral, but I had never felt that with contemporary architecture before. It felt like I was in an installation, that I was inside a vessel.”
The Intersection of Ceramics and Architecture
Capturing the feeling of being inside a vessel is at the heart of MacDonald’s own sculptural and functional works, which are strongly influenced by contemporary architecture. “The contemporary structure is playing a role in the social landscape,” he notes. “It is in stark contrast to everything around it. It is meant to disrupt. You can’t ignore it; you have to deal with it.”
MacDonald’s overarching interest lies in investigating the relationship between personal identity and the built environment. To this end, his works explore the intersection of ceramics, digital fabrication, furniture design, and contemporary architecture. “The intersection of ceramics and architecture is a dynamic and symbiotic relationship,” notes MacDonald. “Both disciplines address social concerns through their aesthetics and utilitarian nature.” Even when working on vessels like mugs and bowls, MacDonald is concerned with their interior spaces from an architectural perspective.
His surrealist sculptures, composed of mixed materials encased in colored-plexiglass vitrines, serve as interior landscapes of the mind, suggestive of futuristic dwellings, topography, and architectural models. Narrative is often suggested, though not literally represented, allowing viewers to observe the objects while considering their material forms and how they relate to each other. “The idea of connection,” MacDonald notes, “of wanting to connect, adds a layer of meaning and conceptual potency to the work.”
Contemporary and Theoretical Architecture Influences
MacDonald first became interested in contemporary architecture while employed at the public library in Cincinnati, Ohio. Tasked with sorting books, he found time to peruse several art and design magazines. One day, he came across Dutch visual artist Constant Nieuwenhuys’ Another City for Another Life: Constant’s New Babylon, a vast architectural and urban planning project that contains paintings, sketches, and texts for a futuristic and hypothetical city raised above the earth. In this world, human labor would be unnecessary, and life’s focus would be on creative existence. The concept was that architecture itself could transform daily reality and change how people could move about and explore their natural surroundings according to their needs. All structures in this world would be linked and transformable, designed for continual growth.1
Exposure to this bold theoretical urban planning project had a profound influence on MacDonald well before he would begin his graduate studies and opened him up to the concept of theoretical architecture—envisioning how humans might interact within an environment that might never come into existence or be impossible to build. This led MacDonald to start thinking about how he might incorporate clay into a theoretical design.
Later, during his studies at Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing, Michigan, The Eli and Edythe Broad Museum was under construction, and MacDonald felt fortunate to be able to watch it being built up close. One of the earliest exhibitions in the museum was of architect Lebbeus Woods’ intricate sculptural models, drawings, and large-scale 2D work. “It was influential because it showed you could be an architect without the aim of actually building structures. You could approach architecture as an artist.” MacDonald started thinking about the function of architecture—that it doesn’t have to be built to be influential. It can even just exist on paper or in one’s mind.
Rethinking the Vitrine
The creative freedom MacDonald was given at MSU was imperative to the direction his work has taken. He initially wanted to make pots, but after his first critique, MacDonald realized that “if I allow myself to commit to just this one thing, it’s going to limit my vision. I needed to push myself as hard as possible.” And so he began working with materials other than clay.
A thoughtful interaction with visiting artist and sculptor Jorge Pardo further changed the direction of MacDonald’s work. Taking note of the many bisque-fired pieces lining the shelves in MacDonald’s graduate studio space, Pardo encouraged MacDonald to build rooms for them. This led MacDonald to realize that building displays could enhance and elevate the ceramic pieces. He started asking himself, “What is the piece? Is it the ceramic work, the pedestal, the light, or the environment it’s being shown in?”
All of MacDonald’s sculptural projects begin with the display furniture, typically made of wood or plexiglass. He first learned how to work with these materials while at MSU. Assigned to teach a wood fabrication class in his first year, MacDonald learned the fundamentals quickly. It wasn’t long before he fell in love with furniture making, enjoying its inherently slow process, the intensive planning, and functional considerations.
While traditionally, museums and galleries display fragile works under plexiglass, MacDonald has reenvisioned how plexiglass can be used, allowing it to become an active part of his sculptural pieces. His plexiglass vitrines act as vessels themselves, serving as interior spaces for curated collections of found objects and unglazed clay components. MacDonald is interested in creating a space where the clay object, plexiglass, wood, and what he considers cast-away or found objects—pieces of plastic or metal that might end up in a recycling bin—talk to each other. Combining these pieces and staging them under a vitrine elevates their status and draws our attention to them in new ways. His hope is that viewers will reevaluate the objects we typically consider throwaway or consumable.
Making Sense of a Complex World
Being an artist at this moment in history, MacDonald feels an obligation to create works that reflect the ambiguity, instability, and complexity of the human experience. He believes contemporary architecture has the power to help us understand our world and ourselves, and that utilizing those design concepts can be a powerful vehicle for commentary about our lives. MacDonald regards his current body of work as “architectural models” that encourage viewers to consider their individual roles in our society at large.
MacDonald has spent much time contemplating his place in today’s globally fragmented society. By bringing contemporary architecture and the clay object together in both his sculptural and functional works, he highlights what he considers “their shared essence as fundamental concepts or structures,” hoping to engender a sense of connection over disconnection. “Clay is the most relatable material an artist can use because it’s so close to the body. The primary tool for construction is your hands, and it records everything you do to it instantly. It’s trapped in time forever.”
In Dark Cloud, Unknowable Architectures, MacDonald explores his frustration over what he deems his inability to understand the world around him. A tall, angled wooden pedestal evokes a sense of instability. Housed atop the pedestal is a colored-plexiglass vitrine containing two abstract ceramic structures, a decaled image of a car from the 1960s printed on clay, and two obituaries etched into fluorescent plexiglass that glow from within. Dark clouds loom over everything. The obituaries are of two men who are unknown to MacDonald, but share the same name. The decaled image is of the car owned by Viola Liuzzo, a civil rights activist from Michigan who traveled to Alabama in 1965 to protest the inequality of African Americans in the state. The Ku Klux Klan murdered Liuzzo along a rural highway (not far from where MacDonald used to live) as she was driving another activist from Selma to Montgomery during the Selma Voting Rights March. Due to the systemic concealment of information from the civil rights movement in Alabama, her story has been virtually unknown. In this piece, MacDonald admits his ineptitude to fully understand the meaning of forms and narratives in his surroundings. Yet despite the lack of complete understanding, the work reveals his deep connection to this moment in history.
MacDonald’s struggles and limitations in understanding his environment are what compel him to create. Ultimately, it is a feeling of connection he seeks. “Social media promised to connect us, but those connections seem to be more superficial rather than authentic,” reflects MacDonald. “Being in the room with someone and looking into their eyes or touching them—it’s not a thing we really do anymore. I think everyone probably wants that, but we’re denying ourselves as though it doesn’t feel appropriate to be vulnerable.” This experience of feeling disconnected is, ironically, one we all share; it is both private and collective.
Ideas for the Future
As assistant professor of ceramics in the department of art and art history at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, MacDonald’s first priority during the school year is his students, so he doesn’t get a lot of time in the studio to make. He typically spends the school year planning out the work he will construct in the summer when he has more studio time. With conceptual work, new ideas take a long time to manifest. Well before he begins construction on a piece, MacDonald carves out time to reflect on it. Influenced by his wife, painter Anne Herbert, he notes, “She’ll often go into her studio and stare at her paintings.” Similarly, he’ll find himself contemplating objects in his studio and thinking about the ways they might be used. Sitting in his workspace and reflecting is just as important as going in there to make the work.
MacDonald muses that if he had endless resources and time, he’d be interested in creating even larger-scale works. “If I had long enough to think about it, I could eventually figure out how to build it.” In addition to his conceptual work, he enjoys making functional pots, including his highly sought-after slip-cast cups. The complex glazing process is a slow one, but it allows MacDonald the chance to play with color. He enjoys being immersed in both ways of making, though he notes he’d like to get to a place where his vessels and sculpture are more closely aligned.
MacDonald’s works have been widely exhibited throughout the US, and he has received multiple awards and fellowships, including a National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Emerging Artist award in 2018. He and Herbert sometimes exhibit their works jointly. In April 2025, they had a show at the Gadsden Museum of Art in Gadsden, Alabama. And, from September 2026 through January 2027, MacDonald will have a solo show at the Museum of Art in DeLand, Florida.
As he begins thinking about creating works for upcoming shows, MacDonald sees each new piece as a looming question with no defined answer. But by asking the question, he’s propelled by an ultimately unknowable truth that can only be glimpsed in rare moments—the same truth he felt while standing alone in the Holocaust Tower in Berlin: that we are bound together by our inability to comprehend the depth of our connectedness.
the author Susan McHenry is a studio potter, writer, and educator based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She has an MFA in writing and literature from Bennington College. To learn more, visit susanmchenryceramics.comor follow on Instagram @susanmchenryceramics.
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The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.
Standing alone in the Holocaust Tower, also known as the “Voided Void,” at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Wade MacDonald felt for the first time the transforming power of contemporary architecture. “It was a moment where I felt like architecture could speak.” Surrounded by darkness, the Tower’s angled walls travel upward revealing a narrow slit to the outside. “A beam of daylight pierces through the cold darkness,” he recalls. “It is a way out, an end to suffering.” The experience marked MacDonald. “It was similar to the feeling of being in a cathedral, but I had never felt that with contemporary architecture before. It felt like I was in an installation, that I was inside a vessel.”
The Intersection of Ceramics and Architecture
Capturing the feeling of being inside a vessel is at the heart of MacDonald’s own sculptural and functional works, which are strongly influenced by contemporary architecture. “The contemporary structure is playing a role in the social landscape,” he notes. “It is in stark contrast to everything around it. It is meant to disrupt. You can’t ignore it; you have to deal with it.”
MacDonald’s overarching interest lies in investigating the relationship between personal identity and the built environment. To this end, his works explore the intersection of ceramics, digital fabrication, furniture design, and contemporary architecture. “The intersection of ceramics and architecture is a dynamic and symbiotic relationship,” notes MacDonald. “Both disciplines address social concerns through their aesthetics and utilitarian nature.” Even when working on vessels like mugs and bowls, MacDonald is concerned with their interior spaces from an architectural perspective.
His surrealist sculptures, composed of mixed materials encased in colored-plexiglass vitrines, serve as interior landscapes of the mind, suggestive of futuristic dwellings, topography, and architectural models. Narrative is often suggested, though not literally represented, allowing viewers to observe the objects while considering their material forms and how they relate to each other. “The idea of connection,” MacDonald notes, “of wanting to connect, adds a layer of meaning and conceptual potency to the work.”
Contemporary and Theoretical Architecture Influences
MacDonald first became interested in contemporary architecture while employed at the public library in Cincinnati, Ohio. Tasked with sorting books, he found time to peruse several art and design magazines. One day, he came across Dutch visual artist Constant Nieuwenhuys’ Another City for Another Life: Constant’s New Babylon, a vast architectural and urban planning project that contains paintings, sketches, and texts for a futuristic and hypothetical city raised above the earth. In this world, human labor would be unnecessary, and life’s focus would be on creative existence. The concept was that architecture itself could transform daily reality and change how people could move about and explore their natural surroundings according to their needs. All structures in this world would be linked and transformable, designed for continual growth.1
Exposure to this bold theoretical urban planning project had a profound influence on MacDonald well before he would begin his graduate studies and opened him up to the concept of theoretical architecture—envisioning how humans might interact within an environment that might never come into existence or be impossible to build. This led MacDonald to start thinking about how he might incorporate clay into a theoretical design.
Later, during his studies at Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing, Michigan, The Eli and Edythe Broad Museum was under construction, and MacDonald felt fortunate to be able to watch it being built up close. One of the earliest exhibitions in the museum was of architect Lebbeus Woods’ intricate sculptural models, drawings, and large-scale 2D work. “It was influential because it showed you could be an architect without the aim of actually building structures. You could approach architecture as an artist.” MacDonald started thinking about the function of architecture—that it doesn’t have to be built to be influential. It can even just exist on paper or in one’s mind.
Rethinking the Vitrine
The creative freedom MacDonald was given at MSU was imperative to the direction his work has taken. He initially wanted to make pots, but after his first critique, MacDonald realized that “if I allow myself to commit to just this one thing, it’s going to limit my vision. I needed to push myself as hard as possible.” And so he began working with materials other than clay.
A thoughtful interaction with visiting artist and sculptor Jorge Pardo further changed the direction of MacDonald’s work. Taking note of the many bisque-fired pieces lining the shelves in MacDonald’s graduate studio space, Pardo encouraged MacDonald to build rooms for them. This led MacDonald to realize that building displays could enhance and elevate the ceramic pieces. He started asking himself, “What is the piece? Is it the ceramic work, the pedestal, the light, or the environment it’s being shown in?”
All of MacDonald’s sculptural projects begin with the display furniture, typically made of wood or plexiglass. He first learned how to work with these materials while at MSU. Assigned to teach a wood fabrication class in his first year, MacDonald learned the fundamentals quickly. It wasn’t long before he fell in love with furniture making, enjoying its inherently slow process, the intensive planning, and functional considerations.
While traditionally, museums and galleries display fragile works under plexiglass, MacDonald has reenvisioned how plexiglass can be used, allowing it to become an active part of his sculptural pieces. His plexiglass vitrines act as vessels themselves, serving as interior spaces for curated collections of found objects and unglazed clay components. MacDonald is interested in creating a space where the clay object, plexiglass, wood, and what he considers cast-away or found objects—pieces of plastic or metal that might end up in a recycling bin—talk to each other. Combining these pieces and staging them under a vitrine elevates their status and draws our attention to them in new ways. His hope is that viewers will reevaluate the objects we typically consider throwaway or consumable.
Making Sense of a Complex World
Being an artist at this moment in history, MacDonald feels an obligation to create works that reflect the ambiguity, instability, and complexity of the human experience. He believes contemporary architecture has the power to help us understand our world and ourselves, and that utilizing those design concepts can be a powerful vehicle for commentary about our lives. MacDonald regards his current body of work as “architectural models” that encourage viewers to consider their individual roles in our society at large.
MacDonald has spent much time contemplating his place in today’s globally fragmented society. By bringing contemporary architecture and the clay object together in both his sculptural and functional works, he highlights what he considers “their shared essence as fundamental concepts or structures,” hoping to engender a sense of connection over disconnection. “Clay is the most relatable material an artist can use because it’s so close to the body. The primary tool for construction is your hands, and it records everything you do to it instantly. It’s trapped in time forever.”
In Dark Cloud, Unknowable Architectures, MacDonald explores his frustration over what he deems his inability to understand the world around him. A tall, angled wooden pedestal evokes a sense of instability. Housed atop the pedestal is a colored-plexiglass vitrine containing two abstract ceramic structures, a decaled image of a car from the 1960s printed on clay, and two obituaries etched into fluorescent plexiglass that glow from within. Dark clouds loom over everything. The obituaries are of two men who are unknown to MacDonald, but share the same name. The decaled image is of the car owned by Viola Liuzzo, a civil rights activist from Michigan who traveled to Alabama in 1965 to protest the inequality of African Americans in the state. The Ku Klux Klan murdered Liuzzo along a rural highway (not far from where MacDonald used to live) as she was driving another activist from Selma to Montgomery during the Selma Voting Rights March. Due to the systemic concealment of information from the civil rights movement in Alabama, her story has been virtually unknown. In this piece, MacDonald admits his ineptitude to fully understand the meaning of forms and narratives in his surroundings. Yet despite the lack of complete understanding, the work reveals his deep connection to this moment in history.
MacDonald’s struggles and limitations in understanding his environment are what compel him to create. Ultimately, it is a feeling of connection he seeks. “Social media promised to connect us, but those connections seem to be more superficial rather than authentic,” reflects MacDonald. “Being in the room with someone and looking into their eyes or touching them—it’s not a thing we really do anymore. I think everyone probably wants that, but we’re denying ourselves as though it doesn’t feel appropriate to be vulnerable.” This experience of feeling disconnected is, ironically, one we all share; it is both private and collective.
Ideas for the Future
As assistant professor of ceramics in the department of art and art history at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, MacDonald’s first priority during the school year is his students, so he doesn’t get a lot of time in the studio to make. He typically spends the school year planning out the work he will construct in the summer when he has more studio time. With conceptual work, new ideas take a long time to manifest. Well before he begins construction on a piece, MacDonald carves out time to reflect on it. Influenced by his wife, painter Anne Herbert, he notes, “She’ll often go into her studio and stare at her paintings.” Similarly, he’ll find himself contemplating objects in his studio and thinking about the ways they might be used. Sitting in his workspace and reflecting is just as important as going in there to make the work.
MacDonald muses that if he had endless resources and time, he’d be interested in creating even larger-scale works. “If I had long enough to think about it, I could eventually figure out how to build it.” In addition to his conceptual work, he enjoys making functional pots, including his highly sought-after slip-cast cups. The complex glazing process is a slow one, but it allows MacDonald the chance to play with color. He enjoys being immersed in both ways of making, though he notes he’d like to get to a place where his vessels and sculpture are more closely aligned.
MacDonald’s works have been widely exhibited throughout the US, and he has received multiple awards and fellowships, including a National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Emerging Artist award in 2018. He and Herbert sometimes exhibit their works jointly. In April 2025, they had a show at the Gadsden Museum of Art in Gadsden, Alabama. And, from September 2026 through January 2027, MacDonald will have a solo show at the Museum of Art in DeLand, Florida.
As he begins thinking about creating works for upcoming shows, MacDonald sees each new piece as a looming question with no defined answer. But by asking the question, he’s propelled by an ultimately unknowable truth that can only be glimpsed in rare moments—the same truth he felt while standing alone in the Holocaust Tower in Berlin: that we are bound together by our inability to comprehend the depth of our connectedness.
To learn more about Wade MacDonald, visit wfmceramics.com or follow on Instagram @wmacd.art.
the author Susan McHenry is a studio potter, writer, and educator based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She has an MFA in writing and literature from Bennington College. To learn more, visit susanmchenryceramics.com or follow on Instagram @susanmchenryceramics.
1 from The Kunstmuseum Den Haag (kunstmuseum.nl)
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