The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.
“Anything produced in ceramics has a cost to Earth and is thus unsustainable.”—Jane Bamford, 2025.
Peering in the street front window into what was formerly the MICA (Mestizo Institute of Culture and Art) in Salt Lake City, Utah, I was instantly intrigued by what looked like miniature coil-built igloos. These enchanting mini igloos turned out to be functional penguin shelter sculptures!
“Treading Lightly: Walking the Talk” was curated by the celebrated and prolific ceramics maker, facilitator, inventor, and educator, Lisa Orr. Orr brought this exhibition to fruition with the support and co-curation of her fellow POW! (Pots on Wheels) collective members, Hannah Niswonger and Adero Willard. The exhibition was one of ten spotlights at NCECA (the National Council for the Education of Ceramic Arts) in 2025. Orr showcased the work of fourteen artists who are all in their own way responding to the environmental crisis, global warming, and seeking innovative ways of creating in ethical and responsibly sustainable ways.
Collaboration and Impact
The mini igloos are the work of Australian-based artist Jane Bamford, who in 2017 made a conscious decision to set aside her functional pottery practice and collaborate with scientists on conservation, habitat, and species support. For her Ceramic Little Nesting Modules, Bamford worked alongside little penguin ecologists off the coast of Tasmania and South Australia. Bamford is driven by the belief that all species deserve to thrive.
Similarly compelled by the environment’s impact on our fauna, Julia Galloway contributed three large-scale, hand-carved stoneware urns that are part of a larger ten-year project to create one urn for each of the 1153 threatened and endangered species in the US. She’s about six years into the project. Galloway aligns her practice with environmental awareness, and at the same time serves as the Green Learning Community Co-Leader on NCECA’s Green Task Force. The urns in Treading Lightly represent the Oregon spotted frog, the yellow-billed cuckoo, and the Oregon silverspot butterfly. To me, their unassuming, modern, minimalist forms recall the unadorned simplicity of Korean urns. Galloway’s artistry and carving are exquisite.
Environmental Relationship
I was simply mesmerized by Kate Roberts’ work, Study on Atmosphere–Memphis. The softness of the color palette, the unexpected inclusion of what looked like window screen meshing, and the layers of “collage” that created a subtle and visually comforting landscape drew me in. Roberts layers thin films of tulle, sprays them with Mason-stained unfired red clay in powder form, and paints in 3D with the tulle, creating a kaleidoscope of sunset colors, framed in wood. The very existence of this work seems almost impossible, as if one tiny brush of a sleeve, or the slightest tremor, would cause the whole piece to disintegrate into powder. Indeed, Roberts describes her work as “dust paintings.” Conceptually, the artist is creating “atmospheric visions [which] consider the ways in which industrialization, urbanization, and resource extraction have fundamentally altered humanity’s relationship to the environment.” She notes astutely that “Though sunsets elicit images of beauty, in fact their creation is caused by pollution and is directly related to humanity’s choices.” For Roberts, clay in its unfired state elicits the liminal, questions permanence, and explores the connection between the vulnerabilities of clay’s many forms and mortality.
My personal aesthetics are aligned with modern minimalism. Along with Roberts’ work, another stand-out piece was Scott Parady’s wall work, Cross Roads. This piece presents the viewer with material trompe d’oeil: it looks as if it’s rusted steel, cast over old bricks with their many bored holes. I suspect that Parady used wood planks as forms, relying on the grain of the wood to imprint on the clay’s surface, in a similar way as a mason might cast cement. The looseness of the work’s imperfectness feels just right; although its seeming haphazardness may seem simple to execute, it is clearly the culmination of a lifetime of skilled artistry.
Parady’s massive wood-fired vessel, Large Jar, that somewhat literally anchors the show, had by far the highest carbon dioxide footprint due to its sheer volume, and the method in which it was fired. But there’s a twist in the plot here: Parady sources wood for his firings from his own 80-acre lot in such a way as to stop forest fires from burning through it, all the while factoring in managed small burns to mimic nature. Parady’s sustainable intervention is actually preventative, insofar as should a very large forest fire set light in his region, less potential carbon footprint would be released, as a result of Parady’s controlled burn management. Impressively, his forest might even create a fire break and contain an otherwise runaway fire.
Sustainability and Carbon Footprint
Bryan Hopkins’ translucent lamps glow with alluring warmth. Another plot twist: Hopkins works with what he calls “low-fire porcelain.” He set out to create a clay body that could be single-fired at low temperature, would be self-glazing, translucent, and as white as “regular” cone-11 fired porcelain. Hopkins experimented with all US-sourced ingredients, testing Utah-produced halloysite. Ultimately, he deferred to New Zealand kaolin in order to achieve the look he was aiming for. Hopkins fires at cone 05 over a five-hour cycle. Impressive on the sustainability meter. Sometimes aesthetic beauty trumps sustainability.
On the flip side of sublime minimalism, Bradley Klem’s uber-adorned, hand-painted toilet was staged like a throne and centrally located in the show. Klem evokes Greek mythology, juxtaposed with symbols of modernity, industry, consumption, and deception in his underglaze painting. The work is camp and kitsch, radical, and unsettlingly mind-bending. Klem raises numerous questions in his artist statement, “Ceramics, one of humanity’s oldest forms of material storytelling, has a history of function, beauty, and ritual, one that contrasts with modern systems that seek to quantify and categorize all aspects of human existence, including creative expression. In the end, is the very idea of a carbon-footprint calculator, a paradox—meaning “does it clarify responsibility or obscure it?”
I had the great fortune to meet and spend some time with John Neely in the spring of 2024, a year before his untimely passing. Our global community lost a veritable giant in June 2025—a giant man, a giant heart, a giant visionary. Neely is credited with designing and building a virtually smokeless wood-fueled train kiln.
In the 1970s, Neely studied and worked in Japan. These experiences shaped his creative practice and his contribution to sustainable wood-firing. He realized his theory of a smokeless wood-firing kiln at Gulgong, in Australia in 1993. The plans for Neely’s train kiln are open-source and several kilns are popping up all over the world. I witnessed the building of a train kiln at Syracuse University in New York, this past spring, a student hands-on project under the keen and precise guidance of Austin Riddle. Neely taught Riddle to build train kilns, and Riddle has made it his life’s work to continue and expand upon Neely’s legacy.
Treading Lightly’s curator, Lisa Orr, invented the time, energy, and fuel-efficient compact rocket kiln. This is a wood-fired kiln adapted from a rocket stove and a rocket mass heater. It can be fueled by scrap wood and/or discarded pallets. It features a J-tube firebox with a vertical heat riser made of insulated refractory materials, enabling complete combustion of small-diameter scrap wood for high temperatures with minimal smoke. The design maximizes fuel efficiency through controlled airflow and insulation, producing a rocket-like roar during firing and supporting cone-10 results in hours. NCECA programmed a panel discussion around the rocket kiln with Lisa Orr, Chris Alveshere, and Lindsay Rogers. Two of the participants in Treading Lightly, Alveshere and Yuliya Makliuk, used Julia Galloway’s rocket kiln, modeled after Orr’s rocket kiln, in the creation of their works.
There’s a lot of controversy over wood firing in general due to the slow regrowth of trees and the high CO2 by-product. According to exhibition artist, Yuliya Makliuk, who crunched the numbers on environmental footprints for Treading Lightly, the decomposition rate of wood in order to release carbon to offset the CO2 created during firing, is approximately seventy years. When I first apprenticed in ceramics in the north of India, we were allowed one small electric kiln, really small, maybe three cubic feet, and we bisque fired with propane. The surrounding hills were blanketed with mature trees, but each person in the state of Himachal Pradesh was only allowed to consume one tree per year, so wood firing was out of the question. This is when sustainability in practice really struck me as a potentially policy-driven means. We as artists are all called to review and examine the ways in which we create and produce, and weigh the costs, both current and future, on the planet in which we live.
Exhibition Run: March 24 to May 25, 2025, at Mestizo Institute of Art and Culture, Salt Lake City. Participating artists: Jane Bamford, Linda Christianson, Naomi Dalglish, Julia Galloway, Bryan Hopkins, Michael Hunt, Paulina Jimenez-Gomez, Brandi Lee Cooper, Yuliya Makliuk, John Neely, Scott Parady, Kate Roberts, Bradley Klem, and Chris Alveshere.
the author Heidi McKenzie is a Toronto-based ceramic installation artist and arts journalist. To learn more about McKenzie go to www.heidimckenzie.ca.
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The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.
“Anything produced in ceramics has a cost to Earth and is thus unsustainable.”—Jane Bamford, 2025.
Peering in the street front window into what was formerly the MICA (Mestizo Institute of Culture and Art) in Salt Lake City, Utah, I was instantly intrigued by what looked like miniature coil-built igloos. These enchanting mini igloos turned out to be functional penguin shelter sculptures!
“Treading Lightly: Walking the Talk” was curated by the celebrated and prolific ceramics maker, facilitator, inventor, and educator, Lisa Orr. Orr brought this exhibition to fruition with the support and co-curation of her fellow POW! (Pots on Wheels) collective members, Hannah Niswonger and Adero Willard. The exhibition was one of ten spotlights at NCECA (the National Council for the Education of Ceramic Arts) in 2025. Orr showcased the work of fourteen artists who are all in their own way responding to the environmental crisis, global warming, and seeking innovative ways of creating in ethical and responsibly sustainable ways.
Collaboration and Impact
The mini igloos are the work of Australian-based artist Jane Bamford, who in 2017 made a conscious decision to set aside her functional pottery practice and collaborate with scientists on conservation, habitat, and species support. For her Ceramic Little Nesting Modules, Bamford worked alongside little penguin ecologists off the coast of Tasmania and South Australia. Bamford is driven by the belief that all species deserve to thrive.
Similarly compelled by the environment’s impact on our fauna, Julia Galloway contributed three large-scale, hand-carved stoneware urns that are part of a larger ten-year project to create one urn for each of the 1153 threatened and endangered species in the US. She’s about six years into the project. Galloway aligns her practice with environmental awareness, and at the same time serves as the Green Learning Community Co-Leader on NCECA’s Green Task Force. The urns in Treading Lightly represent the Oregon spotted frog, the yellow-billed cuckoo, and the Oregon silverspot butterfly. To me, their unassuming, modern, minimalist forms recall the unadorned simplicity of Korean urns. Galloway’s artistry and carving are exquisite.
Environmental Relationship
I was simply mesmerized by Kate Roberts’ work, Study on Atmosphere–Memphis. The softness of the color palette, the unexpected inclusion of what looked like window screen meshing, and the layers of “collage” that created a subtle and visually comforting landscape drew me in. Roberts layers thin films of tulle, sprays them with Mason-stained unfired red clay in powder form, and paints in 3D with the tulle, creating a kaleidoscope of sunset colors, framed in wood. The very existence of this work seems almost impossible, as if one tiny brush of a sleeve, or the slightest tremor, would cause the whole piece to disintegrate into powder. Indeed, Roberts describes her work as “dust paintings.” Conceptually, the artist is creating “atmospheric visions [which] consider the ways in which industrialization, urbanization, and resource extraction have fundamentally altered humanity’s relationship to the environment.” She notes astutely that “Though sunsets elicit images of beauty, in fact their creation is caused by pollution and is directly related to humanity’s choices.” For Roberts, clay in its unfired state elicits the liminal, questions permanence, and explores the connection between the vulnerabilities of clay’s many forms and mortality.
My personal aesthetics are aligned with modern minimalism. Along with Roberts’ work, another stand-out piece was Scott Parady’s wall work, Cross Roads. This piece presents the viewer with material trompe d’oeil: it looks as if it’s rusted steel, cast over old bricks with their many bored holes. I suspect that Parady used wood planks as forms, relying on the grain of the wood to imprint on the clay’s surface, in a similar way as a mason might cast cement. The looseness of the work’s imperfectness feels just right; although its seeming haphazardness may seem simple to execute, it is clearly the culmination of a lifetime of skilled artistry.
Parady’s massive wood-fired vessel, Large Jar, that somewhat literally anchors the show, had by far the highest carbon dioxide footprint due to its sheer volume, and the method in which it was fired. But there’s a twist in the plot here: Parady sources wood for his firings from his own 80-acre lot in such a way as to stop forest fires from burning through it, all the while factoring in managed small burns to mimic nature. Parady’s sustainable intervention is actually preventative, insofar as should a very large forest fire set light in his region, less potential carbon footprint would be released, as a result of Parady’s controlled burn management. Impressively, his forest might even create a fire break and contain an otherwise runaway fire.
Sustainability and Carbon Footprint
Bryan Hopkins’ translucent lamps glow with alluring warmth. Another plot twist: Hopkins works with what he calls “low-fire porcelain.” He set out to create a clay body that could be single-fired at low temperature, would be self-glazing, translucent, and as white as “regular” cone-11 fired porcelain. Hopkins experimented with all US-sourced ingredients, testing Utah-produced halloysite. Ultimately, he deferred to New Zealand kaolin in order to achieve the look he was aiming for. Hopkins fires at cone 05 over a five-hour cycle. Impressive on the sustainability meter. Sometimes aesthetic beauty trumps sustainability.
On the flip side of sublime minimalism, Bradley Klem’s uber-adorned, hand-painted toilet was staged like a throne and centrally located in the show. Klem evokes Greek mythology, juxtaposed with symbols of modernity, industry, consumption, and deception in his underglaze painting. The work is camp and kitsch, radical, and unsettlingly mind-bending. Klem raises numerous questions in his artist statement, “Ceramics, one of humanity’s oldest forms of material storytelling, has a history of function, beauty, and ritual, one that contrasts with modern systems that seek to quantify and categorize all aspects of human existence, including creative expression. In the end, is the very idea of a carbon-footprint calculator, a paradox—meaning “does it clarify responsibility or obscure it?”
I had the great fortune to meet and spend some time with John Neely in the spring of 2024, a year before his untimely passing. Our global community lost a veritable giant in June 2025—a giant man, a giant heart, a giant visionary. Neely is credited with designing and building a virtually smokeless wood-fueled train kiln.
In the 1970s, Neely studied and worked in Japan. These experiences shaped his creative practice and his contribution to sustainable wood-firing. He realized his theory of a smokeless wood-firing kiln at Gulgong, in Australia in 1993. The plans for Neely’s train kiln are open-source and several kilns are popping up all over the world. I witnessed the building of a train kiln at Syracuse University in New York, this past spring, a student hands-on project under the keen and precise guidance of Austin Riddle. Neely taught Riddle to build train kilns, and Riddle has made it his life’s work to continue and expand upon Neely’s legacy.
Treading Lightly’s curator, Lisa Orr, invented the time, energy, and fuel-efficient compact rocket kiln. This is a wood-fired kiln adapted from a rocket stove and a rocket mass heater. It can be fueled by scrap wood and/or discarded pallets. It features a J-tube firebox with a vertical heat riser made of insulated refractory materials, enabling complete combustion of small-diameter scrap wood for high temperatures with minimal smoke. The design maximizes fuel efficiency through controlled airflow and insulation, producing a rocket-like roar during firing and supporting cone-10 results in hours. NCECA programmed a panel discussion around the rocket kiln with Lisa Orr, Chris Alveshere, and Lindsay Rogers. Two of the participants in Treading Lightly, Alveshere and Yuliya Makliuk, used Julia Galloway’s rocket kiln, modeled after Orr’s rocket kiln, in the creation of their works.
There’s a lot of controversy over wood firing in general due to the slow regrowth of trees and the high CO2 by-product. According to exhibition artist, Yuliya Makliuk, who crunched the numbers on environmental footprints for Treading Lightly, the decomposition rate of wood in order to release carbon to offset the CO2 created during firing, is approximately seventy years. When I first apprenticed in ceramics in the north of India, we were allowed one small electric kiln, really small, maybe three cubic feet, and we bisque fired with propane. The surrounding hills were blanketed with mature trees, but each person in the state of Himachal Pradesh was only allowed to consume one tree per year, so wood firing was out of the question. This is when sustainability in practice really struck me as a potentially policy-driven means. We as artists are all called to review and examine the ways in which we create and produce, and weigh the costs, both current and future, on the planet in which we live.
Exhibition Run: March 24 to May 25, 2025, at Mestizo Institute of Art and Culture, Salt Lake City. Participating artists: Jane Bamford, Linda Christianson, Naomi Dalglish, Julia Galloway, Bryan Hopkins, Michael Hunt, Paulina Jimenez-Gomez, Brandi Lee Cooper, Yuliya Makliuk, John Neely, Scott Parady, Kate Roberts, Bradley Klem, and Chris Alveshere.
the author Heidi McKenzie is a Toronto-based ceramic installation artist and arts journalist. To learn more about McKenzie go to www.heidimckenzie.ca.
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