The SA+C is proud to present the juror group for the 2024 Narratives in Clay Call for Entry.
Jennifer Ling Datchuk is an artist born in Warren, Ohio and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Her work is an exploration of her layered identity – as a woman, a Chinese woman, as an “American,” as a third culture kid.
Trained in ceramics, Datchuk works with porcelain and other materials often associated with traditional women’s work, such as textiles and hair, to
discuss fragility, beauty, femininity, intersectionality, identity, and personal history. Her practice evolved from sculpture to mixed media as she began to focus on domestic objects and the feminine sphere. Handwork and hair both became totems of the small rituals that fix, smooth over, and ground women’s lives. Through these materials, she explores how Western beauty standards influenced the East, how the non-white body is commodified and sold, and how women’s – globally, girls’ – work is still a major economic driver whose workers still struggle for equality.
Gretchen Keyworth, Fuller Craft Museum’s Director Emeritus and Chief Curator, has led a long and lustrous career. Before becoming Director and Chief Curator of Fuller Craft Museum, she managed a consulting business helping to develop business and marketing plans for craft artists and organizations. Keyworth co-founded Signature Galleries and Grohe Glass Gallery, and has also served as director or advisor for several prominent craft shows, including Crafts at the Castle; Fine Furnishings, Providence; and the Society of Arts + Crafts’ CraftBoston event. She also served as Director of Cultural Promotions for the City of Boston’s Office of Cultural Affairs. Keyworth’s relationship with the Fuller dates back to 1988, when she served on the museum’s board of directors and collection committee.
Malcom is an artist and teacher, currently Associate Professor of Ceramic Art at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
He earned an MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1996 and studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and Penn State University where I completed a BFA in ceramics in 1994.
Professionally, he is active in presenting workshops and lectures and participating in residencies, including visits to Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, and the Robert McNamara Foundation. My works have been presented at The Luise Ross Gallery, New York City, and are held in numerous private and public collections, including the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, FuLed International Ceramic Art Museum, Beijing, China, the Haan Museum, the Indiana State Museum, and the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum in Taiwan.
Malcom’s works, both ceramic and drawing, are guided by improvisations that fluctuate between volumetric forms with graphic flatness. The vessels are inspired by the intersections of graffiti art, comic books, and playful organic abstraction. Generally, ceramics forms rely on wheel-thrown and hand-built elements, most commonly presented as abstractions of cups, bottles, and vases. In this making practice, he merges these forms with a passion for Hip Hop and Jazz as locations for invention and the unexpected. The decorative objects operate as signifiers of acculturation to aesthetic things reflecting back to us our aestheticized desires and imaginations. Motivated by these concerns and his own multi-faceted/multi- cultural background his research blends identity politics, CAD/CAM, printmaking, and drawing into a complex web of influences and passions.