Belger Arts annual resident exhibition includes work by current Artists in Residence: Summer Brooks, Elaine Buss, Eleanor Foy, Sun Young Park, Adams Puryear, and Nicole Woodard. For the six artists, the past year has been one of processing and navigating uncertainty, while persistently evolving, creatively thriving, and laying the “groundwork” for what’s to come.

Summer Brooks’ figurative depictions of black women challenge constraining ideals of beauty. Pressed and carved hair textures, confront stereotypes and aesthetic standards, while her use of materials such as India ink and spray foam challenge the conventions of the ceramics medium. Elaine Buss’ sculptural forms include symbols that serve as a visual language that reveals her fascination with knowing and exploring. Her work invites the viewer to experience what has informed, comforted, and humbled her. Eleanor Foy’s work is heavily inspired by the American West. For Foy, Westerns embody and perpetuate the violence of our colonial past, and underscore our relationship to history, land, and language. Foy considers the construction of her lamps and sculptures an indulgence and a criticism of romantic Americana. Sun Young Park combines clay and non-clay materials to create large, abstract sculptures that reflect how she processes and translates her reality and explores the duality of the material and the conceptual. Adams Puryear documents pop and internet culture, combining traditional techniques and contemporary imagery inspired by the internet’s “anti-filter.” Nicole Woodard creates representations of the human experience by decorating her abstracted figurative busts and heads with drawings that reveal human resilience.

Belger Crane Yard Studios continues to host national and international artists through its Artists in Residence program. A residency provides ceramic artists the opportunity to expand their body of work or create a special project that may be outside of the scope of their routine studio practice.