Above Board Ceramics

Above Board Ceramics is an annual online tableware exhibition founded by Lilly Zuckerman and Penelope Van Grinsven. Lilly and Penelope are recent-not-so-recent ceramic MFA grads who live in New Haven, CT. They both landed in New Haven after years of near misses. With many mutual friends and shared experiences stretching over the last decade at places like Penn State, Missoula, MT, Boulder, and Fort Collins, CO, it wasn’t until Lilly moved just three blocks away from Penelope that they formed a friendship at light-speed. Establishing Above Board Ceramics seemed like a natural move. Lilly and Penelope share an interest in curating a functional tableware exhibition while promoting new and diverse makers in the field. The first iteration of this exhibition in March 2021 was online. Plans are in place to have the show live, in-person in the future.

Interview with Penelope Van Grinsven & Lilly Zuckerman

Questions by Andreana Donahue

I know you established Above Board Ceramics fairly recently, this past November. You mentioned that the circumstances of the pandemic ultimately created the time and opportunity to pursue this project. How have the limitations and desire for connection during this time informed your business model or overall approach?

Starting this business during a pandemic made us want to create a space of engagement for our community even more. Ceramic artists could not gather in person for the yearly ceramics conference NCECA, potters missed potlucks, and coming together to build community. We created ABC over zoom from our couches three blocks away from each other and on phone calls after work and on weekends. This fall was one of the darkest times with positive cases and deaths climbing. Having this bright spot of a joyful exhibition we could share with everyone in the spring gave us direction and focus during the most challenging time of the pandemic. 

While we believe that ceramics exhibitions are ideally viewed in person where the work can be touched and interacted with. Creating an online platform for the exhibition and sale meant everyone in the country and world could see it and participate. That is a beautiful bridge we were able to build. Bringing all of these artists together around one virtual table did feel very special during a global pandemic and built connections we were craving.

After meeting in New Haven, you two became fast friends. Can you talk about your shared interest in community engagement? What are some of the most unexpected strengths or successes of your creative partnership?

Organizing the ABC exhibition feels to us like our act of service to the field, a mutually beneficial way for us to give back and help foster community engagement as well as financially supporting artists. We provide a good balance for each other in our creative partnership, pushing each other and reigning each other in simultaneously. We divide the work very organically based on strengths and interests.

In March you launched the first annual Above Board Ceramics exhibition celebrating utilitarian tableware, which coincides with the NCECA conference. Can you tell us more about the concept of this exhibition?

Our goal was to curate a show that captures the real diversity of our field. Bring new and established ceramic artists who make functional tableware (and also some makers whose work doesn't fall neatly into that category to challenge their making) together at the virtual table is our driving concept.

Like most galleries adapting to restrictions over the past year, you adopted a virtual exhibition format. Can you talk more about your decisions surrounding alternative content in lieu of viewers experiencing the work in person?

We asked for in situ photos, videos, gifs, and selfies of makers’ hands holding their work. This allowed a glimpse into the intimate settings of the makers' homes, studios, gardens. A bit of the "behind-the-scenes" access that the normal format of work extracted from the studio and placed in a white cube space could never offer. We hoped that this additional information added texture and details about the maker’s life, setting, and mindset that enhanced the virtual gallery experience. For example, Mariana Baquero shared a stop motion video of a family dinner with her dishes. Viewers were invited to her table and it gave a sense of the presence these objects occupied around the table as if they were a guest themself!

You’ve been quite intentional about selecting artists in order to achieve an honest representation of the contemporary ceramics field. Can you share some insight into your co-curatorial process?

Our goal was to curate a show that captures the real diversity of our field. We invited a balance of established and new artists and we did a lot of research to learn to broaden our scope. We love your phrase, "honest representation" because the truth is that this field is incredibly diverse but many exhibition rosters don't reflect that.

Objects in the exhibition range from improvisational hand-built vessels to more traditional tableware with highly controlled, wheel-thrown silhouettes. Can you tell us more about the diverse interpretations and approaches to working with ceramics included in this exhibition?

We invited artists who are making functional and utilitarian pots as well as more sculptural artists to help us challenge and stretch the definition of “functional tableware” For example, Jason Walker made a ceramic toilet paper holder, for an after-dinner activity. We also saw connections emerge across work from different artists like Andrea Marquis’ massive table divider, "Centerpiece for a Partisan Family Dinner" (almost 30" long and 20" tall), and Krissy Ramirez's Nopalito mugs featuring a hyper-realistic brick wall. In one piece, a wall (albeit perforated) splits a dinner table in two; in the other piece, a user conquers the wall, again and again, every time they sip coffee from the mug.  Marquis's piece humorously but seriously speaks to the intense political divide many families feel and Ramirez's signature motif of cinder block, spray paint, and brick stems from the place where she discovered her love of clay at the border town of Douglas, AZ.

Over the past decade or so, ceramic artists have increasingly gained popularity and prominence in the contemporary art community. Does this signal to you that ceramics are being taken more seriously than in the past?

Yes, it does seem like ceramics is getting a lot more coverage by entities in the contemporary art world and it's not just established artists from other media working in clay that is getting recognition (Pablo Picasso, Lucio Fontana, or even Lynda Benglis), we're actually seeing ceramicists - artists who primarily work with clay and are involved or capable of every part of the making process - represented by blue-chip galleries or shown at major art fairs. Our show undeniably curated artists with highly polished craft skills but even that isn't undervalued by the contemporary art world like it once seemed to be. 

How do you typically cultivate relationships with artists you’re interested in supporting? Do you think artist-run spaces naturally provide a more meaningful or impactful experience than traditional gallery representation?

As this was a large group show, we were able to start by inviting established artists who's work we had admired for a long time and asking them to recommend emerging artists we might not know. We scoured social media and are grateful for the work of organizations like The Color Network and Artaxis that create compendiums of ceramic artists of all levels. I would guess we had a lot more freedom and flexibility than a traditional gallery and our ethos has very little to do with making a lot of money and much more about making connections.

Using the name Above Board was a thoughtful decision, highlighting relationships between the phrase origin and the dining table, community gathering, as well as honesty. Can you talk more about the importance of transparency and equity to your mission?

It is what we are all about! Part of this emphasis on transparency stems from us feeling so new to this line of work and feeling like the best way for our community to help us out is if they are with us every step of the way. We've talked a lot about how mysterious it can all feel when we've been in the position of an artist participating in a show and sent work off and maybe months later (if lucky!) all we've gotten is a check with no explanation. We made every effort to communicate with our artists before, during, and after the show even in small, tedious ways; for example, we sent an invoice that broke down what they sold, to whom, our gallery/artist percentage split, and a round-up of data on how sales went for the entire show.

You mentioned that promoting the visibility of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ artists and curators is integral to this project. Can you talk more about this and the ways you’ve prioritized this goal?

We relied on numbers a lot. We used the demographics from the census as a goal for the makeup of the show, figuring that our artist population should look like a slice of the U.S. population. We extended invitations to artists and then when we got yes or no responses, we checked our numbers again and extended more invitations to be a part of the show. We asked artists to self-identify in an anonymous survey to make sure we weren't making any false assumptions.

Penelope, I know you’re currently a Fellow at Yale, and Lilly, you’re the Studio Manager at Clay Art Center in Port Chester, New York. How do you navigate your time between these roles, your studio practices, and Above Board? How do these various aspects of your life influence one another?

It was a juggling act but I don't think we know another artist who isn't doing that same act with their own set of props. Our institutionally supported positions were supportive of the new side-hustle but truthfully, it was our studio practices that ended up making room for this endeavor. That and our sleep!

Are there other artist-run spaces or initiatives you find particularly inspiring or essential right now?

A-B Projects run by Nicole Seisler (a-bprojects.com) promoting artists that are expanding the field of ceramics, POT LA (potstudiola.com) a ceramics studio owned and operated by people of color with a mission to make a ceramics studio feel accessible to people who have felt marginalized in other ceramic spaces, and Clay Siblings (claysiblingsproject.org) who are sharing their love of ceramics in high schools, community centers, and Boys and Girls' Clubs and making it known that everyone has something to give and gain in the ceramics community.

Is there any advice you would give an artist (or group of artists) planning to start a new exhibition space or community project?

Be as organized as possible from the beginning! Submit your LLC paperwork before you need it in order to avoid the hefty expedited fees! Also, just give in to paying for extra cloud storage space.

What have you learned from forming Above Board Ceramics so far? How do you envision this platform progressing or expanding in the near future?

We were so buoyed by the positive responses we got from artists in the show so the biggest and best take-away was that there is room and desire for this exhibition/entity to exist! Our immediate plans are to run another virtual show in the fall and an in-person next spring.

To find out more about Above Board Ceramics check them out on Instagram or on their website.