Chris DePrez

Although I am mainly a wheel thrower, clay came to me more like a coiled pot, a slow building of importance in my life. I came to clay over 25 years ago, taking an introduction to clay from Linda Christen in St. Paul, Minnesota. When I was finishing up my religious studies degree in Bloomington, a family friend had an open door policy and let me throw on her wheel after classes.

Clay has always been a meditative process for me, with the great challenge of finding the right form and balance in pots. I generally, prefer to make pots where the glaze and clay speak together, or even where the clay speaks thru the glaze. I enjoy simple balance in pots with a sense of impermanence or even decay. I still look forward to incorporating more ideas of ritual in my work and with shows at the studio, since ritual theory was one of my main interests in religious studies. 

Chris Dance

Christopher M. Dance is a figurative sculptor from Indianapolis, IN. Dance’s classical figurative approach exists as an anachronism and also as a celebration of history, craft, and the beauty and mystery of the human form and psyche.

He is a classically trained artist who studied at Herron School of Art and Design, as well as in Italy. Dance has been a teacher at Pike High School in Indianapolis for 12 years serving as the main ceramics and sculpture instructor.

Universal themes and delicate mysteries evoke the power and drama of the posture and gesture, and create a play between subject and viewer. Dance is intrigued by what the form reveals and conceals by ways of movement and dialogue and seeks to capture the moment where physicality bends to the realm of the unseen and the magic of our everyday existence is revealed.

Cris Rivas

Cris Rivas makes sculptures that locate emotional states within a body reimagined using magic realism and poetic figuration.

Early influences include roaming pastures, woods, and streams with her sisters in rural Missouri and Tennessee, the biblical tracts of Jack Chick (popular with evangelicals in the 1970s), and MAD magazine.

Cris moved to Indianapolis with her husband and daughter in 2013. She has lived and studied art in Kansas City, San Francisco, Birmingham, AL, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago.

Rachel Bleil

Rachel’s work focuses on narrative, exploring the journeys and transformations of a variety of hybrid characters based on teddy bears.  She choose teddy bears for their associations with childhood and their ubiquitous, yet supportive presence in our lives.  Each character will have different animal qualities and exist within a specific environment, whether land, sea or sky.  The teddy hybrids have attributes that may help or hinder them in the given environment.  Through the changes that take place within each narrative, she is able to explore and reflect her own journeys of growth, change and adaptation.

The process of sgrafitto on porcelain captivates me.  She finds that the process gives her work a graphic quality, which enhances the narrative.  The subtle variations in line are expressive, while leaving behind a tactile surface texture.

Andrew Perry Davis

Andrew Perry Davis is originally from South Carolina, where he attended Winthrop University. He completed his M.F.A. in Ceramics at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. His first teaching position was at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant Michigan. He has been ceramics program technician at Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis since 2011.

Kenny Sprinkle

Kenny Sprinkle is an Indy-based ceramic artist, originally from Camby, IN. He received his BFA in Ceramics along with his BS in Visual Arts Education from Ball State University. Since then, he’s had the opportunity to teach ceramics at the Indianapolis Art Center, the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and Fountain Square Clay Center.

Kenny’s current body of work derives inspiration from natural objects such as horns, antlers, and bones for the form. Everyday pots, for example the mug, are reimagined as they could be in fantastical worlds. Some of the textures he uses tend to mimic the underside of mushrooms while others will reference the natural architecture of honeycomb or bone marrow. When it comes to glaze and color, Kenny tends to use more neutrals and earthy tones to further reference the natural style.

Sam Welch

Sam Welch is an Indianapolis native. He is currently living in Fort Wayne, IN where he works out of a home studio. He graduated from Herron School of Art and Design in 2013 with a degree in art education. Most of his work is made on the potter’s wheel and is then altered. Sam enjoys firing his work in all atmospheres and is particularly interested in glaze chemistry. He has been a member of the Indianapolis Clay Co-Op since it first began in 2018 and is eager to see where it will go!

Peggy Breidenbach

Peggy Breidenbach is an Indy-based sculptor and educator. Her work mines her own life experiences - growing-up, mothering, loss, aging and the fragile beauty of now - to not only better understand her humanity, but also to remind viewers of theirs.

Her ceramic forms reference those found in nature - seeds, bones, stones and fossils - artifacts of the living world. Be enlarging them to elevate their beauty and impact, they become potent metaphors for themes she aims to explore.