Emerging Artists 2019

The Clay Studio is dedicated to supporting artists at all stages in their artistic journeys. Here, in our Bonovitz Gallery, we are proud to introduce the work of three young artists from around the country making excellent functional pottery — Olivia Tani, Neil Celani, and Dehmie Dehmlow.

Olivia Tani earned her BFA at Alfred University in 2017, and moved to Minneapolis as a recipient of a 2017 Fogelberg Studio Fellowship at Northern Clay Center. Olivia has since transitioned to being a studio artist at Northern Clay Center. Her pots are primarily constructed from slabs and occasionally includes wheel thrown pieces.  Currently, Olivia is working in cone ten soda fired stoneware.  Attracted to the challenge of translating an imagined three-dimensional form into a two-dimensional blueprint, she is drawn to the intersections of planes, and how that affects the composition of line, or the illusion of an “inflated” mass, and finally, what that inflation does to proportion and composition.

Neil Celani is a full-time studio potter making quality soda fired pots for daily use in a kiln he built in 2013. He has been working with clay for over a decade and continues to devote himself to the evolution of his skills and aesthetic approach to the craft. Neil was selected as a 2016 Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist and is currently the Resident Artist at the Clay Center of Northern Colorado where he also manages the studio. Neil is obsessed with the endless variety of psychedelic surfaces achieved with soda, clay, and fire.

Dehmie Dehmlow earned her BA in Ceramics and Pre-medical Sciences from Colorado State University and has worked as a studio potter and caregiver for adults with disabilities and the elderly. In 2017 she worked as a ceramics intern at Anderson Ranch Art Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado. In 2018 she was selected as the Salad Days Artist in Residence at Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in New Castle, Maine. This August, Dehmie will begin her MFA at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Dehmie creates rhythm through the succession of shapes and color found in the profile, opening and surfaces of each pot — a conversation between layers, edges, and endpoints of soft and hard geometry