I HOLD THE CLAY, AND THE CLAY HOLDS ME BACK. THIS IS HOW IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN.
… Except for that moment in grad school when I broke up with clay. I had convinced myself that I didn’t want to be limited by clay or pigeonholed as a ceramic artist; I swore that clay and I were done. It took me all of two painful, uncentered weeks to come crawling back.
This temporary fissure with clay marked the beginning of my mission to reclaim and reshape what it means to be a ceramic artist. I became an artist because I wanted to learn to see the world differently. I am a ceramic artist because clay allows me to see myself differently in the world. Clay is a conduit that grounds me in myself, connects me to others, and embeds me in place.
NICOLE SEISLER CREATES DIALOGUE AND PERSPECTIVES AROUND CERAMICS THAT EXIST IN THE SAME CONDITIONS AS THE MATERIAL: MALLEABLE, SHIFTING, ADAPTABLE, AND ENDURING; EXISTING WITHIN, BETWEEN, AND BEYOND CONVENTIONAL DEFINITIONS.
Three interdependent, mutually-reinforcing areas comprise Nicole’s practice: making, educating, and curating. This tripod enables each aspect to support the others, thereby creating a platform for her broader, pluralistic vision for ceramics as a conceptual field.
Nicole received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She has exhibited her work at museums ranging from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Museum of Fine Arts Tallahassee to the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles. Her work was recently featured in a solo exhibition at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, CA, and the two-person exhibition In Hand: Contemporary Material Engagements with the Built World at the Kennedy Museum at Ohio University.
Nicole has taught ceramics for almost fifteen years at as many universities — from SAIC and the University of Washington, to Scripps College and UCLA — and she is currently Assistant Professor and Head of Ceramics at Lewis & Clark College.
As Founder and Director of the contemporary ceramics platform A-B Projects, Nicole has curated forty exhibitions and offers alternative educational programming that reevaluates and redefines the trajectory of contemporary ceramics.
Writing
Ashwini Bhat interviews Nicole Seisler (December 2021) about the A-B Projects Ceramics Certificate program in Studio Potter.
Hyperlocal Materialism (April 2020) A paper written in collaboration with Kate Hampel, which we co-presented at the 2020 College Art Association Conference.
Top Ten Problematic Issues with the C-File list of Top 15 Male Artists (January 2020) A response to Garth Clark’s Top 15 Male Artists: Ceramics in Fine Arts (note that Cfile removed this article from their website two weeks after I wrote my response). I authored this ‘Top Ten list’ in tandem with Julia Haft-Candell’s Open Letter to C-File and Amanda Leigh Evans’ Open Letter to C-File.
Crisis of the Cylinder (February 2019), published by Board of Photography.
Opening Up (just might be a misnomer) is a video made during an early stage of the Covid-19 pandemic.