The Colonial Dames Present | Michelle Erickson: The Art of Making History | 5/1/24

The Colonial Dames Present:
Michelle Erickson: The Art of Making History
Join Curator of Decorative Arts and Design Amy Dehan for a conversation with ceramic artist Michelle Erickson who will discuss her practice as a studio potter in the fields of contemporary art, historical archaeology, and studio ceramics. Renowned for her depth of historical reference, technological virtuosity, and incisive commentary, Erickson will illustrate how she brings the dynamic legacy of ceramics as a form of social expression into the present. Erikson’s ceramic artworks speak to twenty-first-century issues by referencing how makers and users have deployed ceramics to advocate for political change, decry social injustice, and document epic events in human experience. The artist will highlight her recent solo exhibitions Wild Porcelain at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco’s Legion of Honor (2021-2023) and Recasting Colonialism at the Baltimore Museum of Art (May-October 2023).
About the Artist
Michelle Erickson is an accomplished contemporary artist. Internationally recognized for both making and historical scholarship, Erickson is a leading figure in reconstructing historic ceramic technology. Her ceramic artworks explore issues of child slavery, social and cultural identity, racial inequity, and environmental geopolitics. Erickson is widely exhibited and published; her artworks can be found in private collections and major museums across the United States and Britain. Her practice in experimental archaeology has been incorporated into many exhibitions and programs. Erickson’s scholarship concerning the discovery of colonial era ceramic techniques is well documented in several volumes of the annual journal Ceramics in America, edited by Robert Hunter and published by the Chipstone Foundation. Erickson’s depth of historical reference and technological virtuosity distinguish her unique career as an American artist working in clay.
Presented by:
The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the State of Ohio.
Colonial Dames Lecture and Tea graciously underwritten by the L. W. Scott Alter Trust