Studio + Exchange: Ceramics at Stamps

The human impulse to create beauty and function from the earth’s clay has been alive for nearly thirty thousand years, and it continues to shape the creative practices of artists working today.

“Clay is an ancient material, but there are vibrant contemporary practices, technologies, and communities of artists working with it,” says Nicole Marroquin (MFA ​‘08), an alumna and professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan.

Appointed in 2023, Marroquin is one of three recently hired tenured and tenure-track faculty that the Stamps School has welcomed to the ceramics studio over the past five years. The group’s diversity in approach, background, and specialization fosters a culture where differences are a collective strength, helping students discover clay’s infinite potential and their own creative voices.

Meet the Ceramics Faculty

With a creative practice rooted in community-based art, Marroquin’s work centers on BIPOC resistance movements and spatial justice throughout Midwest history. She works primarily in sculpture and graphic surfaces, encouraging students to explore mixed media and installation.

“My practice is responsive to conditions, places, and people. I want students to see their work as something that can connect and collaborate with communities,” says Marroquin.

Marroquin is joined in ceramics by colleagues who share her commitment to art as a conduit for community connection.

“Between us, I think we have something for every student,” says longtime Stamps lecturer and ceramicist Kate Tremel. ​“The collective nature of our space and process creates an environment where students learn from all faculty, both through casual interaction and class time.”

Tremel’s creative journey began with functional containers, then evolved into sculptural forms and ceramic lighting. Using a paddle and anvil technique learned during an internship with a Peruvian ceramicist, she constructs vessels and deconstructs them with pierced patterns, casting light and shadow in poetic ways.

“I try to create a moment of reprieve and restoration from the challenges of our world,” Tremel says. Her focus on the vessel’s communicative power and the handmade object’s role in building community invites students to understand ceramics as both practical and philosophical.

Assistant professor Ebitenyefa Baralaye, appointed in 2024, approaches ceramics through a lens that is both spiritual and material, exploring themes of translation, migration, and memory in clay. His practice emphasizes the connection between form and meaning, urging students to see the vessel not just as an object but as a carrier of history and identity.

“Ceramics allows us to consider how forms bear and carry stories across cultures,” Baralaye reflects, inviting students to dig deeper into the roots of creative expression.

Quinn Alexandria Hunter, appointed assistant professor in 2023, centers her interdisciplinary practice around excavating and reimagining erased or forgotten histories. Through object-making, performance, and spatial intervention, Hunter interrogates narratives of visibility and absence, particularly affecting Black women and communities shaped by displacement.

“Art is my vehicle for inscribing presence, labor, and memory into landscapes that have historically excluded them,” Hunter explains. Her practice incorporates archival documents and tactile materials to construct layered histories, both rigorously researched and imaginatively reconfigured.

Lecturer Benjamin Teague, who started at Stamps in 2015, incorporates wheel-throwing, hand-building, slip-casting, and painting in his practice. By manufacturing glazes and drawing to pre-visualize objects, Teague bridges two- and three-dimensional art processes.

“All of my work is seeded by a desire to understand our shared experiences, relationships, and emotions,” notes Teague. His technical versatility encourages students — including many non – art majors — to see ceramics as a medium suited for multidisciplinary exploration.

With some 60 years of engagement in the field, Stamps lecturer Susan Crowell’s work has evolved from vessels to figures to landscapes to abstraction. It currently involves the depiction of animals — domesticated as well as those under threat of extinction — as protagonists in social struggle. 

“Like the French artists Aillaud, Baudelocque, and Tabet who have used animals as subjects for social commentary, I am especially interested in how powerfully metaphor can describe contradictions of the human condition,” Crowell says.

Individually, these faculty members bring distinct approaches — but their collective energy shapes the experience within the Stamps ceramics studio.

Distinctive and Diverse

At the Stamps School, diversity is essential to thriving studio culture. As Hunter notes, ​“The diversity of the faculty strengthens the curriculum by modeling complexity. We come from different backgrounds and approaches to clay. That difference creates a studio culture that resists a singular definition of what ceramics is, or should be.”

Tremel agrees, citing the collective spirit found in a diverse studio culture: ​“Ceramics is a labor-intensive and collaborative endeavor, and we really work well together. Each of us has very different interests and approaches to our work and teaching,” she says.

Teague, who often teaches ceramics classes for students outside the art and design disciplines, points out the value of having diverse perspectives in the studio.

“In one class, I may have students from music, mathematics, and UX design. Having a faculty with broad approaches and influences means we can provide a space where all students find ways to connect their interests to ceramics,” he observes.

Crowell finds connection and a desire to understand one another through the medium itself. ​“We all love clay and fire. We speak diverse ceramic languages about a broad range of subjects,” she says.

Ultimately, varied creative viewpoints offer students more than a range of techniques — they underscore the artist’s role as a connector across difference, cultivating an environment where both students and faculty grow.

“Being in dialogue with colleagues whose priorities differ from mine pushes me to articulate why I approach materials and stories the way I do,” says Hunter.

Baralaye’s creative practice is also influenced by his Stamps faculty colleagues, noting that their research, commitment, and accomplishments deepen his own fascination with the field and motivate him to push his practice further.

“Ceramics has always been a discipline that thrives on shared knowledge, and the colleagues and community I’ve built over the years — now including those at Stamps — are invaluable to me.”

Community of Practice

This March, the Stamps ceramics faculty will be spotlighted at Volumes, the sixtieth National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) conference, held in Detroit from March 25 – 28. NCECA’s annual conference is the largest international gathering focused on ceramic art, drawing students, hobbyists, professors, critics, gallerists, and collectors to share research, techniques, and exhibitions spanning the city.

“It is a rare opportunity to experience an extraordinary concentration of exhibitions, lectures, demonstrations, and conversations in a short period of time,” Baralaye says.

The Stamps School is a sponsor of Volumes, and will host two exhibitions during the conference: Impressions: A Stamps Pre-College Showcase, a juried exhibition featuring ceramic works created by Michigan high school students and teachers; and Legacies: Contemporary Art Dialogues with Clay, an exhibition of new and recent work by diverse intergenerational artists working in clay locally and nationally. Faculty, staff, and alumni are featured in many official NCECA exhibitions, and the school raised funds during its 2025 Giving Tuesday campaign to support conference attendance and transportation for undergraduate and graduate students.

Stamps representation on the NCECA program is robust: Baralaye serves as on-site conference liaison on the 2026 board of directors; Hunter is co-organizing a featured exhibition and performing as part of the inaugural Clay in Performance group; Marroquin’s work, on view in Legacies, explores spatial justice through installation; Teague is guiding tours and exhibiting in multiple shows, including a virtual tour; Tremel has organized and is exhibiting in Thresholds, a design-centered ceramic furniture exhibition at the Detroit Artist Market that includes alumni and faculty collaborations.

Crowell says her time at NCECA is a rarity and a privilege, noting that ​“the opportunity to think deeply, consistently, and intensely, particularly in concert with colleagues and away from the distractions and duties of ordinary life, is especially valuable.”

Marroquin reminds creative practitioners at all levels that it’s important for studio artists ​“to crawl out of their caves and look around” — the conference creates connection, inspires new directions, and dispels myths of artists working solely in isolation.

Learning and Connection

Stamps faculty encourage student attendance at the conference, with Baralaye encouraging students to get outside of their comfort zone, attending lectures that fall outside of their usual scope of interest and spark new conversations. 

“Seek out techniques, ideas, and work that feel unfamiliar,” he says. ​“And start as many conversations as possible: talk with artists in exhibitions, speak with presenters after lectures, and introduce yourself to people you meet around the city while grabbing lunch or dinner. Conferences are as much about building relationships as they are about learning.”

Hunter advises students to make peace with the fact that they won’t be able to see everything a conference this big has to offer, instead choosing a few ​“must see” things everyday to enjoy. ​“And have your business card or social media handle handy,” she adds.

Marroquin’s advice is very specific: ​“Attend the Emerging Artists talks Saturday morning. Do not miss this talk. It is you, in the near future.”

Tremel encourages students to explore pop-up shows and opening receptions, often free and filled with opportunities to meet ceramicists from across the country.

“Even if you don’t go on the organized bus tours, the routes can give you some indication of the featured exhibitions and a route to explore them. Often there are several exhibitions within walking distance from one another,” she advises.

Perhaps the most important part of NCECA, like the Stamps ceramics studio, is providing space for diverse creative practitioners to simply be together, authentically.

“We thrive together, learning in community,” Hunter says. ​“That is where real growth happens.”

Learn more about NCECA’s Volumes conference, taking place in Detroit from March 25 – 28, and explore exhibitions and events featuring Stamps faculty, staff, students, and alumni.

Story by Truly Render.