Small Cloud Cups with Tray, 2023, thrown and handbill
Holly Hanessian grew up in Florida and lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where she practices ceramics as an artist, educator and scholar. She has made socially engaged artworks using clay and has advocated the importance of our haptic senses in an increasingly digital world. Her work inhabits the overlapping worlds of craft, design and contemporary art and now is focusing on useful objects.
Her latest artworks center around weather, hurricane relief and clouds. The pieces submitted are made from porcelain clay and fired in an electric kiln with a runny glaze, that emphasizes soft cumulus clouds in blue.
Hanessian is a Professor of Art at Florida State University where she is the area head of ceramics and was the Past President of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA. ) She is a member of the international academy of ceramics, Socially Engaged Craft Collective, ArtAxis, and AccessCeramics.