As a soft and malleable material, clay naturally takes the impression of the people and things that touch it. Often this is intentional—from stamps, to surface textures, ceramic objects are often designed to display the marks of their makers. Other times, such signs are less deliberate—traces of fingerprints and other marks from the moment of creation become permanent parts of a clay object’s history. What is more, over time, some impressions remain clearly visible, while others wear away and become nearly invisible.
In spring 2026, a group of students traveled to Greece to study the history of ceramics in the Mediterranean and to develop their own artistic skills in the context of what they learned. This exhibition explores the impressions that their experiences left on them. As is the case with the works they created, some are clear from the moment of their making, while others may not be recognized until seen by others and from different points of view.
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Strength in Fragility I, II, III and IV
Alexis Alore
Ceramic
The fragility of ceramics is one of the aspects of the art medium that I particularly find beautiful, seeing pieces in Greece that were hundreds or thousands of years old taught me how resilient they truly are. Ancient art may be fragile, but it can also give a glimpse into what someone thousands of years ago was thinking or feeling.
When I was in Greece, I received news about a personal health issue. Dealing with this issue so far away from family and friends was a constant and mentally exhausting distraction. I turned to art and the inspiration I saw all around me. I began to sketch as a way to process my feelings. Sad? Scared? Frustrated? Confused? Draw. draw. draw. I started to feel so emotionally connected to these sketches that it was almost bringing me to tears at some point. What is more, I realized on the flight home that I had created something quite beautiful. My drawings were raw, fragile, chaotic, and while not everyone will understand them, they contain a beauty that emerged from the chaos that marked their creation.
I have chosen to represent these drawings as sketches carved into white clay, and through glazing methods. This material that I saw and utilized every day in Greece serves as a metaphor for how fragile and strong I am. It is about how in taking a risk and going to Greece, I gained a new confidence in my ability to find joy and beauty in my own life and how I can relate that back to my art. I hope that viewers can connect with it the way I did and am able to see that the complexity and fragility of living this life is what makes it so beautiful.
The Ballot
Marissa Camporesi
Ceramic, wood, epoxy
The kleroterion, used in ancient Athenian jury selection, leverages the process of randomization to make important decisions. When ancient Athenians wanted to participate in a public trial as a member of the jury, they brought a personalized token, much like the ones for use on this plinko machine, to the Athenian marketplace. There, they placed it in the slot of a column that corresponded with their tribe. From there, a tube full of black and white balls were used to select jurors by row. Pulling one color meant selection, the other meant rejection.
Also visually referenced near the bottom of my game is the broken pieces of pottery that Athenians would use as ballots. Annually, Athenians would decide if they were to ostracize a peer. If yes, the person to get the majority vote would be exiled from the city for 10 years.
In my piece, I created a nod to the incised kleroterion using the inverse (positive) of the block in the form of flattened pegs. Reconstructed jury tokens are dropped by the player. They fall into a combination of Ancient Athenian and American ballots, effectively casting a vote via the beloved American game of plinko.
The ability of ancient stone and ceramic to generate political output fascinated me. In modern day, by participating in the political system, you have to be willing to play a game. The type of conservation and restoration we saw in Greece was often based on permits and profits, which became politics very quickly.
Political games are often hard to win. They feel random.
For a brief second, as your ballot or token enters the box, there’s a flood of hope. You think you just may have made the right choice to get what you want. And then… well maybe you have to try just one more time.
The Fluidity of Femininity
Hadley Detter
Ceramic
In this work, I explore the subject of fertility and the concept of the female body, not as an object meant to look at but as an amazing machine of sorts that can produce life. It was made entirely out of clay to represent what was used back in Ancient Greece.
This piece was originally inspired by an ancient device known as a clepsydra. In Athenian lawcourts, which depended almost entirely on single speeches of accusation and defense made before a jury of peers, these devices were used to ensure fairness of time. The clepsydra uses a typical vase shape with a hole near the top and one at the base. The base hole is blocked, and the vase is filled until water drips out of the top hole, this ensures that the time is the same for everyone and every time. Then the bottom hole is opened, and litigants are allowed to speak as long as the water continues to flow.
While this ancient “timer” could have many uses, I am interested in the way that ceramic vessels are often considered symbols of the human body. Therefore, breasts at the top of the vase allow one to know that the body/vessel is “full and ready to be used.” The middle of the vase features a fetus, which hints at the time it takes for a child to reach full gestation and an egg, which symbolizes both the potential and the choice of each woman to support life within.
Ultimately The Fluidity of Femininity is intended to make the viewer not only think more about the capabilities of the female body the effects of this process on the body and the choices, sacrifices and time that are required to bring life into the world.
Desiring Peace
Sierra Lamphier
Ceramic
The things I learned about ancient Greece inspired a work that focuses on women’s empowerment. On a visit to the Temple of Aphrodite on Acrocorinth, we were taught about the practice of ritual prostitution as a way to celebrate the goddess. We also learned about the use of the silphium plant as a contraceptive. I could easily imagine the motivations of women who took this ancient drug. I wanted to share their stories in my work and show how ancient Greek women had the same fear and desire to remain in power over themselves as do modern women.
To convey this idea, I have created a bust of a woman that has the now extinct silphium flower growing out of her head. My use of fine red clay ties together both ancient and modern. Throughout my trip I was struck with how the warm red of terracotta reflected the fiery orange dyed hair on modern Greek women everywhere. I molded this clay with my hands, measured my proportions, felt my own form, and replicated the feeling onto the clay. I wanted it to be as cared for as the works of ancients. But I also wanted it to show what it would be like for a woman at peace.
Compared to modern times, ancient Greece’s treatment of women should feel much more different, but it’s troublingly familiar. The warm colors of Greece, the beauty, the nature, and the many strong and unique Greek women I was blessed to meet on my trip inspired my piece. Greece taught me to notice what surrounds me and to practice the care that women deserve.
Life After Death
Ari Mullett
Ceramic
During my time in Greece, I got to see a variety of artifacts in museums and dig sites, but what most caught my eye was the treatment and display of human remains. At the dig site in Isthmia, human bones were kept in plastic bags and crates, while at museums they were displayed for thousands of people to look at. I was surprised to see that the physical proof of people’s existence is treated like an object no better than fragments of a statue or vase.
This led me to question the ethics of how our society treats ancient human remains. In many cultures, burial assemblages have cultural and spiritual significance. Thus, archaeologists taking these bodies, separating them from their belongings, and putting them in a crate or on display seems very disrespectful. However, these societies and cultures are not around anymore, and their burials provide much information about the past. Where is the line? Is there a way to be respectful of the remains and still use burials for research?
I don’t know if there is a right answer, but I do think people forget that these remains were once human beings like you and me. To convey this idea, I created an amphora vase which was used for cremation in ancient Greece. However, in addition to the skeletal remains, I have placed flowers, suggesting that these bones are not just objects but once belonged to a human life. We shouldn’t forget that. Even though their societies are gone, they are still human beings and deserve to be seen as such.
Soul Branding
Charlie Sailor
Ceramic
This tile series explores identities through the ways that I perceived four people I met while on my study abroad in Greece. At the start of the trip, I was struggling with my relationship to my career and questioning what I wanted to do after graduating this spring. While in Greece I found myself looking up to the older people I met, believing they had everything figured out. I wanted that certainty for my own life, and in a way, I projected those feelings onto how I perceived others.
As I spent more time talking to each of these people, I realized the flaws in my thinking. They did not have it all figured out in the way that I had imagined, nor had their lives followed a perfect upward path. What they all shared was a willingness to change careers multiple times without regret. That realization stuck with me and inspired me to create tiles that reflect both their identities and the ways that I had initially perceived them.
Each tile was designed from memory to represent each person except the tile depicting the archeological dig site where I had the opportunity to work. Unlike the others, this tile represents many people and a larger shared purpose, making it the central piece of the series.
Each tile piece was torn from the same slab, much like fragments of pottery that were once part of the same vessel. This process represents the way in which we are all connected even when the pieces do not always look like they fit together. If Greece taught me anything, it is that we are all connected no matter what path we think we are on or what path we present to others.
Flaming Chimeras
Harrison Sanders
Ceramic
Flaming Chimeras is a pair of sculptures that resemble a hybrid combination of creatures. One sculpture is made as a crab with a human face coming out of its back while the other has the body of sea horse and the head of a wolf. Both creatures have crazed expressions on their faces. When working with clay, I favor the method of slabbing over all else, with this series being no exception. The main body of the crab was entirely slabbed as was the wolf’s head. Slabbing was crucial during the creation of these works as it gave me the ability to create sturdy hollow chambers within the heads that hold oil, making these works functional oil lamps. When it came to the sea horse body, I experimented with a method that involved creating a form from a solid hunk of clay before hollowing it out and attaching the head once it became solid enough. The two main inspirations for my sculpture/lamp series came from my time in Greece. The hundreds of small, handheld oil lamps that I saw in museums and storerooms across the country fascinated me. I took the function of the lamps and applied them to my sculptures, creating larger, more unique lighting devices. Both creations are also primarily made up of an ocean animal, which came from the fact that I spent most of my free time exploring the waters of the Mediterranean.
Life / Death / Rebirth
Kaity Silengo
Ceramic, metal, beads
My study abroad in Greece is showcased in three pieces. I drew inspiration from nature, architecture, ancient ceramics, and artists we met. The prevailing motif in all three of my pieces is the Pink Oleander flower. The first thing I saw after leaving the airport in Greece were Oleander flowers, and I became captivated by their color. Throughout my stay, the flower appeared everywhere we visited and was something I saw every day. Together all three pieces create the story of the life of ancient artifacts while drawing from my experiences in Greece. Life is the beginning of a new vessel, when it was first made and used in ancient times; Death represents when an artifact is buried and broken in the ground; Rebirth shows the new life a vessel has once it is found and pieced back together.
My first piece, Life, includes imagery and colors of the Oleander flower. Inspired by the many temples we visited in Greece, the top of the vase resembles the shapes of Corinthian Capitals, while the bottom is supported by twisted columns. I felt inclined to use texture in my design after meeting the artist Angeliki Stamatakou and seeing the various textures she uses. The shape of this vessel is also reminiscent of the large vessels I saw in Corinth’s storage room.
The next piece I made is a ceramic tile, Death. We visited Valsamakis Ceramic’s and learned their technique of painting tiles. I created a tile instead of a third vase because a flat surface was needed to use the painting technique I learned while abroad. The tile has a design of an Oleander flower and is broken to resemble pieces of an artifact that was buried underground.
My last piece, Rebirth, is a vase with the appearance of being pieced back together. While working at the Isthmia dig site, we learned about the long process of restoring ancient ceramics. Incorporating my love for the symbiosis of nature growing between man-made structures, I placed flower petals emerging from the holes in the vase to represent how nature overflowed over the buildings in Athens.
Personal Devotions
Lillian Stauffer
Acrylic and jewelry beads on ceramic
Through this piece, I connect my gratitude for my family with what I was experiencing while traveling in Greece. Although I was surrounded by incredible history and culture, I kept thinking about how much my family had encouraged me to travel and how I wished they could experience it with me.
Kandylakia, traditional Greek roadside shrines used to honor saints, remember a loved one, or express gratitude resonated with me, so I chose them as a way to honor my own family. Every detail connects to a specific family member and something that reminded me of them during my trip. The exterior patterns are inspired by the pottery and architecture I saw at Ancient Corinth, the Acropolis, and Mycenae. My mother’s panel features a poppy flower that I associate with her after a family trip and a necklace, reflecting her love of ancient history and the treasures I would find in her jewelry box. My dad’s panel includes a fish and a decorated cup inspired by his love of cooking and trying new food, our shared memories, and inside jokes. My sister’s panel includes a kore-inspired earring and a wreath that references ancient theaters and performers, as well as her costumes and passion for dance. The entire shrine is weathered and cracked, but filled with gold, showing how long this gratitude was held, and reflecting the care in preserving a shrine like this.
Even in a different country, I found reminders of my family everywhere I looked. This shrine is a way of expressing my gratitude for their encouragement and influence. While I’m not particularly religious, learning about this tradition made me realize that, in my own way, my family holds the same significance in my heart as any saint would.
Group Workshop Project
Valsamakis Studio
Stoneware tiles, wood
Located in the northern suburbs of Athens, Valsamakis Ceramics is the last traditional workshop and studio in a neighborhood that was once crowded with ceramics factories. Founded in 1960 by Panos Valsamakis, a refugee from the town of Aivali on the coast of Asia Minor, the studio became famous for art that blended traditional Greek and European modernist styles. Students on the study program participated in a day-long workshop where they produced the work displayed here by following a tradition of manufacture that is now three generations old.
Color images by Ryan Frederick