Current Residents
Ethan Arias
Long-Term Resident 2024/25
Sippy Fellow
Ethan Arias, a Coral Springs, Florida native, started studying ceramics in 2021 at the University of North Florida. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Engineering Studies with a focus in Fine Arts Materials and minors in Marketing and Ceramics in May of 2024. While in his undergraduate studies he earned two research grants to enhance his study of ceramics materials. As an artist, Ethan is focused on wheel-thrown, functional ceramics that are fired in atmospheric kilns. His work is often inspired and influenced by the curves of the human body.
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Instagram: @eapottery
Yve Holtzclaw
Long-Term Resident 2024/25
Sippy Fellow
Yve Holtzclaw is a genderqueer artist and educator originally from Atlanta, Georgia. Since graduating from Massachusetts College of Art and Design with their BFA in ceramics and art history in 2020, they have been awarded the Donis. A. Dondis travel grant, completed a residency in ceramics at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art, and organized shows both locally and nationally. Their work focuses on the intersection of the metaphysical and the tender through immersive and nostalgic installations of anthropomorphized climate, animals, and architecture. Interested in giving a face to forces and creatures who blend into our urbanized landscape, their work explores the inescapable enmeshment and interaction of wild and domestic forces through portraits constructed from materials which span ceramic, fiber, metal, wood and paint.
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instagram: @yve.ceramics
Heather Lepp
Long-Term Resident 2024/25
Sippy Fellow
Heather Lepp is an artist and educator originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba. She received her BFA from the University of Manitoba in 2016, and her MFA from West Virginia University in 2024. In addition to formal education, she apprenticed with four professional potters from 2016-2020. In 2019 she was an artist in residence at Medalta, and in 2023 she was a summer resident at the Red Lodge Clay Center. She was awarded the Marilyn Levitt Prize in Functional Ceramics from the Manitoba Arts Council. She has taught at numerous art centers and exhibited her work across Canada and the United States.
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Instagram: @heatherlepp
Kayla Noble
Wood Fire Resident 2023-25
Sippy Fellow
Kayla Noble is a woodfire artist born and raised in New York's Hudson Valley. She holds a BFA in ceramics from the State University of New York at New Paltz, completed a long term artist residency at Taos Clay (Taos. NM), and has taught and given workshops at numerous community studios in New York State. Noble's practice is rooted in functional pottery; she crafts vessels in conversation with communal action, rituals of food cultivation, and the relationship of service and containment. She owes much of her exposure to clay and reverence for craftsmanship to her grandfather, Brad Benn, a practicing potter and harpsichord builder.
Through woodfired pottery I suspend time, creating worlds in which I am the observed and observer. The researched and the researcher. I collect and I play. In the work I balance gentle exploratory caresses with guttural and instinctive decisions. Unapologetic femininity reveals raw, emotive displays of longing and loneliness. My processes are unassuming investigations of beauty and destruction. The process of woodfiring shifts my practice from private to communal. I relinquish control and extend trust to my community. The sensuality and tenderness of my making methodology is contrasted by the fierceness of the kiln.The process demands all of me- my body an extension of the objects. My tools, an extension of the hand.
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Instagram: @mud_wench
Krissy Ramirez
Long-Term Resident 2023-2025
Sippy Fellow
Born and raised in the border town of Douglas, AZ, Krissy discovered her enthusiasm for clay at Cochise College. Furthering her education, she received a BFA with an emphasis in ceramics from Western New Mexico University in 2017. Then, after completing a 2 year artist in residence program at WNMU she moved to Montana without visiting the big sky. During her time in Missoula she has been part of; the post-baccalaureate program at the University of Montana, co-founder and resident artist at Wildfire Ceramic Studio, and worked out of Speakeasy Clay Studio.
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Originally from a border town neighboring Mexico, Krissy Ramirez utilizes experiences from ‘la frontera’ in her ceramic work. From textured plaster walls and detailed carved bricks these illustrative components compliment each other as inspiration from the Mexican homes she grew up in. Serving as a cathartic vehicle, she incorporates washed out graffiti in spanglish on her wares. With these illegible “tags” she is able to draw thoughts on the life of a Latina woman living so far away from her raza (people) while keeping Mexican roots alive with her ceramics.
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instagram: @rebelwareceramics