ARTIST STATEMENT
My work is informed by the Japanese concept of mujō (mutability and impermanence) and the feminist Pattern and Decoration movement. I bring to light and celebrate the beauty I find in the artifacts of mundane labor by decorating and emphasizing the material aspects of fabrication. In my wall pieces, I capture the patterns and processes of creating. Aspects intrinsic to shaping clay, like touch, tools, reiterative motions, detritus, and imperfections, become legible and tangible. In some pieces, I use stencils for DIY home or cake decorating to encourage viewers to reflect on questions of access and high and low art. Objects like pottery shards and cast-off wadding from the kiln yard, which are usually not meant to be visible in finished works, become embellishments. By integrating these discarded and disregarded materials, I seek to honor the history of makers and making.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Juliane Shibata is a ceramic artist and educator based in Northfield, Minnesota. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University in Ohio and was awarded a 2025 Teaching Artist Cohort Grant, a 2021 McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists, and Artist Initiative grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Juliane received the Tile Heritage Prix Primo award at the 23rd Annual San Angelo National Ceramic Competition and first place in the 62nd Arrowhead Regional Biennial. She has been a resident artist at Oak Spring Garden Foundation; Starworks Center; Art Omi: Artists; The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China; and the College of Biological Sciences Conservatory & Botanical Collection at the University of Minnesota. Her installations have been commissioned by, among others, Abbott Northwestern Hospital and the Four Seasons Hotel Minneapolis. Works of hers belong to the permanent collections of Northern Arizona University’s Art Museum, the Brown-Forman Corporation, the Perlman Teaching Museum at Carleton College, and the Francis Greenburger Collection.
© Juliane Shibata