Artist Talks
with Jessika Edgar, Jodi Connelly, & Kate Oggel
Thursday, July 23 at 5:30pm
Artist Talks at Starworks are free and open to the public. Guests are invited to meet featured visiting artists, watch and learn as they present slides and discuss their process and influence, and ask questions about their works.
Treat Yourself - Starworks Cafe & Taproom is open during this event and proudly serves a variety of craft NC beer, delicious wine, coffee & lattes, smoothies, and much more.
Stay After for Drew Foust LIVE in the Cafe at 7pm
Jessika Edgar
Jessika Edgar is a ceramic artist based in Metro Detroit. Raised in both Western Massachusetts and Southern California, Jessika has an MFA in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art, an MA in Studio Art and BA in Studio Art from California State University Northridge. Jessika has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at The Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Regis Center for the Arts, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI, Ceramic Research Center and Brickyard Gallery, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur, India, El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX and Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, and Gyeonggi Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Icheon-si, Gyeonggi-do, Rep. of Korea. She has been awarded residencies at Guldagergaard: International Ceramic Research Center, the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Wassaic Projects, the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, A.I.R. Vallauris, the Vermont Studio Center, Red Lodge Clay Center, and Medalta. Jessika is currently an Associate Professor and Area Coordinator of Ceramics at Wayne State University.
Jodi Connelly
Jodi Connelly’s work investigates the complexities of the human relationship to nature and the environment. Through site-specific environmental interventions, photographic documentation, installations and drawing, she explores issues of climate change and the impact the industrialization of the land has had on native ecosystems and the environment. Her work is hand-wrought and physical, which serves to create intimacy between herself and the land upon which she works. She completed her MFA in Art Studio at the University of California, Davis in 2018, where she received the Keister and Allen Prize for her project An Intervention in Space and Time, a year- long environmental intervention at the UC Davis McLaughlin Reserve. She was the inaugural recipient of the Ali Youssefi Artist Residency at Verge Center for the Arts in 2019, where her artwork explored the impact of gold and mercury mining on the Knoxville area of the Coast Range of California. In 2023, she was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts funded Seeding Creativity Grant to research the use of rammed earth in fire resilient landscaping. She has also been an artist in Residence at the Montello Foundation in Montello, NV, Vermont Studio Center in Johnston, VT and Cill Rialaig in Ballinskelligs, Ireland, among others. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Manetti Shrem Museum in Davis, CA, the Greenville Museum of Art, and the Durham Art Guild in North Carolina. Mrs. Connelly currently resides in Sacramento where she teaches ceramics and sculpture at Sierra College and Sacramento State University.
Kate Oggel
Born and raised in Illinois, clay artist Kate Oggel now resides in Rhode Island. She arrived in New England for graduate school at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. After earning her MFA in Ceramics/Artisanry, she stayed in the area, teaching and working with clay since then. She currently is Assistant Professor of ceramics at CT State Manchester in Connecticut. Working out of an old barn in rural Rhode Island, Kate Oggel's recent artwork focuses on hand-built sculptural ceramics with naked clay surfaces.
