Current | NCECA's 57th Annual Conference

This four day conference will include panel discussions, keynotes and other educational opportunities. In addition, over 90 concurrent exhibitions will be on display at various locations across the region. Learn more about the NCECA concurrent exhibitions here.

Current day Cincinnati is home to a vibrant creative community of artists, many working with clay. Collectively and individually, they are getting their hands dirty and shaping new worlds. The region’s first peoples of the Eastern Woodland Indian tribes venerated their ancestors, moving tons of earth over long distances to form massive mounds. In the early 19th century, scores of brickmakers and artisans churned out construction materials from the clay-rich flatlands bordering the mill creek in their very back yards. Still later, ceramic artists like Maria Longworth Storer established Rookwood Pottery when she found that the clays of the Ohio Valley rivaled those used in the world’s finest ceramics.

Current can be a flow of electrons, a force of water, a moment in time. Current invites us to consider how working with clay leads us to engage in worlds of continuity and continual change. The river is an essential and enduring feature of Cincinnati’s history and evolution. Current predates the history of human creation and transports artifacts, stories, ideas through time to future generations. Ceramic artworks embody currents that carry diverse traditions of invention and renewal.