About Us

 Brian Vu is a multidisciplinary artist born in North Texas. His approach to ceramics addresses the coexistence of the semi-permanent and the ephemeral, as well as the improvisation of memory with the mundane and domestic. He works in a wide variety of mediums, such as ceramic sculpture, dance performance, painting, and impermanent installation, to explore these themes. Minimalism, color, and taking up large volumes of space are motifs that he uses to frame his work.

In his current work, Brian is creating and utilizing ceramic props or stand-ins that reference the domestic household and the daily functions performed within those spaces. He is particularly interested in rectilinear spaces, which are associated with anthropology, aesthetic, function, space, and architecture, and with the relationships he creates between the ceramic object and the rectangle.

Brian holds a BA with a concentration in ceramics and contemporary dance from Bennington College and a MA in ceramics from Cranbook Academy of Art, where he studied under Ian McDonald. Brian was nominated for the Emerging Artist Award and received the New Beginnings Award from Cranbrook and Mercedes-Benz Financial Services. In the summer of 2018, Brian was the artist-in-residence at Locust Projects in the Miami Design District and exhibited lung tone_ mirror print_, a solo show merging both clay and dance performance.

Brian’s residency is generously underwritten by Leslie and Brad Bucher.

 Lauren Eckert is a multimedia object maker and illustrator from southern New Jersey.  She works in fields such as digital fabrication, video, audio, and robotics and brings this research back to her creative home, in the crafts disciplines. She uses the tools and materials of industry—metal, computers, screens, 3D printing, and code—as a means to witness the machine’s collaborative relationship with people and thought.  As a result of this experience, her objects and digital works come from, look towards, and suggest her visions for anticipated versions of the future.

Lauren attended Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia, where she received her BFA in Metals/Jewelry/CAD-CAM in 2019. She has received awards including a Shapeways Education Grant, the Temple University 2019 Rio Grande Student Award, and a Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG) Conference Student Scholarship. Her work was included in the 2018 SNAG Jewelry and Metals Survey and has been exhibited in venues such as the Wayne Arts Center, Wayne, PA; Nazareth College Arts Center, Rochester, NY; and Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. In 2018, she curated the show, The Virtual Hand, for Temple University. To learn more about Lauren’s work, visit https://lauren-eckert.com/.

Lauren’s residency is generously underwritten by Sara and Bill Morgan.

Tim is a fiber and mixed-media artist from Virginia. His work focuses on traditional craft processes, including natural dyeing, weaving, carpentry, and many others, as a conduit for investigating and documenting particular elements in environments that are products of an anthropogenic ecology. He is a self-taught weaver that uses a variety of non-traditional materials from unexpected sources such as plastic shopping bags, vinyl advertising banners, and videocassette tapes.  At HCCC, Tim will continue to introduce elements of materiality, narrative, and symbolism in large-scale weavings that incorporate imagery and text.

Tim received his Bachelor’s degree in art history from the College of William & Mary (2010) and his MFA in sculpture and dimensional studies from Alfred University (2015). He is also the recipient of a Fulbright Grant (2016) to research natural dyes in Arctic Norway. Prior to moving to Houston, he lived near the Texas-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley, where he taught sculpture at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg, Texas.

To learn more about his work, visit www.gonchoroff.com.

Tim’s residency is generously supported in part by Kathryn and Richard Rabinow.

Maxwell Mustardo suffers from a healthy obsession with artifacts. Born and raised in rural New Jersey, Max graduated from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2017 with bachelor’s degrees in fine art and art history. During his time at Alfred, Max earned multiple awards and grants that afforded him opportunities to study material culture and industrial design in China, Japan, South Korea, and Italy. His ceramic practice currently encompasses scholarly writing, curation, teaching, design, and sculpture. Max’s work has been exhibited throughout the U.S., most recently in California, including venues in Davis, Mendocino, Graton, Crockett, Roseville, and San Francisco.

Whether working in clay or writing, Max’s practice revolves around broad, reverential notions of the vessel, the body, and language. From utilitarian design to more eccentric sculptural investigations, he toys with meandering identities, imbricated indexicality, ambiguous materiality, and provisional functionality. Max approaches making as a, “critical and dynamic opportunity to stimulate evolution and antagonize static thinking” by continually dissecting his own processes, re-visiting forms, and re-framing themes.  He sees objects as vital witnesses and participants, reflections and poems, both animated and imagined.

To learn more, visit https://www.mustardom.com/

Max’s residency is generously underwritten by Scott and Judy Nyquist.

Masako Onodera graduated with an MFA in metals from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign in 2008 and currently is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menomonie, WI. Through her artwork, Masako strives to emotionally connect the viewer with the craft materials and practices she employs. Her creations suggest an experience of the body that is altered by the tactile and visual characteristics of the object.

Masako is the recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award and a Mid-Career Educational Endowment Scholarship from the Society of North American Goldsmiths. Her work is published in journals and books, such as Metalsmith Magazine, the Art Jewelry Today series from Schiffer Publishing, the 500 series from Lark Crafts, and ACTIVA from Design Diffusion Edizioni in Milan, Italy. Masako’s art is exhibited nationally and internationally and is included in many private and public collections, such as the Mobile Museum of Art in Alabama, the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, and the Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin. To learn more about Masako, visit https://www.masakoonodera.com/.

Masako’s residency is generously underwritten by Carolyn Covault.

Audrey LeGalley is a ceramic artist from San Antonio, TX. In 2018, she received her Bachelor of Fine Art from the Southwest School of Art and was awarded the Best in Show title for her senior thesis exhibition. Since then, Audrey has exhibited her work throughout Texas at venues such as Blue Star Contemporary Museum and the Greater Denton Arts Council. She will begin working on her MFA in Studio Art at the University of Texas at San Antonio this coming fall.

Audrey is interested in the relationship between mental health and the domestic. Through the use of porcelain—a material found in nearly every American home, used for tiles, dinnerware, and decoration—she creates objects that express a sense of fear and fragility. By using porcelain in unconventional ways, she opens up an exploration of mental illness, memory, and trauma expressed through the material’s innate fragility. Using hand-building processes, she creates domestic objects and furniture that impart a sense of anxiety in the viewer.

To learn more about her work, visit https://www.audreylegalley.com/.

Jared Theis was born in 1977. He earned an MFA from the University of California, Davis in 2012. While in California, he received a Joan Mitchell MFA grant and the Robert Arneson Award. In 2014, he was awarded a Statens Kunstnerstipend from Kulturrådet Norway Arts Council in Oslo. In 2017, he was awarded a three-month residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Germany, through Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio, Texas. He recently exhibited his work at Kunsthall Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway; Mass Gallery, Austin, Texas; and the Oslo Prosjektrom, Norway. He currently works in San Antonio, Texas.

Over the past five years, Jared has been building a type of personal mythology or system that follows a group of fantastical creatures through time and various stages of evolution. His investigations are realized through clay and fiber sculptures, installation, performance, and video. He uses this system as a lens through which to reflect upon life on earth, human societies, and our own evolutionary path. While at HCCC, he plans to explore the evolving cultural life of these characters through a type of reality TV show.

To learn more about his work, visit https://www.jaredtheis.com/.

Joyce Lin has always been fascinated with internal structures and mechanisms, how things are made and where they come from. She works with a range of mediums, including wood, plastics, and upholstery, to create sculptures and functional furniture objects that explore questions about material, form, and the ever-shifting relationship between humans and their environment. Her current work involves deconstructing furniture archetypes to explore the paradox—of natural and artificial, permanent and impermanent, connection and disconnection, and old and new—that marks contemporary society’s modern materials, processes, and attitudes.

Joyce grew up in Birmingham, AL, where she attended the Alabama School of Fine Arts. Her cross-disciplinary interests led her to attend the Brown/RISD Dual Degree Program, through which she earned her BFA in furniture design at the Rhode Island School of Design and BA in geology-biology at Brown University in 2017. She has exhibited in various galleries, including the Lawndale Art Center in Houston and International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York City. She moved to Houston in late 2017 and currently works as a woodshop manager and instructor at TXRX Labs, a nonprofit makerspace located downtown. To learn more about her work, visit www.joyce-lin.com.

Born in Manhattan, raised in the NY suburbs, and living in the mountains, Meg Wachs considers herself a New Yorker through and through. She received her BFA in Metals from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 2012 and recently graduated with her MFA in Craft & Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her work has been exhibited in China and throughout the United States, most recently at Anderson Gallery in Richmond, Virginia, for her MFA thesis exhibition.

Meg’s past work has aligned with ideas of physiology, mental health, and adornment. While in residence here at HCCC, her most recent work has developed into a cross-disciplinary experimentation of color theory and adornment. Although she considers herself a metalsmith, she uses her background as a painter and her skills as a maker to straddle the line that seemingly divides craft and fine art. Her goal is to transform the materials of traditional painting practices through the lens of a jeweler.

For more information or to see more work, visit www.megwachs.com.