The Color Network website. All images © the artists
Let’s rewind to 1991. Ceramic artist and professor Bobby Scroggins, who was frustrated by the lack of access and recognition for artists and craftspeople of color—particularly Black artists—took matters into his own hands. At the conference of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), he sought out Black and Brown faces in the crowd and organized informal chats, inviting peers and colleagues to form a cohort. Soon, was born.
The original organization ran until 2014. Fast-forward to 2018 when a conversation at the annual NCECA conference spearheaded by artists Natalia Arbelaez and April D. Felipe initiated a new organization with the same name. I sat down for an with three of TCN’s co-organizers, including Arbelaez, George Rodriguez, and Magdolene Dykstra, who put it best when she described the power of making resources available:
Educators and curators are well aware of needing to question the models they’ve been following and decenter previously prioritized groups. For me, as an educator, that’s the most exciting aspect of the database: there is no longer any excuse for any educator to say that they just don’t know any artists of color.
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Kiln opening at Watershed Residency, 2022, with Shaya Ishaq, George Rodriguez, and Yesha Panchal
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