Experimentation is what moves me. I started collecting clay as a game, and got hooked to it. The research for clays that fits my criteria of resistance to high temperatures, workability and beauty is not easy, but extremely rewarding: it allows me to work with unique materials, with their pro and cons, and I try to exalt those intrinsic characteristics.

Julia is an artist and potter based in Enschede. Since 2021 she has been working at AKI ArtEZ in the ceramics workshop – first as an assistant, and now as a technical instructor. There she teaches students from Fine Art, Crossmedia Design and Moving Image in practical skills such as hand-building, throwing, mould-making and glazing; everything there is to know about clay.

Since 2023, Julia has also been part of the teaching team at Carina Claassens Ceramic Centre in Haarlo.

Oliver Neu’s animal sculptures, created from porcelain and building clay, have an equally naturalistic and alienated-abstract effect. The broken surfaces and fragmentary body constructions – reminiscent of surreal fantasy creatures – come together in the eye of the beholder to form an exciting, contradictory image.

Apart from being awarded the Master Prize by the Bavarian State Government and other accolades, a pivotal moment for me was a journey to Japan. There I had the privilege of apprenticing under three masters. From renowned ceramicist Yoshihiro Shimada I learned intricate traditional Japanese techniques like sometsuke. The pinnacle of the experience was participating in a 24-hour wood firing.

A ceramicist and illustrator based in Herefordshire. Her work begins as drawing and develops into porcelain sculptures—like 3D sketches in which lines become stories. She explores how a line transforms once it becomes tangible, and how form and imagination come together in that process.

Her work is unglazed, pure, and playful, with a slightly surreal quality that continues to intrigue.