Exhibitions

Black Clay Exhibition Showcases Black Ceramic Artists at ARTE NOIR Seattle

Presented by ARTE NOIR and Pottery Northwest, the new exhibition Black Clay traces a radical, rhythmic lineage in ceramics, and it’s happening right now in Seattle.

Willow Vergara-Agyakwa, Tangled Roots | Weeping Willow, 2023, ceramic.

Presented by ARTE NOIR in partnership with Pottery Northwest, Black Clay features over 20 Black ceramic artists. This exhibition runs from December 3, 2025, through February 22, 2026 inside ARTE NOIR’s Central District gallery space.

The show brings together a new generation of makers like Sierra Bundy, Willow Vergara-Agyakwa, and Deshun Peoples with nationally recognized artists including guest artist Tammie Rubin. Each artist’s work reclaims ceramics as a vehicle for storytelling, resistance, and spirituality. It ushers in a broader conversation about Black identity and legacy through clay.

Black Clay exhibition.

Black Clay pays homage to trailblazers like David Drake, who etched poetry into pots as both personal and historical record, and to sculptural icons of the Harlem Renaissance like Augusta Savage and Selma Burke. It even nods to living legends like Kehinde Wiley and Andile Dyalvane. Their works push the art form into the realm of cultural declaration.

Whether referencing folklore or feminine energy, mythology or lived experience, these pieces reflect the tensions and triumphs of Black existence. The medium, though fragile, becomes a vessel of resilience.

Sierra Bundy, Cousin Sandstorm and Shadow Work.

Black Clay also includes a series of workshops in the ARTE NOIR Maker Space. Highlights include a mask-making session with Sierra Bundy (Jan 17) and a clay portrait demo led by Aisha Harrison (Jan 24), inviting the public to connect with the medium’s expressive potential firsthand.

If you’re in Seattle, this is not a show to miss. It’s an immersive, multivocal celebration of what happens when Black artists take one of the oldest technologies known to humankind and mold it into something unmistakably now.