Studio Potter is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2024 Grants for Apprenticeships Program. Each of these five mentor/apprentice teams will receive awards of $15,000 as they work together in 2025 to expand their practices, deepen their ties, and share the rhythms of the studio throughout the year. Congratulations to each of you!

Mentor: Malene Djenaba Barnett (photo: Alaric Campbell)
Apprentice: Kemi Schleicher
Brooklyn, New York

Mentor: Kenyon Hansen
Apprentice: Paige Lewandowski
Dollar Bay, Michigan

Mentors: Maggie and Tom Jaszczak
Apprentice: Serena Ben-Avraham
Shafer, Minnesota

Mentor: Stephen Procter
Apprentice: Naomi Ferenczy
Brattleboro, Vermont

Mentor: Kate Waltman
Apprentice: Ariana Stein
Seagrove, North Carolina

2024 Jurors:

Ursula Hargens

Ursula Hargens is a studio potter based in Minneapolis. She is also a long-time educator, co-founding the Minnesota New Institute for Ceramic Education and being a part of the Center for Craft’s first Teaching Artist Cohort. She is a three-time McKnight Artist Fellow, has received grants from the Jerome Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board, and was Ceramic Arts Network’s Artist of the Year in 2020. Hargens received an MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, an MA in Art Education from Columbia University, and studied ceramics at Nova Scotia College of Art & Design.

Matt Jones

After graduating from Earlham college with a BA in Art with a focus in Ceramics, Matt Jones completed two consecutive apprenticeships with Todd Piker in Cornwall Bridge, CT and Mark Hewitt in Pittsboro, NC. After three years of intensive training in the workshops of these mentors, Matt and his wife Christine moved to the Big Sandy Mush valley of Leicester, about 20 miles west of Asheville, NC, where they set up a pottery business, building a workshop with an attached retail space and a large wood burning kiln in 1998. He has had two “Kiln Openings” or open house weekend sales each year for the last 25 years, and gradually these shows have become his primary selling events of the year while remaining open for business by appointment.

Jones took on his first apprentice in 2001, and has hosted 10 including his current apprentice, Sam Harley. In 2005, he built an apprentice cabin on the property which has housed all subsequent apprentices. Their living expenses are covered, and Jones pay a monthly stipend in exchange for chore work and their participation in every aspect of the production and business. 

Matt and Christine have raised two children who are now graduated from college. Christine teaches Biology at a local boarding school in Asheville and helps with running the business and book-keeping. Jones says he feels fortunate to have moved into an area where craft is appreciated and collected, and where with determination and persistence he has been able to make a reasonably good living.

Mike Tavares

Mike Tavares grew up in Rhode Island, a child of parents both proudly from the Cape Verde Islands. Despite being raised in the United States, Tavares’ parents ensured that he understood their culture, spoke their language and ate traditional Cape Verdean cuisine. Tavares received his BFA from Syracuse University, New York. During his studies, Tavares discovered his love for earthenware and woodfired ceramics. He now has a home studio in Pawtucket, Rhode Island and is the co-founder and co-leader of The Clay Siblings, a non-profit that aims to make clay and corresponding opportunities more accessible to high schoolers and other young artists of all backgrounds and identities.