Opening Reception: Saturday, March 8, from 5-9pm 
Featuring Queer Resource Tents + Potluck

On View: March 8 – April 27
Morean Center for Clay 

Join Dakota-Joan and her students in the culminating exhibition of the 2024 trans/clay/body project partnered with Creative Pinellas and the National Endowment for the Arts. Over the course of a year, over 60 trans or gender nonconforming youths received free ceramics courses as well as a traditional anagama wood-firing workshop. Throughout these classes, students were challenged to connect themselves to a sense of history using the timeless medium of clay, gaining inspiration from 2000-year-old forms and ways of making.

“Our work seeks to explore the connections between the ephemeral body and the permanence of fired ceramics. We ask the viewer to engage with us, to find the connection between the work of our hands and the Gravettitian Figurines or the cave paintings of Lascaux. In this installation, we have brought part of the kiln in to occupy the gallery, and we invite the audience to make clay offerings to its altar, as we did before our firing. In an era where increased trans visibility has been matched with increased hostility and attempts at erasure, it is crucial to allow trans people to record their own narrative. “