FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASECONTACT: Mandy Wilson, 412.465.1637 | mwilson@contemporarycraft.org
CONTEMPORARY CRAFT EXPLORES THEMES OF GRIEF IN NEW EXHIBITIONPITTSBURGH, PA (MAY 2024) – Contemporary Craft (CC) is exploring the themes of grieving,mourning, and the celebration of life in its new regional, juried exhibition, Hereafter. The exhibition
will be on view May 31 – August 24 and features 13 regional artists working across a variety of craft
mediums. The public opening reception is scheduled for Friday, May 31, 5:30 – 8:00 PM.
Craft objects have long been a vehicle for processing and understanding, and the act of creative
expression itself can become an instrument for healing. Through the unique perspectives of theartists featured in Hereafter, this exhibition transcends individual experiences, to create a richtapestry of cultural and ancestral connections, and brings forth an authentic portrayal of the grieving
process. Each artwork becomes a poignant vessel, carrying the weight of emotions and memories.
To celebrate the high quality and breadth of work being created in the region, the call for Hereafter
was open to craft artists based within 250 miles of Pittsburgh. Selected artists include SueAmendolara (Edinboro, PA), Kimberlyn Bloise (Pittsburgh, PA), Dan Brockett (Leechburg, PA), Cheryl
Capezzuti (Pittsburgh, PA), Tom Doyle (Washington DC), Meryl Engler (Akron, OH), Sharon Massey(Indiana, PA), Zach Mellman-Carsey (Lancaster, PA), Jada Patterson (Pittsburgh, PA), Lucas Pointon(Gibsonia, PA), Katie Rearick (Allison Park, PA), Kate Strachan (Amber, PA), and Hee Joo Yang(Pittsburgh, PA).
The exhibition features more than 50 works that include assemblage, clay, sculpture, jewelry,printmaking, and basketry. "In Hereafter, we carefully chose these 13 artists, whose creations
resonate with profound emotions and memories drawn from their personal journeys, someintertwined with rich cultural and ancestral threads,” said Associate Director Yu-San Cheng. “Eachpiece reveals intricate details and narratives, inviting viewers on a captivating and intimate
exploration of grief, mourning and the celebration of life."“Grief and mourning are a part of each person’s narrative at some point in time, and of course wehave globally experienced them over the course of the past few years. At Contemporary Craft, wevalue the opportunity for collective introspection around these topics, through the lens of artwork,”said Executive Director Rachel Saul Rearick. “This regional artist exhibition will explore intimate
memories, as well as moments that might resonate with many. We welcome visitors to join theseartists along a journey that processes spiritual and ritual response to loss, and imagines theworld Hereafter.”
Hereafter aims to guide visitors through an emotional journey, inviting introspection and empathy. In
this shared space of reflection, Hereafter becomes a sanctuary for communal healing andunderstanding.
Opening Reception & Related Events
Opening Reception: Friday, May 31, 5:30 – 8:00 PM. Free and open to the public. Join us as wecelebrate the opening of Hereafter. Light refreshments will be served.

Artist Talk: Saturday, June 1, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM. Free, registration required. Hereafter artists
will be in the gallery discussing their work and answering questions from visitors.
July – August Monthly Guided Tours: The second Saturday of each month, join us for a freeguided tour of Hereafter. Registration is encouraged.
Additional events will be announced in the coming weeks.
About the Artists
Sue Amendolara was born in Youngstown, Ohio. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree inJewelry Design/Metalsmithing from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana and a Bachelor of Fine
Arts degree from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. She taught Jewelry Design/Metalsmithing at
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania from1991-2022, retiring in 2022. She served as President of theSociety of North American Goldsmiths from 2011-2014. Her metalwork has been exhibited regionallyand nationally in galleries and museums for over thirty years. Her work has been included ininternational venues in Germany, Switzerland, Thailand, Poland and Japan. Publications of her work
include American Craft, Metalsmith, Ornament and Lapidary Journal. She has been the recipient of
three Individual Fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (1994,1999, 2003) and a MidAtlantic/NEA Regional Fellowship (1995.) Her work is part of the permanent collections at theCarnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England, TheRenwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C. and the White House
Collection of American Crafts, Washington D.C. She was awarded “Artist of the Year” from Erie Artsand Culture, Erie, PA in 2023.
Kimberlyn Bloise is a ceramic artist who grew up in Monroeville, PA. She attended Mercyhurst
University for Studio Art and received her MFA from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. Kimberlyn
makes work that revolves around material study and experimentation. She confronts ideas of anxiety
and communication, and challenges what is considered functional or practical by the standards oftraditional ceramics. Since 2015, Kimberlyn has been teaching ceramics classes and has
participated in numerous juried exhibitions and arts festivals, where she has received numerous
juror’s merit awards. In 2021, she was awarded 2nd place for her work in the national MFA student
juried exhibition, COHORTS alone : together, hosted by the University of Montana. Kimberlyn has
spent time with many Pittsburgh-area arts centers, including Union Project, Radiant Hall, andBraddock’s Bathhouse Ceramics Studio. She completed a residency at Pittsburgh Center for Artsand Media in 2023, and she is currently an instructor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Inaddition to working with clay, she enjoys playing music, hiking, and spending time with her dog andcat, Sadie and Ernie.
Dan Brockett creates handwoven baskets from willow grown on his 12-acre property, Foggy
Blossom Farm, in Leechburg, Pennsylvania. As a grower turned self-taught artist, there is an elementof companionship with, and reverence for, his material that permeates every project. From choosing
the willow varieties he plants to eventually harvesting and selecting each rod for a specific basket,
Dan’s desire to be in relationship with all aspects of his craft is the driving force behind his work.
Cheryl Capezzuti is best known in her hometown of Pittsburgh for making community-interactive
public art and has shared her work through residencies in unusual spaces ranging from Duds ‘N
Suds Laundromat to Pittsburgh International Airport. Non-traditional, donated, and discarded items
have always been her materials of choice and are most notable in her current series. Her newest
work revisits dryer lint as a sculptural medium and includes over one hundred new works using thisdust of everyday life to reflect on what it feels like to be human right now. The Heinz Endowments,
The Jane Henson Foundation, The Pittsburgh Foundation, The Sprout Fund, The Pennsylvania
Council on the Arts and Awesome Pittsburgh have all recognized and funded her work during her 25
years of making art in Pittsburgh. Selections from her studio are always on view at be Galleries in
Lawrenceville. Learn more at www.studiocapezzuti.com.
Thomas Kieran Doyle is a ceramic artist and arts educator born in Pittsburgh, PA, but currently
living in Washington, DC. He loves helping students of all ages learn how to work with clay and findjoy in making something with their own hands. Thomas is currently a faculty member and gallery
coordinator at Stone Ridge School in Bethesda, MD. Previously, he has worked as the StudioTechnician at the Chautauqua Institution and as in the Work Exchange program both at The ClayStudio in Philadelphia and Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Skælskør, DEN.
Thomas also served as the Gallery Manager at The Schulman Project and Program Director of MICA
Pre-College. Tom’s art work has been shown at several galleries and art centers around the U.S. Heholds a BFA in Ceramics and a Masters of Arts in Teaching from Maryland Institute College of Art.
Meryl Engler is an artist using woodcut and collage to create layered prints that evoke intimate,magical human moments, and the hidden landscapes of the environment. Meryl grew up in
Huntington Beach, California, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. She attended Syracuse University
where she studied sculpture, printmaking, religious studies and history, while also competing on thewomen’s rowing team. Next, she went to graduate school at University of Nebraska-Lincoln forstudio art with an emphasis in printmaking. This is where she developed her love of colorful woodcut
prints, using layering, pattern and repetition. Meryl moved to Akron, Ohio in fall of 2019 as the Artistin-residence at Rubber City Prints. The city’s landscape, people and history continue to inspire her.
From watching the foliage and greenery take over the barren, urban landscape of Northeast Ohio togathering with friends around a fire on a summer night, Meryl is always looking for the magical in theevery day. In 2022 she started working at the Morgan Conservatory and learned Eastern andWestern papermaking techniques, now incorporating papermaking into her print work. She has
shown nationally and internationally, notably at Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis, andArtlink Contemporary Gallery in Indiana.
Sharon Massey is an Assistant Professor of Jewelry and Metals at Indiana University ofPennsylvania (IUP). Her jewelry was selected for both Schmuck 2014 and Schmuck 2015 in Munich,Germany. From 2012 to 2015 Sharon served on the board of directors of the Society of North
American Goldsmiths (SNAG) and she currently serves on the Board of Trustees of The Enamelist
Society. In 2009 she received the Art Jewelry Forum (AJF) Emerging Artist Award and was included
in Lucca Preziosa Young. Images of her jewelry have been published in American Craft andMetalsmith magazines and nine books, including The Art of Enameling, Art Jewelry Today 2nd, 3rd,and 4th Editions, and New Brooches. Sharon’s work is included in the collection of the Enamel Arts
Foundation in Los Angeles, California, the Racine Art Museum in Racine, Wisconsin, the Victoria andAlbert Museum in London, England and numerous private collections. She received her BFA from
Winthrop University in 1999 and her MFA from East Carolina University in 2006.
Zach Mellman-Carsey is an artist and jeweler living in Lancaster, PA. Receiving an MFA fromIndiana university in Bloomington, He creates wearable fine and conceptual jewelry and sculptures.
When not creating visual art, Zach spends his time honing his culinary skills and experimenting withniche processes and ingredients dealing with food. With a reference to industrial structures, Zach
Mellman-Carsey creates surreal depictions of their own body. Combining these forms with setstones examines expressions of wealth and power while contrasting a narrative that expresses loss,grief, resilience and renewal.

Jada Patterson is a multidisciplinary artist and crafts person born and raised in Milwaukee,Wisconsin. Their work spans across ceramics, sculpture as well as traditional craft mediums such as
broom making and basketry. Working primarily in clay, beeswax and assemblage Jada explores
beauty, adornment, girlhood and material culture as it relates to the human condition. Jada began
their studies at the Kansas City Art Institute where they received their Bachelor of Fine Arts inCeramics and Art History. They’ve continued their studies as a fellow, mentor and resident at art andcraft schools across the country including the Ox-Bow School of Art, Charlotte Street Foundation,Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, John C. Campbell Folk School and the Hambidge Center for
Creative Arts and Sciences. Jada is currently based out of Pittsburgh, PA pursuing their practice fulltime as well as teaching new young artists.
Lucas Pointon is a Pittsburgh born artist currently living in Madison, Wisconsin. For the past threeyears, he has taught both beginning and advanced jewelry design and metalsmithing courses for theUniversity of Wisconsin – Madison. Since then, Lucas works as a professional goldsmith for a local
company’s store and continues to teach at various private studios. His new series of works are
inspired by Medieval reliquaries, containers that hold the relic of a saint. His interests lie in the ways
people venerate the dead and living, and within his work, the American cockroach serves associeties modern surrogate. Living in a time of cheap manufactured goods and a love for “trash,”cockroaches, are considered the garbage collectors of terrestrial ecosystems. Lucas’s reliquary
jewelry illuminates these once living detritivores and, it is his hope, to direct the viewers’ moral
compass in waste management and environmental protection. The art jewelry on view is in essence
venerating the breaking of the natural re-cycle by hosting the cockroach ironically; an agent ofrecycling halted from itself being recycled by yet other cockroaches. This becomes a beautiful standin for the inability for the “king of trash” of our time, plastics, from being recycled and therefore
accumulating in the natural world.
Katie Rearick received her BFA with an emphasis in Metal/Jewelry from Western Michigan
University, and her MFA from SUNY New Paltz. Supplemental to her formal education, she hasstudied at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and Penland School of Crafts. Her work ranges fromsmall-scale body adornment to large sculptural installations that utilize personal narrative as astarting point. Katie’s work was included in the publications 500 Gemstone Jewels and 500
Enameled Objects. Notable exhibitions include: Staring: in HINDSIGHT at The International DesignMuseum in Munich, Germany, Associated Artists of Pittsburgh 107th Annual Exhibition at TheWestmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, Pennsylvania and Fresh: Metalsmith
Exhibition in Print at the National Ornamental Metal Museum. Previously, Katie has taught at SUNY
New Paltz, Waynesburg University and Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Having founded the Allegheny
Metals Club in 2015, Katie is actively engaged in the Pittsburgh metals community and currently
teaches workshops at the Society for Contemporary Craft. She also maintains a home studio in theStanton Heights neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
Kate Strachan is an interdisciplinary artist, whose clay work integrates various materials such asfiber, wax, and wood to form manuscripts, sculpture, installations and video art etc. The doctrine ofher Pennsylvania Dutch roots forms a basis on which layers of femininity, dark humor andquestioning are all orchestrated together. Kate's work is viewed as a collection of both relics andtexts conveying and preserving the routine of action, sexuality and silence. She earned a BFA fromthe Fashion Institute of Technology SUNY with a focus on fiber. After a drastic career change Katebecame apprentice for two years in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Japan. It was there she was able toconnect with her sensitives to beauty, touch and austerity. Following her apprenticeship, sherelocated to Taiwan to complete her MFA at the Tainan National University of the Arts. While working

both in Asia and the US, she is a recipient of 2020 Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park Exchange(supported by the Agency for Cultural Affairs Japan), 2023 NCECA’s Emerging Artist Award, and,most recently, has been awarded a scholarship for 2024 EKWC Residency (Supported by the Dutch
Government). In 2022, her work was selected for Taiwan's Yingge Ceramic Museum Biennial.
Hee Joo Yang currently lives and works in Pittsburgh. She creates ceramics sculpture with her hand
texture that explore a sense of time, space, and memory. Her ceramics sculptures are inspired fromher background when she lives in South Korea and U.S. Through the abstract objects that
accumulate, flow, and pile, she makes things that have stories, countable or uncountable, empty orfull. She considers how she can arouse curiosity and tell stories to the audience by visualizing whatis invisible. Hee Joo’s evolution into coiling construction allowed her to leave trace on the surface ofobjects. This practice introduces how she engage with the objects like a written language. That’s
why she believes her hand proficiency is related to memory. She received a B.F.A. from the Ewha
Womans University, Seoul, Korea in 2013 and an M.F.A. from Ewha Womans University, Seoul,Korea in 2016, and an M.F.A. from SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz, NY in 2021. Her works had been
exhibited in South Korea, in the United States and other countries. Also, she has had a residence
program and exhibited at the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art, Biloxi, MS and her work has also beencollected.
About Contemporary Craft
Presenting contemporary art in craft materials by regional, national, and international artists since1971, Contemporary Craft offers cutting edge exhibitions focusing on multicultural diversity andcontemporary art, as well as a range of artist-led studio workshops, community engagement
programs, and a store featuring work by top artists from across the country. Located at 5645 Butler
Street in Pittsburgh, PA, Contemporary Craft’s exhibitions are free to the public.