We are delighted to welcome 2015 Ceramic Artist of the Year Michael Strand to The Model this week. On Wednesday, Strand will hold BRA hours and lead an artists talk from 3pm, all are most welcome to attend.

Michael J. Strand is an Associate Professor and Head of Visual Arts at North Dakota State University. With a background as a functional potter, Michael’s work has moved seamlessly into social and community engagement while remaining dedicated to the traditional object as he investigates the
potential of craft as a catalyst for social change.

In 2014, Strand was named 2015 Ceramic Artist of the Year by Ceramics Monthly, the largest publication internationally for ceramic art. In the same year, Strand was awarded a two-year Bush Foundation Fellowship. With this award he will focus on the potential of functional design to
facilitate cross-cultural communication and understanding in political and social spheres extending from his home state of North Dakota to international locations such as Brazil, China, South Africa and Europe. In 2013, Strand was awarded the Alumni Achievement Award for the Hixon-Lied
College of Fine and Performing Arts at his graduate school alma mater, The University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Strand’s work has been published internationally, with articles in American Craft, Ceramics Monthly, Ceramics Art and Perception, Studio Potter, Hemslojen, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Public Art Review. His recent Artstimulus projects were cited in the Yale University Press publication 40 Under 40: Craft Futures by Smithsonian curator Nicholas Bell.

Strand lectures extensively with recent engagements at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C., the Estonian Academy of Art, American Craft Council, University of Kentucky, University of Florida, Kansas State University, University of Nebraska, Museum of Contemporary
Craft in Portland, OR, SOFA Chicago and the Glassell School of Art in Houston, TX, The Ohio State University, The Clay Art Center ­ NY, University Federal San Joao Del Rei in Brazil and Universidad Caxias Do Sul in Caxias Do Sul, Brazil.

In 2015 Strand will lecture and lead workshops at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Society of North American Goldsmiths ­ Boston Annual Conference, The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design in Asheville, NC, The Model, Sligo – Ireland, and the Dandelion Speaker Series in Guernsey,
Channel Islands.