Subject: Meet the 2026-2027 Resident Artists!

2026-27
Artists-In-Residence
CERAMIC ARTISTS │GLASS ARTISTS

Please join us in welcoming a new group of artists to our studios!

Ceramics Artists-In-Residents

Sara Alfieri

Sara Alfieri is a design-driven ceramic artist originally from Rochester, New York. Her work explores the layered relationship between design, function, and accessibility through digitally designed, slip-cast ceramic vessels and architecturally inspired sculptures. The motifs of her forms and surfaces, along with the methods of constructing them, are drawn from modern architecture, design theory, and shape psychology.

Alfieri will give remarks about her work in Proximity and Practice on First Friday, September 4, at 6:30PM at the Belger Crane Yard Gallery.

Erin Drake

Born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, Erin Drake creates sculptural ceramic environments populated by stones, fruit, flower buds and hidden insects or other invented animals. Her work brings these forms together into imaginative worlds, where camouflage, discovery, and transformation shape the viewer's experience.

Take Wheel Throwing Level Three with Drake in September!

Zoey McLeod

Led by a deep appreciation of craft lineages and handmade objects, Zoey McLeod creates work rooted in memory, domestic space, and affectionate nostalgia. Playfully decorated baskets, tree-inspired candelabras, and altered flower vases transform familiar functional forms into objects of delight, inviting viewers to see the home as a place for remembrance and adornment.

Take Handbuilding Level Two with McLeod this September and catch her First Friday Demo on September 4 at the Belger Crane Yard Gallery!

Matt Pekarek

Matt Pekarek is a research-based ceramic artist and recent graduate of the University of Southern California where he earned degrees in Art and Archaeology. Drawing from his archaeological training Pekarek approaches clay as a material and medium for historical storytelling. His work incorporates archival and collected material to examine labor-related U.S. history, connecting clay's associations with memory via the ‘commemorative plate’ tradition and its historical ties to abolitionism. Navigating and breaking the lines between craft and art, he positions his work alongside personal and familial labor history.

Join Pekarek for Wheel Throwing Level Two this September!

Christian Roberts

Christian T. Roberts is a ceramic artist and educator whose practice investigates the intersection of structure and support through abstraction. He holds an MFA in Ceramics from Kent State University, and a BFA in Studio Art, with a minor in English from Appalachian State University. Exhibited nationally, Roberts creates abstract geometric sculptures to question how systems of support shape labor, identity, and interpersonal relationships while simultaneously imposing constraint and pressure to conform.

Take Introduction to Wheel Throwing with Roberts in September!

Jamie Westermeyer

Jamie Westermeyer is a figurative ceramic sculptor who received her MFA in Ceramics from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2026. Her narrative-driven sculptures examine girlhood, domestic environments, and the expectations that shape how women are taught to move, soften, endure, and care for others. Through exaggeration and shifts in scale, she transforms familiar objects and figures into charged scenes that balance playfulness with tension.

Sign up for Westermeyer's Introduction to Wheel Throwing class this September!

Glass Artists-In-Residents

Jamison Cole

Jamison Cole is a glass artist and photographer from Rochester, New York. He received a BFA in Glass and a minor in Fine Art Photography from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2025. Working across digital and analog photography and glass, Cole investigates the bond between these mediums and the personal relationship between this connection and himself. The utilization and manipulation of light, optics, imagery, and the hollow void, allow him to consider his surroundings via these histories, his memories, and natural phenomena.

Santiago Mora

Santiago Mora is a glass artist based in Columbus, Ohio. With a background in pilot training and aviation, his practice often reflects a methodical, procedural approach to material. A graduate of the glass program at The Ohio State University, Mora focuses on the intersections of glass and flight, using the medium to create physical records of planned execution. His current work explores the architecture of modern aviation, through a visual language of superimposition, balance, and conflicting narratives.

See Cole and Mora in action during our free First Friday Glass Blowing Demo on September 4 from 6:00PM to 8:00PM at the Belger Glass Annex!

For information about all Belger Arts programs, including our ceramics and glass residency programs, please visit BelgerArts.org.