What Is This For?

Ceramic artist Eva Conrad invites us to reconsider beauty, purpose, and the quiet power of vessels in Garden Delight.

There’s something unmistakably magnetic about Eva Conrad’s ceramic work. It doesn’t whisper from a pedestal — it announces itself. Her vessels push against the expectations of pottery, of sculpture, of functionality and form. They’re loud in their intention and quiet in their confidence. They confuse, attract, and ultimately compel viewers to stop, circle back, and ask: “What is this for?”

This question — both sincere and rhetorical — lives at the center of Conrad’s practice. “I love that question,” she says. “It could be for something, but it’s not meant for anything. It’s both. And there’s a beauty in that.”

Eva Conrad’s work lives in between. Between minimalism and maximalism. Between pattern and intuition. Between function and metaphor. Between what the viewer expects from ceramics — and what ceramics are capable of.

Countering the Clean Slate

When asked about the aesthetic roots of her practice, Conrad doesn’t hesitate: “I’m responding to what I call ‘gentrification aesthetics’ — the kind of clean, stripped-down minimalism that wipes away complexity. My work is a response to that erasure. It embraces everything that gets smoothed over in the name of simplicity.”

For Conrad, maximalism isn’t just a style — it’s a philosophy. One that reclaims space for the overlooked, the handmade, the historical. “There’s so much that's been cherry-picked out of craft traditions. Western canon has decided what’s valuable, and I’m pushing back on that. I want to celebrate the richness that’s been ignored.”

Her pieces often incorporate dense textures, layered glazes, and repeating motifs — especially grids. The grid, for Conrad, is more than a visual structure. It’s a symbol of how humans attempt to organize and control space. “The grid is everywhere. It shows up in cities, in furniture, in how we lay out our lives. But when you put it on a hand-pinched surface — something uneven, something with memory — it starts to bend. And I love that.”

Vessels of Memory

Conrad’s work is technically, even historically, vessel-based. But don’t expect anything strictly utilitarian. Her ceramics reference containers without necessarily functioning as them — which is exactly the point. “They’re not meant to hold rice,” she laughs. “But they still speak to the power of containers, to their role in human survival and ritual.”

One of her guiding lights is the writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, which reframes the hero’s journey not around the sword, but around the vessel that carries food, water, and life itself. “That essay means so much to me,” she says. “It honors the container — not just what it holds, but what it enables.”

This attention to quiet power permeates her work. Some pieces are hollow but suggest weight. Others seem as though they might contain something — a note, a stone, a secret. “I like the idea that viewers sense something inside even when they can’t see it. That’s the moment of intrigue I want.”

Pattern, Decoration, and Living History

Conrad draws a clear line between her work and the Pattern and Decoration movement, a 1970s-era response to the fine art world’s dismissal of craft and ornament. “That movement validated things like quilting and weaving and said, ‘This is art, too.’ And that really speaks to me,” she says.

Having come from a background in painting, Conrad sees her shift to ceramics not as a departure, but a deepening. “There’s something so powerful about working with a material that has such a long history — longer than fine art, longer than museums. Clay has always been there.”

She shares a story from one of her mentors, ceramicist Andrea Keys Connell, about a family heirloom — a Holocaust-era rations box painted with Hungarian folk designs. “That story has always stuck with me. It shows how ornamentation, beauty, and survival are all connected. It’s not just decoration — it’s dignity.”

Boldness, Confusion, and Color

One of the most immediate aspects of Conrad’s work is its boldness. It doesn’t ask politely for your attention. It commands it. The forms are exaggerated, the glazes vibrant, the textures almost excessive — and entirely intentional.

“I’m not a quiet person,” she says with a grin. “I hold my values loudly, and my work does the same. I want it to challenge what people think ceramics should be.”

Still, she’s not out to alienate. The work invites — even dares — the viewer to stay with it. To sit in the unfamiliar. “I love confusing people,” she admits, “but not in a mean way. In a way that opens something up. Maybe they don’t know what to think at first, but they stay with it. They look again.”

For viewers unfamiliar with sculptural ceramics, her work often elicits questions: “Is this pottery? A sculpture? A vase?” Conrad leans into that ambiguity. “There’s no rule that says it has to be one thing. It can be both. Or neither. That’s part of the point.”

What's Next

Conrad is preparing for a big move: New York City. It’s a return of sorts — a place where both her parents lived before she was born, and a city that feels like part of her personal mythology. “I’ve felt pulled to New York for a long time. I’m ready to be in a space where things move fast and people are making things around me.”

While she doesn’t have a fixed plan — no gallery job lined up, no grant in hand — she’s stepping into the city with purpose. “I’m looking forward to working in community again. I’ve been in a home studio for years. I’m ready to see what happens when I get shaken out of my comfort zone.”

As for the work itself, Conrad hints at evolution. “I think I’ll always be tied to the vessel in some way, but I’m also interested in going bigger. Maybe moving away from the container altogether. I don’t know exactly what it looks like yet — and that’s exciting.”

Conrad’s work doesn’t fit into clean categories — and that’s exactly why it resonates. It challenges, it questions, and it reclaims. It exists somewhere between beauty and defiance, tradition and invention, silence and statement.

As she puts it, “There’s so much happening between things — between binaries, between truths. That’s where I live. That’s where the work lives.”

See the Work in Person

Eva Conrad’s ceramic sculptures are currently featured in Garden Delight, a two-person exhibition at Mark Rengers Gallery, presented alongside the lush, narrative-rich paintings of Carlos Gamez de Francisco.

Together, their works invite viewers into a world where fantasy meets form — where Carlos’s vibrant, theatrical portraits find their counterpart in Eva’s bold, intuitive vessels. It’s a dialogue of contrast and connection: maximalist storytelling through both image and object.

Garden Delight is on view now at Mark Rengers Gallery in Sewickley, PA. For exhibit details, hours, and available works, visit markrengersgallery.com.