My 2026 NCECA Experience – Detroit, MI

This year’s National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, also called NCECA, was held in Detroit, Michigan’s Huntington Place. The convention center itself was aptly sized for the number of people in attendance, which was estimated to be around 7,150 people. Overlooking the Detroit River as well as the Canadian city of Windsor, this was a prime location to ponder the absurdity of borders – invisible lines drawn in a moving river, separating us from another country. The convention lasted from March 24th to the 28th, though the first and last days were halved and less busy.  

To provide as much variety of educational topics, various lectures, artist talks, and demonstrations overlap in the same time frame, allowing attendees to pick and choose whichever piques their fancy. This always creates a dilemma for me, however, since there tend to be multiple in the same hour block that intrigue me. On Wednesday, the 25th, was spent around the resource hall where emerging artists, vendors, businesses, and prospective schools all have booths and information aplenty. My group and I went to an exhibition downtown, which showcased over 60 years of Cranbrook Academy of Art Alumnus works. After lunchtime, more time was spent exploring the upper floors of the convention center, where multiple art exhibits backed by NCECA were held. Notably, the Exhibit Turn Up the Volume! Showcased Latine artists whose works address “biculturalism, migration, and history”. I then attended the Keynote speech by Photographer Hank Willis Thomas – I honestly didn’t like the speech’s delivery very much, and his main message of “mind your heart” got lost through excessive crowd work and handing the microphone to other speakers, despite Thomas being the intended speaker. 

On Thursday the 26th, I had originally wanted to attend a historical lecture about Japanese wood firing practiced by Michigan-based artists, but I woke up too late and missed half of the 30-minute talk. I attended Adero Willard and Del Harrow’s making demonstration until noon. I then looked briefly at the Cup Exhibition and sale, to see what new pots were put for sale since the day prior. One talk that I wish I had been in attendance for was “Can Art Make a Difference?”, of which I heard that speaker and artist Roberto Lugo made profound conversation within. I listened to a talk by Judith Schwartz titled “Preserving Ceramic Cultural Heritage Sites”, which showcased multiple heritage sites around the world, and an outlined approach for preserving and supporting the artisans who keep these cultural productions alive. I then listened to Rebekah Bogard explain her methods of modular building and structural reinforcement with metal tubing in relation to her sculptural practice. This talk was very high in attendance, and Bogard had a lot of humor in her presentation of information.   

Thursday and Friday both had a lot of planning difficulties to overcome in regards to attending peripheral exhibitions and pop-up sales. Detroit is a very spread out concrete nightmare that is most easily traversed by car – my group used buses and our feet most frequently. Factoring in 30 minutes of bus travel in each direction led to us losing a lot of time that could have been spent observing artworks from around the country. There was also a lot of risk involved – about three times did we take transport and walk to an exhibit site, only to find it closed or not very valuable of an experience.  

Comparing this years’ experience to NCECA last year in Salt Lake City, UT, the transportation situation was a large source of stress that wasn’t present last year. In SLC, we drove from Sacramento and had cars at our disposal to see much more art in a smaller amount of time. Since we had to fly to Michigan, and didn’t have the funds for renting a car, the bus and our feet were the best we could do without spending hundreds of dollars on Ubers. It could have been the smaller amount of work seen this year contributing to this feeling, but I think that SLC’s NCECA had more inspiring works of art. The city being more condensed, with closer proximity of exhibitions outside of the convention center as well as access to a car made last year more pleasant and streamlined. This year, with difficulties in transportation and access (and horrible pedestrian/bus infrastructure) made the experience a lot more tiresome and stressful than I’d like to admit. 

Despite this, I saw an exhibit on the 27th titled Ceramics X Fiber that made me overjoyed in the connections I was able to make with the art shown. Paper, hair, fabric, and weavings came together with ceramic forms in 60 different installations, with 120 artists total. Woven tapestries and installations that utilized sheer fabrics stood out the most to me, and the numerous combinations of each material with the other opened my mind to the endless creativity that can be portrayed with a mixed media installation. 

Now having been to two NCECA conferences, I can already tell that the cities that host this national event are crucial to enjoyability and accessibility. NCECA 2027 is going to be held in Baltimore, Maryland, and 2028 in Spokane, Washington. I can only hope that these two cities will be more easily navigable to those without cars. I don’t think I will attend Baltimore next year. Knowing that 2028’s conference will return to the west coast gives me hope that I will be able to attend and explore even more of what NCECA seeks to offer. Thank you to everyone who puts NCECA on, and to you, for reading my personal experience at this year’s 60th anniversary conference held in Detroit, Michigan.