Frank Boyden has worked with clay for 51 years. He is trained as a painter, printmaker, art historian and anthropologist. The wondrous properties of clay and the ability to draw in the round seduced him in 1968. Having no training in the field, he worked with native clays in raku and terra sigillata applications until 1982.  In 1984 Tom Coleman, Nils Lou, and Frank built the sixth anagama in North America and Frank has been wood firing since that time. Since 1993 he has worked only in porcelain.  Frank says his greatest pleasure is drawing and incising—figuring out how to unite three-dimensional objects by lineal means. He says he has been blessed to be invited to lecture and do workshops all over the world, meeting thousands of clay workers and studying the great historic collections of clay.  Boyden’s work is included in over 100 museums and he has received a major NEA grant, the Janet Mansfield Fellowship award as well as the NCECA Outstanding Achievement award with his wife Jane for founding Sitka Center for Art and Ecology 49 years ago.

Carole Epp is a Canadian based ceramic artist. Known internationally through exhibitions of her work, she has also contributed to the critical writing of craft through numerous publications. Respected as a curator she has been involved with curating and organizing a number of ceramic and craft based exhibitions. She has travelled extensively to give talks, teach workshops and to engage with communities of craft practice internationally. 

In 2017 she received the Artist of the Year award from Ceramics Monthly in recognition of her years of advocating for the ceramic community through such projects as Musing About Mud (established in 2007): an online curatorial project and community resource on ceramic arts internationally. She is also recognized for her contributions to the promotion of Canadian Ceramics through co-founding the organization Make and Do Ceramics (established 2015); a collective of artists working towards unifying and amplifying the Canadian clay community to larger and diverse audiences internationally.

Dr. Sequoia Miller is a curator, historian, and studio potter. Since 2018 he has served as the Chief Curator of the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, a ceramics specialty museum. He holds a BA in Russian & Art History from Brandeis University, an MA in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from the Bard Graduate Center in New York City, and a PhD in the History of Art from Yale University. His thesis analyzed the connections between ceramics and conceptual art practices on the East and West Coasts of the United States in the 1960s and ‘70s. Sequoia has recently curated Ai Weiwei: Unbroken at the Gardiner and The Ceramic Presence in Modern Art at the Yale University Art Gallery. Prior to re-entering academia, he was a full-time studio potter for more than 10 years. Based in the Pacific Northwest, he made one-of-a-kind functional pots for daily use in domestic environments. Sequoia has exhibited widely and led workshops at craft schools, universities, and art centers in the U.S. and Canada.