Clay is one of humanity’s oldest building materials. A ball of humble clay, fashioned by human hands and hardened by fire, can be transformed into something as workaday as a terra cotta flower pot or as exalted as a bone china cup made of porcelain so thin as to be translucent. Today’s clay artists are constantly innovating with new techniques and expressions, but the process of crafting vessels of clay remains essentially unchanged over millennia.

Born of Fire was a year-long exhibition that explored some of the many incarnations of ceramic fabrication: from traditional Native American vessels to highly decorated 17th-century Japanese porcelain meant for European trade, to delicate, stylized contemporary works that explore the limits of the medium. The works were on loan from three institutions in our region: the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock; the Springfield Art Museum, Springfield, MO; and the Sequoyah National Research Center at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock.