Ashley Morgan

After working as a licensed architect for ten years, I began working full-time in ceramics in 2024. As in architecture, ceramics affords me the ability to work in three dimensions and create forms that, like buildings, have spatial qualities. I am very influenced by architecture and its phenomenology; how space can evoke feeling, mood, and even emotion. I have found that the process of making ceramics satisfies in a similar way to architectural model-making, as it allows for the exploration of volume and material at a scale conducive to iteration and experimentation. I’ve enjoyed working in sgraffito with colored slips, creating line drawings with imagery from nature and the built world, then sponging glaze on top to create a layered, painterly surface effect. My forms are initially thrown at the wheel out of stoneware and porcelain and altered once they reach their leather-dry state. My work is fired at a community studio in a cone-10 kiln. I make functional tableware as well as one-off, sculptural pieces. In addition to ceramics, I paint and frame small works in gouache and watercolor.

Master of Architecture with Honors, Washington University in Saint Louis, 2013
Bachelor of Arts with Highest Honors, Art History, Vanderbilt University, 2009