Spotlight: Portland

The arrival of the 51st NCECA Conference this March puts a spotlight on Northwest clay.

- Richard Speer

As anyone who knows and loves Portland, Oregon, will tell you, the city is in the midst of enormous change. Long-beloved restaurants, watering holes, parks, and other landmarks are vanishing, replaced by boxy new condo buildings, office spaces, and an ever-trendier assortment of artisanal boutiques. The rapid growth is simultaneously alarming and encouraging: alarming to old-timers nostalgic for the gritty Portland of old; encouraging to those who know that without development, cities stagnate. It’s more than fitting, then, that Portland is playing host to the 51st annual conference of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), whose theme this year is “Future Flux.” That phrase neatly encapsulates what’s happening in Portland, as well as in the physical and thematic potentialities of ceramics: the mutability of forms, whether city blocks or artworks, being actively shaped; and the beauty and fragility that result when once-fluid forms are fired and fixed.