For Austen Brantley, his latest exhibition, “Burnt Offerings,” is a spiritual experience.
Referring to the book of Leviticus in the Bible, a burnt offering is an animal sacrifice meant to cleanse a person of sin and show their dedication to God. And for the 30-year-old Detroit sculptor, his clay creations are his idea of an offering. While religion has been a part of Brantley’s world since he was a child, as an artist, Brantley feels like a higher power is always guiding him.
“I look at clay as a way of doing that because each one of these pieces has to be fired in a kiln at thousands of degrees, and I find that to be synonymous with that,” he told BridgeDetroit. “That’s a way for me to be able to translate how I feel about my relationship with my spirituality and my inner world with these pieces.”
Brantley’s detailed, biblical-like sculptures, featuring men and women molded out of red clay, are on display at M Contemporary Art in Ferndale until April 11.
The show was one of more than 80 exhibitions that opened across metro Detroit last week as part of the 60th annual National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) conference. Held at Huntington Place, the four-day conference brought thousands of artists, educators, businesses, organizations, collectors and ceramic enthusiasts to the Motor City.
This year’s conference marked the first time the organization gathered in Detroit, said Claire Thibodeau, a NCECA member, an assistant professor and section lead of ceramics at the College for Creative Studies.
“It’s kind of a niche thing, right? No one would think that ceramics has such a community-based following, but it really captures a lot of people’s hearts, and we have everything from artists to curators to gallery owners to enthusiasts, and teachers,” she said.
Thibodeau curated a CCS exhibit for the conference titled “Echoes: Alumni Voices in Clay.” The display showcases the work of 35 CCS ceramics alumni across different media, from pottery, sculpture, installation, mixed media, to experimental processes. The exhibit is running until April 18.
When Thibodeau became the ceramics section lead last May, she knew she wanted the college to have a presence for NCECA.
“It took over a year to organize all these different artists, and we had to research and figure out who was in the area, who was able to ship, who’s still practicing ceramics,” she said. “It’s a little bit more than a show; it’s become a community event, too. It’s been a really positive experience where people would be coming in, dropping off their work, and they hadn’t seen each other in 15, 20 years or so. That’s really the soul of NCECA.”
Offering a part of himself
Brantley, who splits his time between Detroit and Toledo, has ties to NCECA, too. In 2023, he was one of six artists selected for NCECA’s emerging artist fellowship. Brantley remembers presenting at that year’s conference in Cincinnati in front of 3,000 people.
“I remember doing the presentation in front of those people, and it was a really amazing experience because not only did I get to learn how to really talk about my work in front of that many people, but I was in this cohort,” he said. “We would have meetings, and we would talk about things we could do to better show our work and things like that. And we were getting all these connections. I found it very valuable.”
Brantley’s always had the mind of an artist, even though his introduction to sculpture didn’t happen until high school. He said he creates the same way now as he did as a seven-year-old using Microsoft Paint.
While a junior at Berkley High School, Brantley became interested in the art form due to the encouragement of his ceramics teacher. In 2014, Brantley decided to focus on sculpting full-time and three years later, he received Kresge’s Gilda Award for emerging artists. In 2023, Brantley was awarded a Kresge Artist Fellowship and the following year, he was commissioned by the city of Detroit to create a sculpture of Joe Louis for the Joe Louis Greenway.
For “Burnt Offerings,” Brantley has created sculptures such as “Ablaze,” which has a hand holding a heart with wings and a miniature woman on top. Another piece, “Avanna,” features a woman from the shoulders up with her eyes closed, balancing a vase on her head with a small figure sticking out.
Brantley said having his figures balancing items on their heads was something he began doing in 2022 after studying mythology and researching African tribes, particularly the Senufo people in West Africa. A subgroup of the tribe, the Poro society, makes specialized masks that often feature designs on the sides and on top.
“I thought it would be really interesting to take that inspiration and use what I’ve learned from classical art and combine those two ideologies,” Brantley said.
The artist even has a sculpture called “The Hunter,” where a man takes down the Kaws statue that overlooks Campus Martius Park.
During the exhibition’s run, visitors have the opportunity to purchase a sculpture on M Contemporary’s website. While some have already been sold, there’s still several pieces available, beginning at $2,000.
Brantley said the sculptures are offering a piece of himself, and he hopes people engage with them.
“I hope that, just like any artist, when you give something, you get something back, and that could be the appreciation or the respect of the work,” he said. “Nowadays, I feel like being an artist is a beautiful privilege, and I think it’s so important that these stories are told.”
A show of storytellers
For the CCS exhibition, the show features work from older and newer alumni, from 1978 graduate Karen Katanick to 2025 graduates Anna Edry and Kailani Wolfe.
Thibodeau received a list of former ceramic students from the college’s Alumni Relations Department and spent last summer reaching out to people by phone, email and social media. She said most phone conversations lasted for at least 30 minutes as she listened to each artist’s story.
“This show became storytelling and thinking about the fruition of over five decades of artists and how they’ve made amazing differences in the field of ceramics,” Thibodeau said. “And it’s not just educators. Some became full-time artists. A lot of them became clay modelers for GM and Ford, and even people who decided to be full-time parents had wonderful stories and experiences. Everyone was included and welcomed to participate in it.”
Some of the artists submitted pieces they had already completed, while others made something new for the show, Thibodeau said. There were no specific guidelines or themes for people to follow, so they could submit whatever they thought was their best work.
“I just wanted it to be like, ‘show us what you got,’” Thibodeau said. “‘What are you doing, what are you interested in?’ In a lot of ways, that can make curation a little tricky, but it was a journey.”
Thibodeau is proud of how the exhibition turned out, as well as all the other shows and events happening while the NCECA conference was in town.
“NCECA probably won’t be here for another 20, 30 years,” she said. “They go from city to city, and so, this was our shot to really show the world what we have. And we nailed it, honestly. There’s just so much breadth here of different approaches to using this medium, and it’s exciting to think about.”