Upcoming Exhibitions

Centering: Clay and Community at the Palo Alto Art Center will engage and convene the community in the art of ceramics through a series of art exhibitions, public programs, school tours, and partnerships. 

Pushing Boundaries: Ceramic Artists and Identity

September 13-December 7, 2025

Across diverse cultures and continents, numerous ancient human origin narratives depict clay as the primordial material from which humanity was formed. In these accounts, deities or other divine entities mold human beings from this malleable, earth-derived substance, symbolizing an intrinsic connection between human existence and the land itself. These narratives underscore the profound relationship between identity and place, suggesting that our sense of self is inherently linked to the geography of our origins.

Pushing Boundaries presents the work of contemporary California-based artists who engage with clay as a medium to interrogate themes of identity and materiality. While some of these artists work primarily with clay, others incorporate it as a symbolic reference to notions of value, place, and corporeality.

Since the mid-20th century, California has played a pivotal role in redefining ceramics as a critical fine art medium. The artists featured in Pushing Boundaries expand upon this legacy, utilizing clay to explore and challenge discourses surrounding the body, race, gender, sexuality, and the environment. Through their innovative practices, they further advance the medium’s revolutionary potential, positioning it at the intersection of contemporary artistic and social inquiry. This exhibition is guest curated by artist, educator, independent curator and arts administrator Demetri Broxton.

Ashwini Bhat: Being, Longing..., 2025, installation view

Ashwini Bhat: Being, Longing…

September 13, 2025-August 23, 2026

Bay Area artist Ashwini Bhat’s site-specific installation ties together and is concurrent to the three exhibitions forming Centering: Clay and Community at the Palo Alto Art Center, addressing themes of identity, sustainability, and highlighting performance and installation.

Being, Longing… will include three works by Bhat: a performance video with sound projected on unfired clay, a limited-edition neon installation, and a large-scale glazed ceramic mandala created collectively by public participation during the 2025 Montalvo Art Center Summer Festival Montalvo Funk.

After thirty-five years in Southern India, multidisciplinary artist Ashwini Bhat now lives and works in the foothills of Sonoma Mountain, California. Coming from a background in literature and classical Indian dance, Bhat works in sculpture, installation, ceramics, video, text, and performance developing a unique visual language to explore the intersections between body and nature, self and other.

Ashwini Bhat: Being, Longing… is supported by the Palo Alto Art Center Foundation through a gift from SACHI, Society for Art & Cultural Heritage of India in celebration of its 25th anniversary (1997-2022).

Clay Sustains: Vessels of Change

January 17-April 5, 2026

This invitational group exhibition will feature 15-20 established ceramic artists focusing an exceptional body of work on issues of environmental crisis and cultural sustainability. A diverse selection of clay materials, processes, and forms will engage viewers in meaningful inquiry into multiple ideas of “sustainability." Clay Sustains continues the Palo Alto Art Center’s Centering series, here in the form of ceramic artwork, where creative vessels and forms (whose basic elements are earth, water, mineral) and their technologies of making (whose elements are fire and air) ask us to look more closely. How can earth itself be fashioned into art that serves as sustenance in our challenging contemporary world? If we consider ceramics as vessels of change, how can these works help us understand ideas of “sustainability” in the face of cultural and environmental change? This exhibition is guest curated by independent curator Rina Faletti, Ph.D.

Thrown, Stamped, Stacked, and Poured: Ceramic Installation and Performance

Summer 2026

This exhibition showcases contemporary approaches to ceramic art through performance and installation in clay by a selection of artists from the region and country. Artists’ exploration of installation has grown in recent years, but one could argue that unfired clay was used in “installation” and “performance art” as early as the Ice Age. Many contemporary clay installation and performance works employ traditional ceramic techniques, including hand building, slabs, extrusions, molds, and wheel-throwing—in innovative ways for novel and compelling results. Artists included in the exhibition leverage the uniquely malleable and expressive potential of clay to create works that address identity, history, and environment. This exhibition is guest curated by ceramic artist and educator John Toki.

These exhibitions are presented in conjunction with Handwork. Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026 is a national Semiquincentennial collaboration showcasing the importance of the handmade and celebrating the diversity of craft that defines America.