Our Ceramics Instructors
Isabelle Burton
Isabelle Burton grew up in a small town outside of Kansas City and is the oldest of six. She played an active role in their homeschool education and has been tutoring, teaching classes, and offering private lessons ever since. She's a recent graduate in ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute and is often seen modeling, acting, styling, and producing for creative projects in the area. Her individual ceramic practice has been the recent exploration in using methods of slip dipping and burnout on cotton clothing and china painting on top of the fragile results. Erasing the identity of the clothes and imposing a new future and meaning provides the cathartic purpose for her methods.
Erin Drake
Erin Drake was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio. She attended Bowling Green State University, in Ohio, where she received her Bachelor in Fine Arts degree in studio art in 2021. While in school she worked as a studio technician as well as was a studio assistant to John Balistreri and assisted him with his large public art installation at the Kansas City Airport. Following her BFA she pursued her MFA at the University of Missouri in the school of Visual Studies in ceramics. She graduated with her MFA in 2024. Her work predominantly focuses on the combining of stones, fruit, flower buds and small foliage into invented environments, then hides insects or other invented animals to mimic the plants in the work. These interests have coalesced into a sculptural ceramic practice with a focus on the creation of an invented world. Drake is currently a Belger Resident Artist.
Stephen Homer
Stephen Homer received his BFA in ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute, and lives in the Kansas City area. He grew up in Columbus, OH on four acres surrounded by fields, trees, and ample gardening space. He enjoyed playing in the dirt and with plants, creating small gardens in rain puddles at the end of the driveway, building things from found old wood and rusty hardware, propagating and caring for all manner of plants, keeping aquariums and all sorts of pets, all of which influence his work today. Stephen currently works at Belger as a Ceramics Education Coordinator & Studio Technician.
Bekah Bliss
Bekah Bliss is a ceramic artist and teacher in Kansas City, Missouri. She received a Bachelors in Art Education and Ceramics from Missouri State University. Bliss held an internship with Springfield Pottery throughout college and moved back to Kansas City in 2017 for a two-year residency at 323CLAY. She recently became a member of the Kansas City Urban Potters and teaches classes at local community studios.
Joseph Hutchins
Joseph Hutchins has been based in Kansas City for a decade, working primarily in ceramics. He is inspired by industrial design and traditional crafts to create engaging playful objects for the home. Hutchins is interested in exploring the line between function/form and Commercial/Fine Art. He currently works at Belger as an Associate at the Belger Crane Yard Gallery.
Paul Mallory
Paul Mallory received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in ceramics from Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, MO in 1989. After graduation, he moved to Kansas City and has worked from several different studios over the years.
Carolyn Mimbs
Carolyn Mimbs has been teaching art for thirteen years in Kansas City, Missouri. She received her BS in Art Education through Missouri State University in 2008 and her MFA in Ceramics at Fort Hays State University 2020. Mimbs has been an active member and volunteer at Belger Crane Yard Studios and has exhibited her ceramic art locally and nationally including exhibitions at the New Orleans Clay Center, the Clay Studio of Missoula, Sweetwater Center for the Arts, and a solo show at the Trap Gallery in Columbus Park, Kansas City. She has been the recipient of the FHSU Graduate Scholarly Experience Grant, furthering her exploration of printing on clay. She has dreams to travel the world while creating her art and expanding her artistic community, as well as aspirations to one day work at the collegiate level, preparing future ceramic artists.
Gina Pisto
Originally from Columbus, OH, Gina Pisto (she/her) completed her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Ceramics at Grand Valley State University in 2016. Prior to the completion of her BFA, she was awarded a Leroy Niemen Fellowship at Ox-Bow School of Arts and Artists Residencies in Saugatuck, MI. Upon finishing her undergraduate studies, she then went on to complete a post-baccalaureate in Craft + Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2018. Most recently, Pisto has completed her Master’s of Fine Arts in Ceramics at Ohio University in 2022. She has exhibited her work nationally in various group and solo exhibitions and has been awarded recognition from the National Council on Education for the Ceramics Arts (NCECA) and the Michigan Ceramic Art Association (MCAA). Previously an artist-in-residence at Belger Crane Yard Studios in Kansas City, MO, Pisto’s work utilizes various materials such as clay, plastic, and flowers to explore notions of loss, memory, and permanence.
SunYoung Park
Sun Young Park was born in Masan, Korea. She is currently working and living in Kansas City. Park explores the space between imagination and reality. The use of diverse materials represents her visual language as she explores contrasting surfaces, emphasizing ceramics and mixed media. Park earned her BFA (2014) and MFA (2017) from Hong-Ik University Seoul, Korea. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. Park was the resident artist at Clayarch Gimhae Museum in the Ceramic Creative Center (2017). She recently obtained her MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale (2021). She has participated in Jingdezhen International Ceramic Art Biennale, Jingdezhen, China, 7° Salon international art résilience, Musée de Peinture de Saint-Frajou, France, and participated in Women to Watch exhibition at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. She previously was a resident artist at Belger Arts Center and Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, MO.
Logan Reynolds
Logan Reynolds is originally from Colorado. He received his BFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2017. He was a Project Network resident at Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Skælskør, Denmark in 2018 and has participated in many group shows across the U.S. He completed his MFA in Ceramics from Ohio University in 2023. He works in clay to fabricate familiar material objects that are performative of a collective middle-class American memory. Reynolds is currently in his second year as a Belger Resident Artist.
Hannah Schelb
Hannah Schelb started working in ceramics in 2009 while attending Augusta State University. After receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2012, she started a studio practice and eventually moved to Albuquerque, NM, where she worked in glaze production and taught community classes. In 2016 and 2017, Schelb attended summer residencies at Chautauqua School of Visual Arts in Chautauqua, NY, while teaching after-school programs in Cincinnati, OH, during the school year. She was accepted into the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2019 and graduated with a Master of Arts and Fine Arts in May 2021. She was the director of ceramics for the summers of 2020 and 2021 at a summer camp in Harrison, Maine. Schelb became a lecturer for the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2022-2024 and started showing work at several prominent galleries. Schelb is currently a Belger Resident Artist.
Kacey Ziegler
Kacey Ziegler grew up in Northwest Florida, spent most of her 20s in New York City, and landed in Kansas City in 2020. She holds a BFA in Illustration from Ringling College of Art and Design, and her work spans several mediums, including clay, wood, fabric, and sequins. She is a Belger Studio renter, frequently found working in her space on nights and weekends, making functional and sculptural work. Her ceramic work has a neoclassical bend and is rooted in a drawing practice that references ancient craft and art works from across the globe.