Jacqueline Kaplan

Bio

Jacqueline Kaplan is a ceramic artist, educator, and licensed esthetician based in Kansas City. Her work combines sculptural character with functional design, using bold color, texture, and narrative detail to create pieces that feel joyful, expressive, and emotionally layered. Jacqueline approaches clay through both personal exploration and community engagement. She is largely self and community taught, having completed two years of undergraduate studies at the University of Puget Sound before earning her associate degree from Johnson County Community College. She currently teaches ceramics at the KC Clay Guild and has attended workshops at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts and throughout the Kansas City arts community.

When she’s not in the studio, Jacqueline works as a traveling makeup artist, helping clients across Kansas City feel their best for weddings and special events. Across both fields, her work centers around creativity, personal connection, and making people feel seen, joyful, and empowered.

Artist Statement

My ceramic work explores the intersection of playfulness, emotion, and utility. At first glance, many of my pieces appear joyful or lighthearted, filled with bright colors, sculptural elements, and expressive forms. Through layered mark-making, recurring motifs, and intuitive color stories, I embed deeper emotional experiences into the surface of the work.

I think of my pieces as a kind of sophisticated adolescence, full of imagination, movement, curiosity, and emotional contradiction. That balance of refinement and play is central to what I make. My surface designs are emotional and rhythmic, created through gesture and repetition. These softer moments are contrasted by sharp lines and bold textures that give each piece structure. This contrast brings energy to the work and reflects the layered complexity I experience while making it.

I work intuitively, letting forms develop through a physical and emotional rhythm rather than strict planning. My perfectionistic tendencies, paired with clay’s ability to push and pull, keep the process alive and constantly evolving. Each piece becomes a reflection of what I’m feeling and learning in real time, shaped into something tactile and expressive.

At the heart of my practice is the belief that joy and playfulness are powerful. I take pleasure in creating work that feels alive, personal, and emotionally open. The objects I make are a reflection of how I want to feel and the energy I hope to share.

Exhibitions