Ceramist Dr. Sharif Bey Joins Flower City Arts Center’s Expanding the Field program
Dr. Sharif Bey, renowned ceramicist and college professor, will give a live wheel demonstration and lecture on Saturday, Sept. 16 from 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. at Flower City Arts Center, located at 713 Monroe Avenue.
Dr. Bey’s sculptures are inspired by modernism, functional pottery, Oceanic Art, and Art of the African diaspora.
After the demonstration, there will be a 45-minute lunch break (feel free to bring your own or explore the many culinary options in our neighborhood). From 1 - 2 p.m., Dr. Bey will present and take questions. Pre-registration is required and can be done online at bit.ly/SharifBey2023.
The cost is $35 for Flower City Arts Center Members and $40 for non-members.
Dr. Bey comes as part of the Expanding the Field after-school program for teens of color, which provides access to visual arts resources— increasing healthy diversity of college-level visual arts programs and future leadership in the professions of Ceramics, Printmaking & Book Arts, and Photography & Digital Arts.
In 2019, program participants went on a field trip to Syracuse, NY where Bey gave a personal tour of the Everson Museum of Art as well as a private demonstration of his art-making process in his home studio. Since then, the Arts Center was eager to extend invite Dr. Bey to Rochester in an effort to educate and inspire young and older artists alike.
Dr. Sharif Bey came to his love of clay attending high school in Pittsburgh. He went on to study sculpture in Slovakia. He received his BFA from Slippery Rock University, MFA from the University of North Carolina, and Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. His works can be found in public collections across the United States including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus; and the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse. Recent institutional solo presentations include Sharif Bey: Excavations, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA (2021); Sharif Bey: Colonial Ruptures, Gardiner Museum, Toronto, CA (2022); Sharif Bey: Facets, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY (2022); and Sharif Bey: Ancestral Vestiges, Belger Arts Center, Kansas City, MO (2023).
Bey has served as a resident artist at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the Pittsburgh Glass Center, and the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts. His awards include a United States Artists grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship, a Pollock-Krasner grant, and a J. William Fulbright scholarship.
To find more information about Dr. Bey and to view more of his work, visit sharifbeyceramics.com.
