Closing the Alfred University School of Art & Design’s 2026 Master of Fine Arts Exhibition season will be shows by MFA in ceramics candidates Marita Manson and Elizabeth Scott. Their exhibitions open Friday, May 8, in the Fosdick-Nelson Gallery, Harder Hall, and will remain on view through Saturday, May 16.
Manson’s show, “The Call is Coming from Inside the House,” emphasizes the horror of the feminine domestic space. Distinctly versed in the uncanny, Manson’s ceramic sculptures call to the visual normalcy of the home while maintaining an eerie discomfort. Working with ceramics and metals, her sculptures explore the double-handed nature of visibility.
Manson is from Victoria, BC, Canada, where she received a BSc from the University of Victoria. She studied ceramics at the UVic, the Kootenay School of the Arts, and the Reykjavik School of Visual Arts in Iceland. In 2021 Marita was an Artist in Residence at Medalta.
Scott’s exhibition, “I see / you mean,” features a series of ceramic figures exploring the connection between inner child and adult self. Girlhood, and memories of adolescence, present themselves through material application as layered and complex experiences. Her figures form as distorted memories that are shaped through accumulation, grief and longing, repair, and fragmentation.
Scott is a sculptor from the Bay Area working primarily in clay. She received her BFA in Ceramics from California State University, Long Beach. In 2024 Scott was awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant for figurative artists.
An opening reception for both shows will be held Friday, May 8, from 5-7 p.m. in the Fosdick-Nelson Gallery. The gallery is open Sunday-Tuesday from noon-4 p.m.
The New York State College of Ceramics is a statutory college of the State University of New York operating within Alfred University. Its public mandate advances education, research, and engagement across the arts, sciences, and engineering of ceramics and glass. The NYSCC Museums and Galleries administer six exhibition venues that serve the public through exhibitions, instruction, and programming. These venues include the Inamori Museum of Fine Ceramics; the Paul Vickers Gardner Glass Center; Fosdick-Nelson Gallery; the Robert C. Turner Gallery; the Cohen Gallery; and the Celadon Terra Cotta Building. Together they present contemporary art, material investigation, and student curatorial activity while linking exhibition practice to teaching and research and sustaining public access to collections, archives, and scholarship grounded in regional industrial history.
