ISYS HENNIGAR
2025 Brightwork Fellow
BIO
Isys Hennigar is a North Carolina based artist working in ceramics and metal. Her work invokes real and reimagined ecological encounters that underscore transformation, hybridity, and play as tools of renewal. Hennigar received her MFA from the University of Georgia and BFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the 2024 recipient of the South Arts North Carolina State Fellowship, and recent exhibitions of her work include the American Museum of Ceramic Art (Pomona, CA), Signature Contemporary (Atlanta, GA), Sow & Tailor Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Ferrara Showman Gallery (New Orleans, LA), and the North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh, NC).
ARTIST STATEMENT
Braiding forms and imagery from agriculture, mythology, and medicine, my work considers systems of sustenance and healing and the cultural and ecological legacies of land cultivation. Grounded in the landscape of the southeastern United States— a site of fantasy, precarity, and symbolic abundance—the work presents chimeric objects in which allegories of sustenance, danger, and purification merge. Working primarily between ceramics and metal, materials bound with associations of strength and fragility, a material interplay mirrors the themes of danger and resilience within the work.
In a literal and poetic sense, vessels function as mediators in the interactions that they might symbolize or facilitate. The sculptural vessel forms I make are hand-built and adorned with relief carvings and cast details of vernacular objects such as deer hooves, peach pits, puzzle pieces, electric fencing insulators, tools, and toys. Animals are often rendered in ambiguous states of metamorphosis, hunt, or performance. The work’s layered surfaces are built through multiple firings and often incorporate metal components. In two-dimensional works, the carved porcelain imagery is mounted on metal. Employing jeweler’s techniques on a large scale, these works resemble engraved charms. Referencing objects of protection and historical depictions of infernal and sublime landscapes, they imagine possibilities of connection between wild and domestic realms, between chaos and play, and hybridity as an emblem of resiliency.
WORK BY ISYS HENNIGAR
Sap Rising (2022); glazed stoneware, overglaze, copper :30 x 9 x 11 inches
La faim qui donne des jambes aux loups (2023); glazed porcelain, brass; 43 x 11 x 1 inches
Sang d’encre (2023); glazed porcelain, overglaze; 14 x 8 x 7 inches
Cutting Teeth (2024); glazed porcelain, overglaze, brass; 47 x 18 x 1 inches
The lightness of feathers, the crushing weight of wings (2023); glazed porcelain, overglaze; 14 x 11 x 8 inches
Fragile Guardian (2023); glazed porcelain, brass; 36 x 12 x 1 inches
Moments Between Dog and Wolf (2022); glazed porcelain, overglaze, bronze, glaze drips, firebrick; 21 x 11 x 18 inches
2025 SELECTION JURY
Linda Dallas
Linda Dallas is an artist and illustrator who has recently resumed residency in her hometown of Detroit, Michigan. Her vibrant watercolors are a visual investigation of sustenance. For the past 35 years she has lived in North Carolina and taught at schools and art centers across the state including Wake Technical College, Saint Augustine’s University, North Carolina State University, Meredith College, and Artspace. In 2014 Linda taught a six-week watercolor course in the Czech Republic for N. C. State University’s Prague Institute. Linda served on the City of Raleigh Public Art and Design Board from 2018-2024. She has also served on the City of Raleigh Arts Commission and the Collection Committee for the North Carolina Museum of Art. Linda is the Project Coordinator for the Envision Saint Agnes Hospital Project. Currently, she is a studio artist and freelance illustrator/textile designer. Linda has a Bachelor of Science from Howard University and a Master of Product Design from North Carolina State University.
Roger Manley
Before serving as director and curator of NC State’s Gregg Museum of Art & Design from 2010 to 2023, Roger Manley worked as a photographer, folklorist, filmmaker, and writer. He wrote and co-directed the award-winning documentary MANA—beyond belief and has curated major exhibitions for more than forty institutions, including the NC Museum of Art, the Asheville Art Museum, Duke University, the Illinois State Museum in Chicago, and the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. He lives in Durham with writer/photographer Theadora Brack.
Lia Rose Newman
Lia Rose Newman has held the position of Director/Curator of the Davidson College Art Galleries since January 2013. From 2002 to 2012, Newman was Director of Programs and Exhibitions at Artspace in Raleigh, NC. She earned a BA in Art History and a BFA in General Studio with concentrations in sculpture and photography from Winthrop University and a Master of Arts from Duke University. Newman provides leadership for the advancement of visual art at Davidson College, overseeing all administrative and operational activities of the Galleries and providing strategic vision to create an inclusive, interdisciplinary center of learning. She is responsible for curating exhibitions and developing exhibition-related programming. With specific interests in socially and politically engaged art practices, Newman’s curatorial projects have explored an array of topics, including HIV, climate catastrophe, immigration, and more. Newman is also responsible for overseeing the development and growth of the Davidson College Art Collection. Over the past ten years, she has helped the college acquire nearly 1,000 works of art, including significant sculptures and commissions focused around diversifying the collection. Newman also serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Art Department, teaching a course that centers student voices in the acquisition process.