The 26th San Angelo north american Ceramic Competition
Opening Week events
April 15–18, 2026
On View
April 17–June 21, 2026
About the Competition
The San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts organizes an annual series of ceramic events with exhibitions, a symposium and workshops led by prominent artists. In even years, the San Angelo North American Ceramic Competition is open to clay artists who have created functional and/or sculptural works. In odd years, the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts hosts the Ceramic Invitational Exhibition, featuring the work of established and emerging ceramic artists selected by the museum.
In a small focus exhibit within the Competition exhibition, the museum features the work of one distinguished guest artist, who also conducts a day-long demonstration workshop the day after the exhibition opening.
The San Angelo Ceramic Symposium, hosted by Angelo State University, is an annual event that is open to ASU students, faculty, and the public. It takes place the day of the exhibition opening and is organized in collaboration with the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts.
Upcoming Competition
Opening Week events
April 15–18, 2026
On View
April 17–June 21, 2026
The San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts presents the 26th San Angelo North American Ceramic Competition. Opening week events will take place from April 15–18 and the exhibition will be on view at SAMFA from April 17, 2026–June 21, 2026. We are excited to welcome juror Linda Ganstrom and our invited artist, Marc Leuthold. This event is generously sponsored by the San Angelo Museum Endowment for Ceramic Events, Texas Commission on the Arts, and John Williams. Read on to see the schedule of events for the opening week in April.
About the Juror
Linda Ganstrom
In her fifth decade as an artist, teacher and advocate for the arts, Linda Ganstrom seeks to balance local and international engagement with a treasured family life. She served as a juror for the Jingdezhen International Ceramic Art Biennial 2023 in Jingdezhen, China and was the 2025 juror for the Ninnescah Biennial Exhibition at the Vernon Filley Museum in Pratt, KS. As the Exhibitions Director for NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) from 2008–2014, Ganstrom worked with hundreds of venues and artists. She served on curatorial teams for Ecumene: Global Interface in American Ceramics during the International Academy of Ceramic General Session in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2012; Continental Divide Ceramics Exhibition and Earth Moves: Shifts in Ceramic Art and Design at the Arvada Center, Arvada, Colorado; and Global Positioning at the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute Gallery, Jingdezhen, China. As an NCECA Collectors’ Tour Leader from 2018–2023, Ganstrom enjoyed creating connections between communities, collectors, artists, and art professionals to build a more vibrant ceramics culture through curating and facilitating ceramics exhibitions.
Earning three degrees from Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas, Linda Ganstrom currently serves as their Professor of Art and Design teaching Ceramics, where she has hosted over 80 visiting artist workshops and mentored over 60 graduate students. She lives and works in Hays, Kansas and shares a studio with her husband, the ceramic artist, Sheldon Ganstrom. As an exhibiting artist she is currently showing in the 15th Annual Workhouse Clay International, in Lorton, District of Columbia and at the Leopold Gallery in Kansas City. Ganstrom’s work is included in over a dozen books and publications, and her article “Care Create” was recently published in the Studio Potter Magazine. She has exhibited in over 300 shows, including solo, invitational group and juried exhibitions, including the Meissen Porcelain Biennale, Meissen, Germany, in 2022 and the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts’ Ceramic Competition six time since 2014, winning First Prize in 2018 and Best Figurative Sculpture in 2024.
About the Invited Artist
Marc Leuthold
Marc Leuthold has been invited to exhibit and create art worldwide. Among many other venues, Leuthold’s artwork has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and PS1 MoMA, both in New York City. Leuthold has served as a Professor at the State University of New York, Princeton University, Parsons School of Design, and Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts.
Artist’s Statement:
The exhibited artwork encompasses artwork made all over the world, including during the Pandemic lockdowns in New York and Shanghai, both of which I experienced first-hand. Migrating my practice to four different continents (North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia) has given me an opportunity to adapt to and use unusual porcelains and clays from all over the world, including the jade-like Chinese Dehua porcelain. I have mounted some of these exotic clays in hand carved wooden bases that I designed—mirroring the 18th century European practice of mounting precious Chinese porcelains in elaborate Baroque-style ormolu bronzes.
My work is essentially abstract, and often, it is unnameable. Hints of feminine and masculine energies in my practice echo Nietzschean complementary Apollonian and Dionysian energies. The work issues from the tension between creative and destructive drives, and I see myself as, ultimately, a conduit for the flow of the universe. It is in this path that the artist must walk.
Opening Week Schedule of Events
RELATED EVENTS & EXHIBITIONS
In addition to the 26th San Angelo North American Ceramic Competition, other exhibits and juried shows will be taking place in San Angelo in conjunction with the Ceramic Competition events. You are welcome to apply to all three, but please do not submit the same artwork to more than one!
