ME 2 Colored Squirrel series

slipcast hand-built porcelain from artists original models and molds

7.5 x 9.5 x 4.5 inches

Courtesy of The Artist

Michelle Erickson is celebrated for her mastery of 17th and 18th-century ceramic techniques-such as slipware, delftware, and agateware-which she uses to explore modern social, political, and environmental issues. In 2007, she designed and produced an official gift presented to Queen Elizabeth II during her state visit to Jamestown, where Michelle studied and recreated pottery from the archeological collections on the earliest colonial American site. During her residency at VisArts, she created these squirrel sculptures using the techniques of 18th century North Carolina Moravian potters. She is also responsible for the recognizable face jug that greets guests and peeks into the Commons from VisArts' Clay I studio.

Michelle Erickson is an accomplished contemporary artist internationally recognized for both making and historical scholarship. Michelle is a leading figure in reconstructing historic ceramic technology. Her ceramic artworks explore issues of child slavery, social and cultural identity, racial inequity and environmental geopolitics. Erickson is widely exhibited and published her artworks are in private and major museum collections across the United States and Britain. Michelle's practice in experimental archaeology has been incorporated into many exhibitions and programs, her scholarship concerning the discovery of colonial era ceramic techniques is well documented in several volumes of the annual journal Ceramics In America, now edited by Ron Fuchs with emeritus editor Robert Hunter and published by the Chipstone Foundation. Michelle has produced ceramics for major motion pictures such as The Patriot, The Time Machine and HBO series John Adams. In 2012 Erickson was artist in Residence at the Victoria Albert Museum in the category of World Class Maker. Recent solo exhibitions include Wild Porcelain at Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco's Legion of Honor 2021-2023 and Recasting Colonialism at Baltimore Museum of Art May-October 2023 and Artifacts at Try-me Artspace NCECA 2024. Michelles's piece HUMANITY, commissioned by the Office of the President of the College of William and Mary, was unveiled in May 2024 and is on permanent display at the Colleges Tyler Mcloud Center. Her ceramic art will be in the upcoming semi-quincentennial exhibition Revolution Reimagined: Evolving Stories from Newport's Past at Rosecliff Mansion opening June 2026. Michelle's depth of historical reference and technological virtuosity distinguish her unique career as an American artist working in clay.