Juliane Shibata is a ceramic artist and educator from Northfield, MN. Her largest installations investigate the contrast between the transience of nature and the relative stability of fired ceramics. Juliane was awarded a 2021 McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists and received the Tile Heritage Prix Primo award at the 23rd Annual San Angelo National CeramicCompetition. Works of hers were included in the 2019 “Blanc de Chine” International Ceramic Art Award exhibition in Beijing and have been commissioned by, among others, Abbott Northwestern Hospital and the Four Seasons Hotel Minneapolis.
Juliane’s residency project, Mutations, which explored the idea of both anthropogenic and naturally occurring mutations in plant development, culminated in a “speculative ceramics” installation. She created eight imagined mutant species based on real plants in the collection and placed the botanical sculptures amid their real counterparts in the Conservatory. The university’s greenhouse, designed by humans to preserve and propagate plants and thus a liminal space between the natural and constructed, served as a unique setting for the project.
Click here to view a video on the Mutations installation at the conservatory. More of Juliane’s work can be found on her website.
