Getting Your Hands Dirty: One BFA student's journey from art elective to a career in ceramics

In the spring semester of their freshman year, Murphey Stromberg had a fortuitous conversation with Assistant Professor Chotsani Elaine Dean that would change Stromberg’s entire collegiate trajectory. Stromberg was taking Dean’s Intro to Ceramics class, and the professor saw something in the student they hadn’t even seen themselves.

“About three weeks into this semester she cornered me in the hallway and was like, are you an art major? You look like an art major. You should be an art major,” Stromberg recalls. “And at that point I was going to be a psych major. and I was thinking about doing an art minor. Spoiler alert: I'm not a psych major anymore. I'm in the art BFA program.”

Stromberg is about to graduate from that program, in fact, currently working hard not just to complete all their coursework but also to complete their thesis work for display in counterpoint, the 2025 BFA Capstone Exhibition, on view in the Katherine E. Nash Gallery on May 6 with an opening reception on the 8th.

Stromberg with one of their finished works.

Stromberg’s project is ambitious: a three-part water fountain on a scale so large that the young ceramicist is actually building it directly inside the kiln to avoid damage or collapse in transit before firing. Their inspiration is coral, developing a visual language in clay based on abstracted forms that could exist, as they explain, “maybe in the ocean, in some alternate world or dimension.”

The confidence to take on such a monumental final project comes from Stromberg spending the past three years working as a ceramics technician — the entirety of their sophomore, junior, and senior year. That one conversation in the hallway led Stromberg towards a whole new career, one they feel ready and eager to embark upon after graduation.

“I've rebuilt a kiln. I do glaze mixing. I've done glaze testing, I do clay mixing. I've cut brick, I've mortared brick. Things I probably can't even remember I've done, I've done,” Stromberg says, all while rolling out porcelain tiles in the ceramics studio for use in their own work. “I have all of the skills I need at this point to be a ceramics tech somewhere, which is crazy to think about because I'm just — I can’t say ‘just,’ Chotsani would be mad — because I am an undergraduate student at the university.”

It's been a surprising journey for Stromberg, who also works as a tour guide for prospective students visiting the Regis Center for Art. “Believe it or not I used to be a very introverted person before college,” they say. “Let alone the idea of giving tours of a department to prospective students or even interact with donors or MFAs candidates and stuff like that. I came into college thinking I was going to be a poli sci and history double major, and then I did psychology, and then I was psych and art. I did not tour colleges looking to go into an art program.”

Stromberg rolls porcelain into tiles for later use.

Now, as a graduating senior, Stromberg has eased into the role of technician and mentor, answering questions on the fly from students in Lecturer Erika Terwilliger’s Wheel Throwing class. When you talk to Stromberg in the ceramics studios or the kiln room, you have to keep up: they move with speed and assuredness not just when doing the physical labor — mixing clay, managing temperatures in the kilns, unloading the finished pots — but also when leading their peers through a process. “These are some of my closest friends now. I spend so much time with these people, I love them so dearly.” It’s a well-earned confidence, as Stromberg has learned the ins and outs of many ceramics processes not just from the faculty but from the highly experienced staff as well, including Facilities Coordinator (and ceramicist) Jim Gubernick and Ceramics Area Technician Kimberlee Roth.

One of Stromberg’s tile works comes out of the kiln. One of the artist’s techniques is to pull the clay to such a fine tapered point that the finished works can be razor sharp in spots.

With only a couple of weeks left in the semester, Stromberg is finishing their fountain sculpture (complete with working water pump) — rolling with the inevitable punches that ceramics throw their way, whether on the wheel, at the coil-building table, or in the kiln. As Terwilliger tells her class during a wheel-throwing demo: "You want a plate? No, I think I'm going to be a bowl today.... Clay will always put you in your place."

It sounds like clay will be putting Stromberg in their place — quite happily — after graduation, as they are hoping to start teaching at Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis. It’s a practice that necessitates strict chemical and physical parameters but that also rewards a certain fluidity of approach, an ability to pivot and to problem-solve. With their years of hands-on experience under the guidance of teachers and staff, Stromberg feels ready to move forward and continue the trajectory that started with a simple intro elective and is about to become a career.

A candlestick emerges unscathed from a bisque firing, prior to Stromberg applying glaze and firing it a second time.