Jonah Fleeger

I am a ceramic artist whose work develops through time, repetition, and sustained engagement with material and process. I work primarily with clay, allowing form, surface, and firing to evolve through extended making rather than quick resolution.

I began working with clay while attending a small boarding school in Arizona, where daily studio access and close interaction with other students shaped how I understood ceramics as both a material practice and a way of learning through proximity. That early experience continues to inform how I think about making, teaching, and working alongside others.

I studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, completed post-baccalaureate programs at the University of Colorado Boulder and Northern Arizona University, and earned my MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. I have also participated in multiple residency programs across the United States, working in a range of studio settings and firing traditions.

Alongside my studio practice, I teach ceramics and remain invested in studio environments where learning happens through presence, repetition, and shared experience. Much of my thinking about making comes from returning to the same processes over time and working in proximity to others engaged in similar material questions.

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Artist Statement

My ceramic work moves along two connected paths. One is rooted in my experiences as a Jewish person navigating identity, diaspora, and antisemitism. The other is grounded in form, structure, and design—how objects relate to one another, to the viewer, and to the spaces they occupy. These paths intersect through installations and individual objects that reflect lived experience and questions of place, cultural assimilation, connection, and belonging.

I work with clay using forms that draw from both ancient and contemporary pottery traditions. These references allow me to engage history without recreating it directly and to work with familiarity as a material in itself. The objects I make are not meant to resolve narratives, but to hold them, allowing associations to remain open rather than fixed. Time plays an important role in my practice. Many of the processes I return to require repetition and long engagement, and decisions often emerge slowly through continued making. I am interested in how revisiting forms and materials over time shifts meaning and how objects can carry experience through use and wear and accumulation.

By returning to familiar structures and materials, my work revisits questions of self, place, and history without offering conclusions. Instead, it stays with these questions, allowing them to remain in conversation with the present.