Craft Around the Country

Connor Czora Documents Queer History in Clay

In porcelain vases, dishware, and more, the DC-based ceramist subverts traditionally stuffy forms with overlaid imagery of struggle and resistance.

By Kate Schuler
June 10, 2026

Digital Only

Ceramics

Free To Read

Photo by Connor Czora

Connor Czora's works in porcelain infuse the imagery of social justice into a traditionally staid ceramic tradition. Their 2024 glazed porcelain Homophile Vases are overlaid with custom decals, 10 x 5 x 3.5 in.

Connor Czora skipped their first day of wheel-throwing class in college.

It was January 20, 2017, and they instead traveled 45 miles south from Baltimore, where they were studying at the Maryland Institute College of Art, to protest at Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration in Washington and document the day in photos.

The ceramist, who grew up admiring the Belleek porcelain and Parian ware replicas of European statuary in their grandparents’ china cabinets, wanted to work in porcelain for the wheel class final project, a dinnerware set.

“Taking this material that has connotations of elitism and formality, I thought, ‘What would it be like if I took some of the protest images and put them on porcelain?’” Czora says. That question became foundational to their practice.

Czora was raised in a conservative family in upstate New York. “I feel like a lot of my interest in activism comes from growing up queer in an environment that was not accepting,” they say. Now living in DC, they are a teacher and the creative director at District Clay Center.

Photo by Connor Czora

Czora's subversive dinnerware, with themes of LGBTQ rights and global inequality, turns traditional porcelain forms on their heads. Pictured here is Pride Service: Andry Hernández Romero, 2025, glazed porcelain, custom ceramic decals, gold luster, 8 x 8 x 1 in., a plate depicting a gay Venezuelan asylum seeker who was deported from the US to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador.

Selected as a 2026 Emerging Artist Fellow by the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), Czora exhibited and spoke at this year’s NCECA conference in Detroit in March. In the show, two vases, Global North and Global South, made in a style adapted from Sèvres gilded French royal porcelain, stood as striking centerpieces. Like all of Czora’s work, the vases are technically demanding, deeply informed by art history, and politically engaged.

Czora’s process for constructing the nearly two-feet tall vases is exacting. After starting with a sketch of the vase form, they scan it and blow it up to full size to get a guide for throwing the three-part body and creating the hand-built elements. For the four faces of each of the Global North and Global South vases, they worked with 185 images in Photoshop to design the complex collaged images layered with meaning.

Photo by Connor Czora

Czora’s Revolutions in Clay exhibition at NCECA's annual conference in Detroit, March 2026.

“I am creating an archive of events because queer people are still looked over in society, and I think it's important to have that historical record of what we are living through. ”

— Connor Czora

“My work explores the ties between historical ceramics and contemporary power structures,” they say. “What I’m interested in is taking these historical forms and subverting the imagery to talk about the issues that are important to me, the struggles that I face and my community faces.”

Global North and Global South reference a pair of vases, New World and Old World, decorated by Joseph S. Potter, an American diplomat in Germany in the late 1800s. Using allegorical female figures across eight panels, Potter presented a view of the United States as culturally and technologically superior to the “Old World”—Africa, Asia, and Europe—which he represented in images of preindustrial life with crude tools and poor living conditions.

Czora’s vessels upend that narrative and draw attention to the impact of colonialism and resource extraction. One panel of Global South focuses on a woman holding an infant while children in the Democratic Republic of Congo mine cobalt, an essential element in lithium ion batteries. Global North places tech billionaires next to a Tesla Cybertruck in front of the DC Apple Store to show how the United States directly benefits from such extractive processes. In pointing out that the vases are glazed with cobalt, Czora says, “I can critique these hierarchies and these power structures, but I am involved in them as well.”

Photo courtesy of the artist

Czora with Joseph S. Potter’s Vase (New World) and Vase (Old World) during a research trip to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Their own works Global South and Global North reference Potter's works.

Photo by Connor Czora

Global North Vase, 2025, glazed porcelain, cobalt, custom ceramic decals, gold luster, 21.75 x 10.5 x 10.5 in.
Photo by Connor Czora

Global South Vase, 2025, glazed porcelain, cobalt, custom ceramic decals, gold luster, 21.5 x 11 x 10.75 in.

Displayed on a wall at the NCECA show was Pride Service, a series of 36 porcelain plates each responding to a specific event either attacking or defending LGBTQ rights over the past five years. The plates, like the vases, feature custom overglaze decals made from digital collages Czora built using original photographs taken at protests or images from media coverage of current events. The work is an act of remembering. “I am creating an archive of events because queer people are still looked over in society, and I think it’s important to have that historical record of what we are living through.”

For Czora, activism and art are part of the same practice. Essential to their activism is the act of physically showing up—at protests, at the Capitol—which also gives space and opportunity to bring performance art into their body of work. And increasingly, drag, long a part of Czora’s personal life, is finding a place within their work as a ceramic artist.

At this year’s NCECA conference, Czora took the stage for their emerging artist talk in a French Revolutionary dress, an interpretation of the figure from Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. “A number of people stood up after, which was really special to me,” Czora says, adding how meaningful it was that some people thanked them for being visible as a queer person and for talking about trans issues. “I thought that it was incredibly important that, if given a national platform, to just go full in and make it part of my art.”

Photo by Connor Czora

Connor Czora after their NCECA Emerging Artist presentation, March 2026. Marla Parker made the dress and cap.

That interest in combining art forms goes back years. In 2018, inspired by Ai Weiwei’s 1995 performance piece Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, Czora began taking slipcast MAGA hats and dropping them so they would shatter outside the White House and the Capitol building. Photos of their performance on Election Day 2020 appeared in over 30 publications globally. Czora almost threw out the molds with the new administration. They’re glad they didn’t—on Election Day 2024, Czora performed it again outside the White House, this time in drag.

“Do I think art can change the world? Absolutely,” they say. “But I also know that organizing as communities can make real and tangible differences in people’s lives, and it is important to me that I’m not just talking the talk, but I’m also walking the walk.”

Locally, Czora has been involved in many causes, including protesting police brutality, organizing for trans rights, and a campaign to pressure the DC Attorney General to enforce anti-discrimination laws after Children’s National Hospital canceled gender-affirming care services following a federal executive order. The care was reinstated.

For their next project, Czora is considering work about DC. With armed National Guard troops regularly walking past their front door, “I’ve been really itching to make some work reflecting on DC and our lack of autonomy,” Czora says. “If my work is about challenging power, I want to be in a city where I can do that.”

Photo by Connor Czora

A still from Make America Great Again, Czora's 2024 performance piece where they shattered a glazed porcelain MAGA hat at Lafayette Square in Washington, DC.

Photos by Connor Czora

Sketches for works in progress.

Kate Schuler is a potter, writer, and editor based in Washington, DC.

Check out more of Connor Czora's work online.

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This article was made possible with support from the Windgate Foundation.

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