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Alvaro Villa, 2025 Chrysalis Awardee |
Clothing Iron Ritual, 2025, Installation, Ceramic, Wood, Bronze plate, Wire cord, Electrical Plug parts.
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2025 MIXED MEDIA: ALVARO VILLA
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Alvaro Villa is a Mexican-American mixed media artist whose work is deeply tied to his identity and spirituality. He uses ceramics as a grounding practice to connect with his ancestors and work with the four elements of water, earth, wind and fire, while incorporating other materials, including glass, fabric, broomcorn, wood and paint.Through his work, Villa explores the magic and spirituality embedded in everyday objects. Whether through ceramics, hand-sewing, or rituals like sweeping, his work becomes a form of healing and a way to channel energy and intention, by infusing domestic objects like brooms or clothing irons with symbolism to honor personal memories and cultural practices.
Villa earned his MFA in Ceramics in 2025 from Alfred University in New York. He most recently was an Artist in Residence at The Clay Center in Port Chester NY, and was previously awarded the Artaxis Fellowship in 2023. Thank you to Kathy Furlong and Amanda M. Phillips for sponsoring this award. |
2024 Glass: Kristine rumman
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Kristine is a Palestinian-American glass artist who creates sculpture, performance, and installations that act as temporary fugitives in search of home. Captivated by compositions of architecture, her work maneuvers mirror and reflection to track, surveil, guide, and comply with its viewers.
Born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, the birthplace of the Studio Glass Movement, she is currently based in Brooklyn, NY and holds an MFA in Sculpture from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia, PA, as well as a BFA from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Kris has shown at many venues including Urban Glass and Art Week Miami. She was the recipient of the Saxe Emerging Artist Award from the Glass Arts Society in 2019, and was most recently awarded a residency at Sculpture space, where she plans to create an immersive public art installation. This award was sponsored by JRACraft. |
2023 FIBER: KRYSTLE LEMONIAS
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Grounded in the principles of painting and sculpture, Krystle Lemonias' stitched tapestries combine intricate woodblock printing with an array of post consumer textiles to depict a contemporary narrative of care work through the lens of Black immigrant women. With her background as a Jamaican born immigrant and experience as a former care worker, Lemonias depicts the complication of what’s gained and lost in resilience.
Lemonias earned her MFA at the University of South Florida in 2022. She has completed artist residencies at Aferro Gallery, Guttenberg Arts, and most recently at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey. In addition to her studio practice, Lemonias is a co-creator and co-host of The Hidden Critique, a podcast to support young artists of color navigating MFA programs to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education. A special thank you to Chris Rifkin for sponsoring this year's Chrysalis Award. |
2022 WOOD: MORGAN HILL
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Morgan Hill is a sculptor and jewelry designer whose work draws on a wide range of aesthetic and conceptual influences from 90's pop culture, cult films, and costume design, to her traditional Southern upbringing. Her longing to break the silence surrounding culturally censured topics drives her to create work on themes of death, abuse, depression, and suicide, as well as their counterparts of rebirth, healing, and empowerment. On the lighter side, her jewelry brand Bad Habits by Morgan Hill celebrates the pleasure of excess and indulged desires.
Hill was a Core Fellow at the Penland School of Craft from 2015-2017. In 2018, she was an ITE Windgate Fellow at the Center for Art in Wood. Her work is carried in galleries across the US and internationally. She creates her work at Treats Studios in Spruce Pine, NC, a studio cooperative she co-founded. This award was generously sponsored by Brenda Erickson and Barbara Wolanin. |
2021 Metal: Rachel David
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This year, the Alliance is proud to support Rachel David who represents a change in the future of metalworking. Her expressive work and support for women in blacksmithing signifies our support not only for her but also her effort to affirm in a gender-biased field that “skill and craftsmanship are superior to brute force.”
Rachel David received a Bachelor of Arts from Evergreen State College in 2004 and has continued her studies through workshops at Penland School of Craft, John C. Campbell School of Craft, Nunez Community College and Haywood Community College where she recently received a machining certification. In 2019, she was featured in 40 Under 40: The Next Generation of American Metal Artists at the Metal Museum in Memphis, TN and received the Smithsonian Craft Show’s Best in Show Award and the Artists Gold Choice Award. In addition to her artistic practice, David is a founding member of the Society of Inclusive Blacksmiths which supports inclusivity through mentorship, support and scholarships. Our deepest gratitude to JRACraft member, Stan Asrael, for sponsoring this year’s award. |
2020 CERAMICS: KATE ROBERTS
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"My practice is a meditation on time and its role in the decay of objects and memories. Inspiration is drawn from historical objects, the architecture around me, or a personal relationship. The physical properties of my materials - parched, cracked clay and vitreous porcelain - at once delicate and dense emulate states of decay in nature yet are built and mended by hand. This contradiction, of meticulously crafting the ravages of time, is at the foundation of my work."
"I was impressed by the wide range of work presented by these ceramic artists. They presented complex views rooted in materiality and process, unique and diverse global traditions, varieties of techniques and skills that bridged ancient processes with science and technology. So many had personal stories to tell that revealed the multicultural and hybrid fabric of this country." - 2020 Juror, Ibrahim Said A special thank you to Rebecca Ravenal for sponsoring this year's Chrysalis Award. In light of the ongoing pandemic, the Alliance raised additional funds to award three Awards of Excellence. These artists include Maxwell Mustardo, Eliza Au, and Chris M. Rodgers. |
2019 Mixed media: Richard james
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Richard W. James creates large-scale surreal figures out of meticulously crafted earthenware and found objects. Influenced by his upbringing in rural Tennessee and the craft skills handed down from his parents and grandparents, James’ often unsettling contemporary ceramic sculptures incorporate the materials and processes he associates with the informative years of his life to question the cultural lenses in which he grew up.
“The jurors were impressed with James’ superb craftsmanship but ultimately it was his unique vision and voice that captured our attention. We were delighted to have strong interest in the Chrysalis award from all over the United States this year, with a record number of applications, demonstrating vibrancy in the craft field” - former JRA President, Michele Manatt Thank you to JRACraft member, Pati Young, for sponsoring this years award! |
2018 Glass: Dean Allison
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"Dean described his work as a documentation of human form, an exploration into the ways we perceive others and a study of portraiture in studio glass. Using a combination of old and new processes and materials, he aims to capture a moment in time. He is especially interested in understanding individuals through an analysis of subtle gesture, physical attributes and the immediate perceptions those attributes spark. He described how glass is the perfect medium for him, since it has characteristics common to people: it is transparent, opaque, fragile, broken, sharp, incompatible, rough, polished and colorful." - JRA Board Member and Chrysalis Committee Chair, Nikki O'Neill
This award was sponsored by JRACraft. |
2016 Fiber: Shea Wilkinson
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"I work primarily with free motion quilting, which allows me the capability of not only forming the texture of the piece, but also the imagery and narrative, using a needle and thread. I use quilting as the anchor for my enthusiasms through different bodies of work, from extraterrestrial to natural worlds, from mythical to the scientific." - Shea Wilkinson, 2016 Awardee
We thank our many supporters, especially Darcy Walker, who so graciously funded our initial grant award. |