Joanna Poag Custom Ceramic Untitled II Sculpture, Equilibrium Series, 2016

Art gallery director. Educator. Artist. Wife and mother. No stranger to time management and the pressures put upon her, Rochester, New York-based ceramics artist Joanna Poag examines the very concept of time in her sculptures and ceramic decorative objects. And having studied math and chaos theory, she also explores the systems and patterns found in nature and creates collages that draw on the traditions of quiltmaking — themes of cutting, linear storytelling and resequencing can be found across her body of work.

Poag earned her bachelor's degree at Roberts Wesleyan College and her MFA from the School of American Crafts at Rochester Institute of Technology. Since 2016, Poag has worked at Roberts Wesleyan as an assistant professor teaching an array of foundation and specialty ceramics courses. 

She refers to her practice as “disciplined wandering” in which she remains focused on a project yet allows room for new ideas. It is a way of avoiding both stagnation and pigeonholing herself into one avenue of creation. This is best seen in her works that took shape before the birth of her first daughter, Fiona, which are nearly skeletal in form, orderly and emphasize negative space. By contrast, her latest work is broadly more organic and centers thematically on time. 

Poag has exhibited across the United States and globally — she has shown her work at the Tainan National University of the Arts in Taiwan, and The Holy Art in London featured her ceramic panels in the 2022 group exhibition “Catharsis.” Poag’s work was featured in the 2015 Upstate New York Ceramics Invitational and she was named an NCECA Emerging Artist the following year.

On 1stDibs, find a collection of Joanna Poag decorative objects, serveware and wall decorations.