“It’s a privilege to return to North Tulsa to develop Future Feast. The urgency of this project lies in its response to some intersecting issues that I am trying to navigate: the erosion of handmade craft traditions, the environmental toll of mass consumption, and the collective well-being of local communities. As an artist who is deeply invested in material knowledge and sustainable systems, I see the act of making as a form of resistance against environmental degradation and cultural erasure. ”
SCULPTURE, SOCIAL PRACTICE
MYIESHA GORDON BEALES
Myiesha Gordon Beales is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator based in Detroit, Michigan. She explores real and imagined stories of human behavior, experiences, and cultural systems. Juxtaposing traditional ceramic techniques with experimental processes, she creates work that embraces paradox and hybridity, blurring the boundaries between structure and freedom, utility and art, the conceptual and the practical. Her focus on cross-cultural encounters stems from a personal commitment to equity and an awareness of the powerful role that creative practices play in fostering understanding and exchange between people of all backgrounds.
Her core research centers on the history and systems of ceramic woodfiring, examining the material intelligence, ecological implications, and adaptability of these practices in contemporary contexts. Through the study and construction of wood-fired kilns, the complexity of wood ash glazes, and locally sourced materials, she investigates how historical firing technologies operate as sustainable systems grounded in resourcefulness, community labor, and long-term thinking. Her research approaches woodfiring as a problem-solving framework that offers insights into energy use, waste cycles, material resilience, and collective responsibility. By translating these principles into present and future applications, her work explores how traditional firing practices can inform sustainable design strategies, site-responsive making, and regenerative approaches to art, craft, and the built environment.
Beales earned an MFA in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art, a Master of Education in Art and Art Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, a Master of Arts Management in Arts, Entertainment and Media Management from Columbia College Chicago, and a BA in Fine Art from Northeastern State University. She has traveled internationally, researching wood-fired ceramic traditions and documenting creative cultures. Beales has exhibited nationally and is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Greenwood Art Project public art grant, Gilbert Family Foundation Fellowship, Windgate University Fellowship, Maxwell/Hanrahan Fund, and Penland School of Arts and Crafts Scholarship. She is currently a fellow with the Tulsa Artist Fellowship.
