Ceramist Jolie Ngo Bridges the Past and Future with Her Otherworldly Vessels

Jolie Ngo. Photo: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND R & COMPANY

You won’t find up-and-coming ceramist Jolie Ngo behind a potter’s wheel. Although her bewitching pastel vessels have a handcrafted quality that echoes the traditional coiling technique, each was in fact masterminded using 3D-modeling software and then printed by a machine loaded with tinted porcelain. “I spend most of my time on the computer,” says the Pennsylvania-born talent, who counts artists Isamu Noguchi and Betty Woodman as inspirations and is currently in graduate school at Alfred University. “I’m utilizing new technologies while referencing past craft and ceramic traditions.”

The Rhode Island School of Design alum, who is half Vietnamese, is also using the medium as an entry point to her heritage. “I was researching Vietnamese landscapes and had an aha moment,” she says of the country’s stunning terraced rice fields, which have a similar aesthetic to her stepped creations. Newly represented by design gallery R & Company, Ngo became a collector’s darling last December at Design Miami/, where she showed Memory Palace, a blue ombré vessel studded with bulbous protrusions, dripping gold, and sprouts of wire. She’ll be back this year, too, showcasing more retro-futuristic works with her new gallery—plus, she’ll appear in the group exhibition “Womxn of Alfred” early next year. “I’m so excited to be in this show,” she says. “It’s the new wave of the future.”