Biography

Jillian Heusohn is a ceramicist based in Tallahassee, Florida, whose practice explores the ceramic vessel as a metaphor for our human experiences. Heusohn earned her Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from Florida State University in 2025. She has exhibited her work both regionally and nationally, receiving awards such as the 2025 Intercollegiate Ceramics Best in Show at Bethany College, the Andy McLachlin Memorial Award from Florida State University, and the Summer Session Creative Residency at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences. She currently serves as a Ceramics Instructor and Studio Technician at Tallahassee Clay Arts.

Artist Statement

I make ceramic vessels to represent our human vessels. Using clay, fiber, and organic remains, I explore themes of relationships, reconnections, and the act of holding in every physical and symbolic sense of the word. By combining the hardened permanence of ceramics with the soft, fragile nature of fibers and remains, I create a holding for the dichotomies that live within us, showing our separated parts and considering how we embrace the differences between our internal and external selves. Using the splitting aesthetics of warm, weathered stoneware and soft, clean porcelaneous clay bodies, I explore what people are connected to, what they store within, and what they return to. My work utilizes imagery drawn in my childhood, dusty papers that my parents held onto for decades, as a way to reconnect to a past based in love. Through crafting my ceramic canvas with my adult experiences, I immortalize the voice of girlhood and hold onto a former existence that embraces simple, joyful moments.