Mighty Mud

Address: 126 Jennings Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37917

Dates: February 3 - 24, 2023

Hours: Tuesday - Friday 11am - 6pm, Saturday 9am - 5pm

Website: mightymud.com

“Resist Repair Reclaim” is a community exhibition of The Bottom’s ceramics class. Over the course of the last 6 months students have been coming together every week to make, explore creative expressions, and grow the Knoxville Black Creative community through the ceramic art form. The very existence of this class is a testament to the power of individual and collective imagination to resist expectations, repair our ever-expanding souls, and reclaim our creative voices and the culminating exhibition is a celebration of that.

Exhibition Grand Opening

Friday, February 3, 6 - 9pm

image: Jalynn Baker

Fitrah Hamid Golden - Fitrah Hamid Golden was raised in rural North Georgia. She currently resides in Clinton, Tennessee with her husband and their two children. Fitrah enjoys costuming, baking, and using ceramics to create jewelry as well as tools for the home.

Jeremy Myles - Jeremy Myles was born and raised in Detroit, MI, where he started his journey into art with drawing and painting. As he continued pursuing art, clay became of interest when he learned that he could give new life to the art he created in the form of tangible 3-dimensional objects. Jeremy is currently the Artist in Residence at Mighty Mud, and a 2023 NCECA Multicultural Fellow. He continues to pursue his art by teaching around Tennessee at Mighty Mud, The Bottom, and Knoxville Museum of Art.

George Habeib - George Habeib is an Artist, Alchemist and Community Visionary. Boasting a BFA in 2-D Studio Art with a concentration in Printmaking, George is a “jack-of-all-trades” and loves to explore different mediums and enjoy their own style and practice in their work. George has made appearances displaying and vending their various works from the Chrysalis to Manumit Gallery and 865 Night Market to the latest Punk Rock Flea Market and the Bottom. George is re-engaging with ceramics as a medium and growing their craft tremendously. You can find George vining at home, at community events, with friends, or on their personal-with-a-mix-of-art content page @athenazbae7 of professional page, @athenaz_alchemy777

Kifeney Walker - Kifeney Walker is a creative trying to find her hobby, a semi-empty nester looking to fill her free time.

Jaleria Rivera - Jaleria Rivera is the Founder of SpaceCraft and a Transnational Fusion Belly Dancer, a dance style fused with principles of North African belly dance, animation, and temple. She pursued a Bachelor’s degree in Communications and Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, then discovered movement during the height of the pandemic. The temporary loss of connection clarified the importance of improvisation that inspired Jaleria to create a business and dance practice rooted in play, artistic expansion, and cultural discovery. 

Jalynn Baker - “My intention as a learning ceramicist is to become more connected with my body. As a child, I always had scissors, yarn, paper, and glue in my hands. This bodily experience of creating and seeing the tangible output of my labor and experimentation is opposite to my current everyday medium of photography, which requires less of the body, excepting the active use of the eye. As I return to making with my hands, I am counteracting the disembodied process of digital creation. I approached each mound of clay with curiosity and openness, wondering what it would become as my fingers informed and shaped it.”

Jazzmine Curtis - Jazzmine Curtis is a Northern-born, Southern-reared mother, wife, Hoodoo, and explorer. Jazzmine uses her creativity to explore and express her curiosity, love and reconnection to her ancestral practices; finding where the lines blur between ritual, art, the magic and the mundane.

Alex Kellam - “Hi, I’m Alex Kellam. I’m Deaf. I was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts and moved to Knoxville about a year ago. I’ve been an artist my whole life. I give love to any ideas of art that come out of my mind, heart, feeling and spirit. Have a good day y’all.”

Ty Murray - Ty Murray is multi-faceted artist and activist. As a modern day Renaissance woman who grew up Black in the rural south, her art reflects who she is, where she’s from and what she aspires to see in the world. She chooses to create art that challenges, art that confronts, art that is loud, bold, colorful and soulful.

Eric Sherwood - Eric Sherwood was born in Knoxville, Got his BFA in Ohio, with a focus on fine art, and minored in photo and video. Did a semester in New York, and a semester in Hangzhou at the China academy. His childhood was spent half in the USA half in China with his Chinese family, Eric is mixed race. He teaches ceramics at Mighty Mud.

Maggie Connolly - Maggie Connolly was born in Dubuque, IA. She earned her MFA from Tsinghua University in Beijing and Ph. D from Tokyo University of the Fine Arts. Currently, she is a full-time artist at Mighty Mud in Knoxville, TN.