Biography

Ellie Naeger is a ceramic and fiber artist specializing in sculptural work inspired by high fashion and its influences on culture. She is a graduating senior at Kansas City Art Institute, receiving her BFA in 2025. While at KCAI, she has been able to achieve goals like receiving awards such as the Lead Bank Emerging Artist Award, Thelma and Richard Notkin Ceramic Award, and the Mckeown Special Project Award allowing her to continue to expand upon her practice. 

Artist Statement

The sculptures created through my practice are an exploration of the intersection of ceramics and fashion manifesting into physical artworks and conceptual connections between the two. By creating ceramic vessels, I explore the way they mirror the body and its adornment. Fashion is often dismissed as fluff or as a global enterprise; from my point of view, it is a social phenomenon that is woven into identity, culture, and self-expression. It serves as a visual language that communicates these ideas through clothing, accessories, and personal style, expressing unique individualism. Fashion trends can shape and transform societal norms, challenge conventions, and create new cultural narratives. Using the language of fashion combined with the tactility and form-making of clay, this is what I aim to do in my ceramic practice. I seek meaning through making highly ornamented porcelain vessels that reflect both bodies and their adornments.