IDS Artist Bios

Zimra Beiner 

Born in Toronto, Canada, Zimra Beiner has taught and exhibited his work throughout the United States and Canada. While he considers himself primarily an object maker, his work has increasingly embraced scale, composition, and the relationship between objects and space within a framework of the still life.

Beiner received a BFA from NSCAD University and an MFA from Alfred University in 2012. His work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at Hostler Burrows, Cross Mackenzie Gallery, Craft Ontario, and group exhibitions at the Gardiner Museum, Art Gallery of Alberta, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and the Katzen Museum at American University. He has attended residencies at the Berlin Ceramics Centre, Private Studio Jingdezhen, China, and the Center for Contemporary Ceramics at California State University Long Beach. He has been the recipient of the the Winnifred Shantz Award and the NCECA Emerging Artist Award and received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. He has taught at numerous institutions, including as an Assistant Professor at the Alberta University of the Arts (formerly ACAD), Lecturer at Princeton University, Bowling Green State University, and as an Adjunct Faculty at New York University and Millersville University.

Caroline Blackburn 

Caroline Blackburn, is an award winning native Los Angeles sculptural ceramic artist, who creates works that explore her interest in abstract painting, architecture, fashion, and nature. Caroline studied Art History and Studio Arts graduating Magna Cum Laude from Boston College. At Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California she studied with some of the foremost artists of our times while earning a MFA focusing on fine arts.

In 2014 Caroline received California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, University President’s Purchase Award (grand prize) at the Ink & Clay 40 exhibition and first place at the Beverly Hills Art Show in the spring of 2017, among many other awards.

Caroline’s work is inspired from her extensive professional career for over thirty years in the Arts. While at the Museum of Contemporary Art from 1988 – 2002, she designed the museum’s educational programs and worked directing many of the distinguished exhibiting artists. Caroline worked for UCLA Architecture from 2002-2018 directing print, media and marketing for the university. Being saturated with contemporary art and architecture at this level is a rare and amazing opportunity that has shaped her understanding and artistic interpretation of art, architecture, and design.

Ariel Bullion Ecklund

Ariel Bullion Ecklund holds a BFA in Art Photography from the School of Visual and Performing Arts and a Master’s Degree in Museum Studies, both from Syracuse University. Following earning her Master of Arts, Ariel worked as a freelance photographer and in the Dept. of Preservation and Conservation at Cornell University Libraries. In 2009, she purchased a gallery and framing studio and has since curated and mounted over 100 physical exhibitions during her 15-year career as a gallerist.

Ariel has exhibited her ceramic and photographic work in galleries and museums throughout the region and her work is in many private collections in the United States. Ariel has been the recipient of numerous awards in juried exhibitions and was the recipient of a Kodak Merit Scholarship. In 2021, she was awarded the Cayuga Arts Collective Paddle Grant, to aid in her ceramic education.

Ariel’s artistic influences include Sally Mann, Lenore Tawney, Agnes Martin, Maria Lai, Todd Hido, Richard Serra. She also finds inspiration in architecture, maps and images of galaxies in outer space.

Caroline Gray

Caroline initially trained as a textile designer and had a career in trend forecasting before completing an MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, specialising in sculpture and installation. Informed by my her backgound in design and fine art, her sculptural abstract works, lamps and vessels celebrate colour and form, creating an interplay between the pieces themselves and the interiors and spaces they are placed in. 

In 2023 the artist was selected as one of 25 leading emerging artists in FRESH 2023 at the British Ceramics Biennial, the highlight of the UK ceramic arts calendar. Caroline was one of four FRESH artists selected to receive a prize of a four week residency at Grymsdyke Farm, a centre of research into materials and innovation based in Buckinghamshire, UK. She completed this residency this past summer. 

Bill Greaves

Bill holds a Master of Architecture from Yale University and was a practicing architect in NY for a number of years prior to turning full time to his ceramic practice. Bill is drawn to clay as a material that he can manipulate and form, in a way that was impossible in architecture where plans are executed by engineers and construction crews. Bill thoroughly enjoys being able to work through the entire process of creation from an initial idea through to the tangible output or artwork.

Annika Hoefs

Annika is a Toronto-based artist and educator, specializing in ceramics. She holds a Bachelor of Material Art and Design from OCADU where she initially began with a focus on textiles, but ended with a full concentration on ceramics. Alongside her studio practice, she has been teaching ceramic classes to students of all ages and skill levels since 2016. Annika’s functional and sculptural ceramics can be found in select gallery shops, restaurants and luxury hotels, locally and internationally. 

Jeremy Le Chatelier

Emerging multidisciplinary artist Jeremy Le Chatelier grew up in Montreal in a Franco-Swiss family. A university graduate in graphic design, his work is characterized by an experimental, material approach. He uses painting, sculpture, photography and decorative furniture to offer pieces that are both functional and artistic. Operating his own studio in Montreal, he continues to explore new forms of artistic expression.

Jana Osterman

Jana was born in Slovenia where she decided to become an artist early on in my childhood. Her first art school was in Ljubljana, in her early teenage years. She then moved to The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Holland and then on to England, where she studied printmaking. Jana has been living and working as an artist and fabricator in Canada since 1999.

Heather Waugh Pitts

After graduating with a BSC in Human Ecology, she studied interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary relationships between humans and their natural, social, and built environments. 

While raising her family, she became the principal owner and designer of a successful interior design company, a mural and fresco company, working on cathedrals, resorts, restaurants, clinics, residential projects, designer showcases, and a design column, having her work published. 

A community pottery studio is where she began to hand-build clay, creating her own ceramics studio in 2020.