Ideas of growth, movement, and acceptance ground Natalie Kuenzi's art making. Working across high and low art media, her sculptures and installations express real and imagined feelings through form and embody seemingly incongruous states simultaneously. Using tactile and accessible materials—clay and plastic—and motifs from natural and built landscapes, the forms reference material and immaterial sources, amplifying the tension between what is fixed and what is free and evoking parallels between natural and supernatural forces. Balancing technical control with chance, the forms are shaped not only by the hand and body but by the material and process itself. The formal constraints—both familiar and strange—ultimately arrive at a
balance that is at once specific and boundless.
Kuenzi’s work cites traditions of craft and art making that celebrate the artist and viewer as agents of change and connection. She is curious about the distinctions drawn between hobby craft and fine art practices within American contemporary art—especially as they relate to cultivating community and creating social change. Kuenzi is interested in balancing artist let efforts to foster connection and imbue form with meaning by using craft as an entry point for making, transforming commonplace materials and expressing open-ended, unstructured ideas. Inspired by her own personal heritage, her work honors family tradition and challenges the hierarchy associated with art media, with an eye towards specific and meaningful action to address solutions for a changing world. Through reclamation, material innovation, and the liberating power of the imagination, Kuenzi seeks to transform how we make, how we consume, and how we connect through creative expression.
Kuenzi is a passionate educator with an extensive background in education, serving as a faculty member at numerous universities, including University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, and Tyler School of Art and Architecture. In 2023, she was honored with the G. Holmes Perkins Distinguished Teaching Award from the Stuart Weitzman School of Design at University of Pennsylvania. Outside of higher education, Kuenzi has abundant experience teaching at community art centers, including The Clay Studio, The Clay Mobile, and Mural Arts Philadelphia's Tacony LAB, and programming free public workshops and skill-shares to support her exhibitions. As an educator, Kuenzi seeks to facilitate an environment where people can connect more deeply with themselves, with each other, and with the world around us through art and through making.
Kuenzi received her BFA in Ceramics and BA in Art History & Theory from Western Colorado University and her MFA from Tyler School of Art and Architecture of Temple University. She is an alum member of Vox Populi, an artist collective Philadelphia, and her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at numerous art spaces and museums, including PENTIMENTI Gallery, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Fleisher Art Memorial, and The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, PA; Hales Project Room and Thomas Hunter Project Space in New York, New York; Artspace New Haven in New Haven, CT; The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington, DE; Baltimore Clayworks in Baltimore, MD; Katzen Art Center at American University in Washington, DC.; Susquehanna Art Museum in Harrisburg, PA; Anderson Center at Tower View in Minneapolis, MN; and Pewabic Museum in Detroit, MI.
Education
Tyler School of Art and Architecture
MFA - Ceramics
August 2015 – May 2017 • Philadelphia, PA
Western Colorado University
BFA - Ceramics
2010 – 2014 • Gunnison, CO
Western Colorado University
BA Art History and Theory
– 2015 • Gunnison, CO
Exhibitions
Upcoming 2027
Solo, TBD, Quigley Gallery at Western Colorado University - Gunnison, CO
Upcoming 2026
Three-Person Exhibition, TACTILE, Salisbury University Art Galleries | Downtown - Salisbury, MD
2026
Group, Now, One With Everyone!, Icebox Project Space - Philadelphia, PA
2026
Group, Our Community, The Clay Studio - Philadelphia, PA
2025
Two-Person Exhibition, Beauty We Forge, PENTIMENTI Gallery - Philadelphia, PA
2025
Group, Bookends, The Clay Studio - Philadelphia, PA
2025
Group, Huddle: The Annual $99 Exhibition, Vox Populi - Philadelphia, PA
2025
Group, Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026, Tyler Ceramics Piazza Gallery - Philadelphia, PA (In partnership with Craft in America)
2024
Solo, Please No Passing Through, Vox Populi - Philadelphia, PA
2024
Group, Cabinet Of: The Annual $99 Exhibition, Vox Populi - Philadelphia, PA
2024
Group, No Take Backs, Tiger Strikes Asteroid - Philadelphia, PA
2024
Group, Upcycled! 2024 VanGo Exhibtion, Susquehanna Art Museum - Harrisburg, PA
2023
Group, Skull Sesssions, Hicks Art Center Gallery - Newton, PA
2023
Group, Slapstick Polyphonies, Vox Populi - Philadelphia, PA
2023
Group, Little Windows: The Annual $99 Exhibition, Vox Populi - Philadelphia, PA
2023
Group, Material Time, Park Towne Place - Philadelphia, PA
2023
Two-Person Exhibition, Post-Consumer, Anderson Center at Tower View - Minneapolis, MN
2023
Group, Upcycled! 2023 VanGo Exhibition, Susquehanna Art Museum - Harrisburg, PA
2023
Group, Light Lift, Unrequited Leisure - Nashville, TN
2022
Group, Vox Member Pop-Up Exhibition, Vox Populi - Philadelphia, PA
2022
Group, 99 Dollar Sale Exhibition, Vox Populi - Philadelphia, PA
2022
Group, In Loving Memory, Space 1026 - Philadelphia, PA
2022
Solo, It Came Up From the Soil, Fleisher Art Memorial - Philadelphia, PA (Wind Challenge Exhibition)
2022
Solo, Husk, Vox Populi - Philadelphia, PA
2021
Group, Winter Vox Member Pop-Up, Vox Populi - Philadelphia, PA
2021
Group, Future Ecologies, Vox Populi - Philadelphia, PA
2019
Group, IT’S A WRAP, Philadelphia International Airport - Philadelphia, PA
2019
Group, PostScript: Notions on Contemporary Craft, The Delaware Contemporary - Wilmington, DE
2019
Group, Keystone Clay: East, Baltimore Clayworks - Baltimore, MD
2019
Group, Material Message, Thomas Hunter Project Space - New York, NY
2018
Group, Notes on a Permeable Husk, Hales Project Room - New York, NY
2018
Group, Knew Member Show, Vox Populi - Philadelphia, PA
2018
Group, US: Emerging Artists in Clay, The District Clay Center & Gallery - Washington, DC
2018
Group, Ball Snake Ball, Artspace New Haven - New Haven, CT
2018
Group, The Seventy Sixers, NCECA Shipping Container Gallery - Pittsburgh, PA
2018
Group, Our Claymobile Teaching Artists, The Clay Studio - Philadelphia, PA
2017
Group, With Friends and Flowers, Floating on the Plastic Ocean, The College of New Jersey - Trenton, NJ
2017
Group, Graduate Student Biennial 2017, The Clay Studio - Philadelphia, PA
2017
Solo, We All Have The Sky, Temple Contemporary - Philadelphia, PA
2017
Group, FOUND, Little Berlin - Philadelphia, PA (Curated by Terrill Warrenburg)
2017
Group, Vision Margin, The Glass Factory - Philadelphia, PA
2017
Group, Not Here Not Home, Temple Contemporary - Philadelphia, PA
2017
Group, Dysfunctional, PEWABIC - Detroit, MI
2016 – 2017
Group, 215 | 610 Contemporary: Juried Exhibition of Regional Artists, The Gallery at Delaware County Community College - Philadelphia, PA (Juried by Pepón Osorio)
2016
Group, RBTL (Read Between the Lines), Katzen Art Center - Washington D.C. (College Art Association’s Annual MFA Exhibition)
2015
Solo, Light as Color as Earth, Gallery 126 - Gunnison, Colorado
2015
Solo, Form and Color, Taylor Hall – Western Colorado University - Gunnison, Colorado
2014
Solo, Static Transformation, Quigley Gallery - Gunnison, Colorado
Awards
2023
G. Holmes Perkins Distinguished Teaching Award, Stuart Weitzman School of Design (University of Pennsylvania)
2017
Master of Fine Arts Project Completion Grant, Temple University
2013
Brian Hirsh Ceramic Artist Award, Western Colorado University
Experience
Lecturer
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Tyler School of Art and Architecture
Philadelphia, PA