Alyson Brandes (b. 1998, Pasadena, CA) is a Mexican-American artist using clay to explore identity through cultural preservation. In 2020 she received her BA in Art History from Chapman University and was awarded with a Getty Marrow Undergraduate Internship at the American Museum of Ceramic Art. Her work was featured in Getty Magazine’s Spring 2024 edition, where she discussed her Mesoamerican influence and Mexican heritage. Curatorial projects include Elemental Encounters, a two-person show of ceramics and textiles. She has shown in group shows with Maker House Santa Barbara, Arvia Projects, Wolford House and the Infinite School. Her modular sculpture, titled Chicano Pinto Union II, became part of the Chicano Park Museum’s permanent collection in late 2025. Alyson has appreciated expanding her ceramic community through residency programs with Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts and Salmon Creek Farm, and was most recently a short-term resident at Cider Creek Collective. She currently manages the ceramic studio at Creative Arts Group in Sierra Madre, CA.
Artist Statement
I am deeply Californian. My family’s roots go back 100 years in Southern California, and Los Angeles was founded as a pueblo on my birthday. My work is a nod to the artists of generations past, from Tongva potters and weavers to the Judson Studios glass and Batchelder tile made along the Arroyo Seco where I live now. Influenced by my Mexican-American heritage, my practice is an act of cultural preservation and creation. With many keepsakes lost to assimilation, movement, and familial fractures, my duty lies with preserving what is left by creating new heirlooms based in old tradition. Art historical and anthropological studies inform my intentional choices in vessel shape, function and surface treatment to elicit a contemporary familiarity to historical artifacts. Bare clay resonates with the spirit of the Southern California desert and chaparral, while freehanded imperfections in glaze and slip application echo the warmth of well-loved items familiar to many. Tactile surfaces with folk inspired carvings and hand pinched textures serve to memorialize traditions and memories in hard stoneware.
The preservation of culture through material collection feels very human in the sense that it can be compulsory or due to superstition and nostalgia. For me it is a bit of all three. My focus on family heirlooms has led me to preserve paintings, logos, beaded moccasins and murals in clay to extend the life of relics important to me. Clay allows me to interact physically with memories by enshrining them with my fingerprints, brushstrokes and glaze pours. In this way I am able to connect to my family and heritage through a shared visual language.