About

Ellie Stanislav, a graduate of Michigan State University, holds a BFA in Studio Art with an emphasis in Ceramics and a BA from the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities. Stanislav has participated as an Artist-in-Residence at Stifel Fine Arts Center in Wheeling, WV and the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts in Kalamazoo, MI. She is currently the Post-Baccalaureate Fellow in Art at Kalamazoo College and a ceramics instructor at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. Her work has been shown throughout the region, most notably as part of the 2026 NCECA Annual Exhibition, ABSENCE TAKES FORM.

Stanislav’s work takes shape as decorative ceramic tiles designed for balance, symmetry, and cohesion, and made to tessellate. It is a practice of reconnection with materials, process, and the stories and experiences that give the work its meaning. It accepts the permanence of change while seeking to preserve what might otherwise be lost. Her subject matter draws from the natural world — botanicals, aquatic life, and landscape — finding in each a language of connection, meaning, and place. Like the tiles themselves, which discover their full meaning only when placed side by side and joined together, these subjects become part of something larger: a durable record of the world as she experiences and understands it.