FREE | Every Friday: May 29 - August 28 | 5 PM - 6 PM
Join us throughout the residency season for our free public series of short and informal artist talks, readings, and presentations. We’ll learn about works-in-progress from our artists and scholars-in-residence with informative and inspiring presentations in all disciplines. This is a wonderful way to kick off your weekend! Bring a friend, all are welcome.
Location: Main Campus. Look for Craigardan Event sign at the end of Main Campus driveway (two “doors” west of the farm store, towards Keene). Google Maps Link
Samantha McLelland
Samantha McLelland is a Massachusetts-based visual artist and educator, whose current focus is primarily ceramics. She has a Master’s degree in Art Education and has taught public school at the elementary and middle school level, and currently teaches pottery to adults. Her ceramics have been published in Pottery Making Illustrated magazine; she has participated in several New England-area art shows; and she sells her work privately. In addition, she is an accomplished illustrator, and published Rosie’s Garden, written by Olivia Coates, in 2025 with EK Kids Publishing.
Her current body of work is inspired by Abstract Expressionism. Her pieces explore the expressive and emotive potential within ceramics by decentralizing form as the focus and instead showcasing color, texture, and balance, inviting the viewer to look deeply and find an emotional resonance within the work. The final result is fully abstract, yet warm and grounded.
Susan Hutner
Julia Harmon
Susan Hutner writes fabulist fiction from her home in Cleveland, Ohio. Her writing is forthcoming in the Northeast Ohio Sewer District’s Ode to Infrastructure and has appeared in Blink-Ink and on the RadioFreeWrite podcast. She is also a founding member of the 1614 Writers. She earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Georgia College and State University. She can be found at @s.a.m.hutner on Instagram.
Julia Harmon is a chef and multidisciplinary artist whose work centers on the relationship between food, ceramics, and gathering. Through intimate supper clubs, she creates four-course, seasonal Italian meals served on handmade ceramic tableware that she designs and produces herself. Her practice brings food and object into direct conversation, emphasizing care, materiality, and presence at the table.
Julia prepares all of the food for each supper, developing menus that respond to seasonality and regional Italian cooking. Italian cuisine provides a foundation for her work—handmade pastas, slow-cooked sauces, and vegetable-forward dishes—while allowing flexibility to adapt to local ingredients and the rhythms of the year. Each menu is designed as a progression, with courses unfolding slowly to encourage attention and connection.
Ceramics are an integral part of the experience rather than a backdrop. Plates and bowls change seasonally alongside the food, reflecting shifts in form, glaze, and firing methods. The vessels are made to be used: held, lifted, and worn over time. Subtle irregularities and marks of the hand are preserved, reinforcing a shared language between the food and the objects that hold it.
The supper club format allows Julia to work on a human scale. Dinners are intentionally small and intimate, creating space for conversation and shared focus. Guests are invited to slow down and engage with the meal through all their senses—taste, touch, weight, and temperature—experiencing the table as a site of care and connection.
Through her four-course seasonal Italian suppers, Julia Harmon explores how handmade food served on handmade objects can deepen our relationship to eating, gathering, and one another. Each dinner exists only for a single evening, emphasizing presence, impermanence, and the value of making things by hand.