Sam Shamard is a mixed Mexican American artist originally from Austin, Texas. She received her MFA at Clemson University, in Clemson, South Carolina, where she has received multiple awards, grants, and scholarships, including the Cecelia Voelker Award in Graduate Art History. Sam pursued her BFA in Art Education at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor (UMHB), during which she also studied at Studio Arts College International in Florence, Italy. Before attending graduate school, Sam worked as a middle school art teacher on the Fort Hood Military Base in Central Texas. Sam was a 2023 Penland Winter Fellow, and her work has been exhibited widely, and most recently in shows at Mason and DAAP galleries in Cincinnati, Ohio, ArtFields, in Lake City, South Carolina, and Benedicta Arts Center in Saint Joseph, Minnesota, and Clay Center New Orleans. Artist Statement: Using animal bones found on my family’s Central Texas farm I create delicately slip-cast ceramic objects that hold the integrity of the original form. I draw heavily on the influence of Mexican Catholic iconography and Southwestern decor but with a playful swirl of my own experiences growing up in suburbia in the 90s. This melding of my mixed Latina-American experience yields a playful exuberance through patterning and color choices, with each object becoming its own memento or talisman to a playful sense of home and history.