Eva Conrad (She/They) was born in Lancaster Pennsylvania and received her BFA at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. She currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where she produces ceramics and paintings out of her home studio. She has done residencies at the Union Project, Bunker Projects, and the Nth degree gallery. She teaches ceramics and multimedia sculpture to children and adults through Sweetwater Center for the Arts, Assemble, Workshop PGH and more. Conrad's work is driven through an interest in pattern and color. Her functional and sculptural ceramics embrace maximalism, a stark contrast to the white-washing minimalism of gentrification aesthetics. Conrad references Folk Art, Post-Modernist design, and the Pattern and Decoration Movement in the wavering nature of the hand-pinched surfaces and tight patterns. Her work stands as a representation of queerness and challenges binary structures. Conrad works to understand and contort those structures as a way of exploring the tension which upholds polarities. Repeating patterns, such as a chess board or tile floor, are opposite forces existing on the same networked surface, portraying the concept of duality and reflection. These objects portray the imaginative stance that is required to reach a life beyond the boundaries of binary understanding.