Deshun Peoples

Deshun Peoples is a ceramic artist, designer, and mental health practitioner from Chicago, IL.  Peoples received his dual BA in Studio Art and Rhetoric from Bates College in 2017, MFA in Ceramics from RISD in 2021, and his MSW from University Chicago Crown School in 2024. Deshun has taught various courses at Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Arkansas, and Chicago State University. Additionally, he has interned as a psychotherapist in group private practice, has done community mutual aid work at various nonprofit organizations, and previously was the Ceramics Studio Manager at Firebird Community Arts in Chicago navigating the intersection of Community Mental Health (Complex-Trauma Work) and Creative Arts Practice.

Deshun makes wheel-thrown, hand-built, slip-casted, and 3-D printed ceramic objects whose curvy contours, minimal surfaces, and geometric patterns pay homage to the intergenerational lived experiences of marginalized peoples. He is concerned with questions of beauty, value, equity, and access and his work serves as an autoethnography of Black and Queer struggle and resistance. Peoples has shown his art work widely, including a solo exhibition at Bates College Olin Arts Center, and group exhibitions at Eutectic Gallery in Oregon, Abel Contemporary in Wisconsin, Crocker Art Museum in California, and The Clay Studio in Pennsylvania. His honors include an apprenticeship with artist Theaster Gates, a Fulbright Student Research Grant to study in Jingdezhen, China, an Emerging Artist Cohort Grant from the American Craft Council in 2022, and an Emerging Artist Fellowship from NCECA in 2023.