While a beginner in wheel-throwing, multi-medium artist and Art History & Visual Arts major Yuhuan Zhang made use of her 2025 Benenson Award to immerse herself in the art of pottery. Her project, Vascape, is an ongoing visual exploration that has incorporated wheel-throwing classes, digital modeling, and more. Driven by a curiosity to understand the art form, both traditional lenses and modern contexts, Yuhuan spent her summer furthering her expertise across media from ink to augmented reality, and examining the process and significance of pottery. This Q&A with Yuhuan offers her insights into her exploratory summer. It is the second of a series of Q&As this year that explore the places Duke students go and the opportunities they encounter after receiving Benenson Awards in the Arts.
Applications are open now for the 2026 Benenson Awards in the Arts, which provide funding for fees, travel, and other educational expenses for arts-centered projects proposed by undergraduates (including graduating seniors) to take place over the summer.
The deadline for 2026 Benenson Award applications is Monday, March 16!
Vascape is, quite literally, a combination of “vase” and “scape”. I came up with the idea of using vases to represent landscapes or cityscapes. I started by making ink drawings that used vases to represent rocks and mountains, because I found that vases and rocks share a similar sense of calmness and stability. Then I decided to take it one step further by making my own vases through wheel-throwing and challenging the forms of art I could make. Through this process, I discovered that pottery-making is a meditative practice that gradually shaped my understanding of the human-nature relationship.
I first experimented with this idea in my Intermediate Drawing class. I had experience with traditional Chinese landscape drawing, and I chose to use ink as my primary medium for the assignment. I also drew inspiration from Morandi’s still life paintings, in which the artist ingeniously places bottles, vases, and boxes to form tranquil scenes. From there, I decided to convey my understanding of nature through this special lens of vases.
Growing up in China, I was exposed to pottery from a young age. However, wheel-throwing has always been something I’ve wanted to learn, because it looks so effortless when demonstrated by others but always overwhelms me when I try it myself. I also thought it would be the perfect medium for this project because the process of turning clay into pottery symbolizes how humans alter nature and how nature challenges humans.
I majored in Art History and Visual Arts because I’ve always wanted to be an artist. I experienced every step of the process, from writing proposals and applying for funding to completing my projects, which is similar to how artists work in the real world. I’m grateful for this opportunity to work as an artist, which has encouraged me to pursue more art projects in the future.
I sprained my ankle at the beginning of the summer, which made it difficult for me to get to pottery classes. Fortunately, I was still able to do wheel-throwing using my right leg and complete the course. One thing I had planned to do but couldn’t because of my injured leg was make pottery in the mountains and spend more time in nature. That led me to the idea of using AR (augmented reality) to bring virtual pottery into my surroundings without having to physically carry the pieces with me.
The Benenson Award is an amazing opportunity for Duke students to realize an idea they have or to continue an art class project just as I did. I encourage everyone to make art, and there is never an idea that is too small. Also, people have used their funds to support all kinds of creative projects across a wide range of art.
This past summer, Caroline Edmondson (’26) stepped into one of the country’s leading creative laboratories: the National Theater Institute’s Theatermakers Summer Intensive. A double major in Theater Studies and Dance …
Right after graduation last year, 2024 Benenson awardee Ivy Sun traveled to Prague to immerse herself in the historical art of puppetry—specifically marionettes. Through the Puppets in Prague workshop, Ivy, who graduated …
For over 35 years, the Benenson Awards in the Arts has provided Duke undergraduates with funding to pursue summer arts training, research, or projects. But what happens after the grant? …
In this interview, Mauro Mastrapasqua ’25—a 2023 Benenson Awardee—shares how funding from this award supported his dream project. His passion for woodworking and playing the bass inspired him to build an electric bass guitar from scratch.
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