In the antiseptic age of AI and ChatGPT, Jason Wang has devised a tactile method to remind Lawrencians of their authenticity, messiness and capacity for human connection.

Wang is the Lawrence Arts Center’s artist in residence for ceramics during the 2025-26 season. For a few hours the next two Saturdays, he’ll haul a potter’s wheel to the main lobby of LAC and throw up between 150 and 200 cups.

Anybody can come by and alter a still-wet clay form with their hands.

“I’m very interested in the hand in a sense of, like, it’s an authentic mark of the human being,” Wang said. “I feel like from a societal standpoint, the hand is so much more important than ever, and just acknowledging the humanity in the hand, too.”

This will be Wang’s first step toward crafting his exit show, a commemoration of his time with LAC that will take place around June.

Following the show’s opening reception, he will bring the fired cups to public events where guests can pick up the pieces — “metaphorically holding another person’s hand,” he said — and drink from them. Cups will be washed between all uses.

Once the exhibition wraps, everyone who altered a cup will have the chance to take home a piece formed by another person.

Wang said he likes making functional ware, or pieces intended for daily use, but he was itching for a theoretical project that put more hands to work.

“So the history of pottery — unlike American pottery, where a potter does everything from start to finish, generally in other societies, one person throws, one person trims, one person glazes, another person fires,” he said.

This project, as well as his 2025 graduate thesis show, belies a fascination with Dunbar’s number theory, which suggests that one person can sustain stable relationships with a maximum of 150 people. However, when groups grow past 150, communities risk abstracting individuals into statistics.

Wang said he saw the concept play out in real time as an MFA student at Ohio University. 

“It seems like administrators at higher ed really care more about making money than they do about helping teachers teach and students learn. That’s been my experience,” Wang said. “And I’ve seen corporate America do the same thing, and how corporate values have infiltrated academia and other institutions like health care. I don’t like people being seen as a number.”

By having more than 150 people alter cups at LAC, he intends to create an archive of handprints, reasserting every individual’s humanity.

“I’m concerned about mental health and this loneliness epidemic,” Wang said. “I feel like people need to be seen and know that they’re valued.”

The public can help Wang alter the cups for his exit show from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 24 and Saturday, Jan. 31 in the main lobby of LAC, 940 New Hampshire St. 

Dates for the show, including other public engagement events, are to be determined.

Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at wulfe@lawrencekstimes.com.

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