Rate My Professor Ingrid Lilligren

Ingrid Lilligren serves as University Professor of Art and Visual Culture (Ceramics) in the College of Design, Department of Art and Visual Culture at Iowa State University. She holds a BFA from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls in 1980 and an MFA from The Claremont Graduate School in 1986. Lilligren began her academic career as Assistant Professor of Ceramics at Loyola Marymount University from 1992 to 1993. Upon joining Iowa State University in 1993 as Assistant Professor in Art and Design (Ceramics), she advanced through the ranks to Associate Professor from 1999 to 2007, Professor of Ceramics from 2007 to 2024, and Professor and Chair of the Department of Art and Visual Culture from 2010 to 2020. She also served as Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fellow at the Student Innovation Center from 2022 to 2024.

Her ceramic sculptures explore climate change, limits of knowing, and social, cultural, and political blindness via incorporated Braille, with technical research into Cone 6 glazes using Iowa's wind-generated electricity for kiln firing. Signature research areas include Engagement and Social Issues, History, Culture and Heritage, Making and Materiality, and Sustainability, Environment, and Planning. Awards and honors encompass the Janet Harris Squires Clay Award (2021), Faculty Professional Development Assignment (2020), Miller Faculty Grant (Co-PI, 2013), Artist in Residence at the State Academy of Art in Tbilisi, Georgia (2007), and selection for Artist in Residence in Vallauris, France (2005). Key exhibitions include "Ingrid Lilligren: Tactile Meditations" at Grinnell College Museum of Art (2024), "Underneath Everything: Humility and Grandeur in Contemporary Ceramics" at Des Moines Art Center (2023), "A Clay Sermon" at Whitechapel Gallery, London (2021), and "TOUCH: The World at Your Fingertips" at Musée de la Main, Lausanne (2012). Her artwork features in publications like Ceramics Monthly ("Finding Meaning at the Fingertips," 2007) and Hands In Clay (1998). Lilligren has advanced community arts outreach through initiatives such as Artist Next Door, Biorenewables Art Competition, and Brunnier Art Museum exhibitions, promoting visual arts innovation across Iowa State University and communities. She contributed as Artist Advisory Committee member for Des Moines Art Center (2023) and board member for Creative Artists' Studios of Ames (2015-2022).