Kadri Pärnamets News

Ceramics Now, September 23, 2025

Kadri Pärnamets: Muraka is on view at Ferrin Contemporary, Cummington, MA

September 20 – November 15, 2025

Ferrin Contemporary is proud to present Kadri Pärnamets: Muraka, a new exhibition by one of Project Art’s resident artists. The exhibition features porcelain sculptures reflecting on the universal element of water and natural forms, and opened during Riverfest and Project Art’s Open House on September 20th.

The exhibition builds on two bodies of work Kadri Pärnamets: Choreography of Water at Ferrin Contemporary her 2022 solo show at Ferrin Contemporary in North Adams, Massachusetts as well as her design for her first site responsive public art commission Fire Sculpture at Claytopia at Guldagergaard in Skælskør, Denmark. The works in Muraka continue themes of abstract biomorphic forms inspired by water, air, and the changing environment of the river ecosystem. Pärnamets uses water as a metaphor; her multicolored surfaces and organic forms visually reference water’s vast, expansive body that connects land and sky and its forces that impact both protect and threaten the land, earth’s inhabitants and possibly humanity itself.

Ferrin Contemporary director Leslie Ferrin comments “Kadri’s grounding in her own environments in both Estonia and Cummington provides a deep foundation for her quiet, soft forms and surfaces. Straddling two worlds, her daily walks provide inspiration and the time for reflection as she watches the colors change and considers the impact on nature from the turbulent forces pulling us forward.”

Pärnamets chose the title for her exhibition Muraka, naming it after a place with special meaning for her in Estonia. Muraka is a nature reserve in her home country characterised by its wetlands, unspoilt forest and one of few remaining wilderness areas in north-east Estonia.

Kadri Pärnamets: Muraka includes her first large scale porcelain sculptures produced in 2025 with support from the A.R.T. 2025 grant from Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. The funding provided time and materials to expand on two series 2024 that are included in the exhibition – Fragments of Waves and Frame of Mind series’. These pieces differ in form and scale while tracing a clear flow of consciousness from her past works. Works are placed in rows like thoughts drifting to the surface, contained in their individualism, but connected as part of a wider sea or ecosystem. Her surface treatments, which alternate between matte respites and shimmering, effervescent blue glaze, speak not only to the glimmer of sun on water, but to the changing environment back home in Massachusetts. Residing along the Westfield River, Pärnamets works amongst an everpresent soundtrack of the river’s current and the hush of waving willow trees. In the studio and on her daily walks through the neighborhood, she is always observing, listening, and finding inspiration in the acute timbres and textures of the changing New England seasons.

Pärnamets’ work has been shown internationally at the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (Tallinn, Estonia), at the International Tea Trade Expo (Shanghai, China), at Guldagergaard in Skælskør, Denmark, and many others. Since 1996, she has participated in symposiums in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Switzerland, USA, Norway, and Hungary. She graduated from the Art Institute of Tallinn, Estonia with a BA/MFA in Ceramics. Dividing her time between Estonia and the USA, her primary studio is the USA at Project Art in Cummington, MA. She is represented by Ferrin Contemporary.

More on the Exhibition HERE

More on Kadri Pärnamets HERE

By Jennifer Huberdeau, The Berkshire Eagle, September 18, 2025

CUMMINGTON — Porcelain curves, twists and grows, taking on unexpected billowy forms in Kadri Pärnamets’ new exhibition, “Muraka,” in Ferrin Contemporary’s summer gallery at Project Art.

“I find that most of my work is inspired by water lately,” Pärnamets, just back from a summer trip to her native Estonia, said in a recent interview at the gallery.

That inspiration comes from walks along the Westfield River, which flows behind Project Art, and in Estonia, as well as from the ocean during a residency at Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Denmark, where she created a 7-foot-tall fire sculpture for Claytopia in July 2024.

The show, which opens with a short talk and public reception, 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 20, as part of Project Art’s open house during the Cummington Cultural District’s RiverFest, runs through Nov. 15. Pärnamets and her husband, Sergi Isupov, both resident artists of Project Art, will also be hosting RAKU firing, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., on the banks of the Westfield River, as part of the community-wide celebration.

“Muraka,” named for an Estonian nature reserve filled with wetlands and forests, builds upon two previous bodies of work, “Choreography of Water,” a 2022 solo show at Ferrin Contemporary’s former North Adams gallery featuring a sea of hand-built porcelain cups, vases and cloud forms, and her 2024 works, “Fragments of Waves,” a series documenting the rise and fall of ocean waves made from layers of colored clay in a luscious variety of blues and green hues.

“The sea just surrounded me, and there were all these waves out there. I was looking for all these different ways to express my idea about all this rushing water. Whenever you look at it, it’s different,” Pärnamets said of her creation of “Fragments of Waves,” which is also on view at the gallery. “I was just thinking, what’s the meaning for me? What’s the meaning for most people?”

Building on that work, Pärnamets began sculpting a series of works — small bulbous sculptures in bright hues that are reminiscent of the cloudberries that grow in the bogs of Muraka, the nature reserve close to her home in Estonia. These works informed two large-scale works in the show, created with the assistance of an Artists Resource Trust (A.R.T.) Grant from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.

“Nature is a big inspiration,” Pärnamets said. “They start from this kind of cloud feeling. It’s something that you can’t touch, but it is there. You can see it. You can feel it, but you can’t really touch it.”

That feeling, she said, is what informs her work, allows her to shape soft, billowy, cloud-like structures from clay.

“It’s hard to explain,” she said. “It’s just this form that’s inspiring to me. I call it a softness and a movement. When you look at them, you can see this softness, this movement … like they’re floating a little bit.”

More on the Exhibition HERE

More on Kadri Pärnamets HERE