The University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Northern Clay Center sponsored an exhibit of works by ceramicist Daisy Brand, which opened at the Center on January 13, 2006. Brand grew up in a middle-class family in eastern Czechoslovakia. At the age of 14, she was deported with her family to Auschwitz. She was later sent to a slave labor camp in Riga, and subsequently to five other camps. She and her sister Miriam were the only member of their family to survive the war.

After liberation, Brand moved to Israel and then to the U.S. In 1963, she enrolled at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where she majored in ceramics. She later studied at Boston University School for the Arts. Brand continues to maintain a studio in Boston.

Brand's work is rooted in her Holocaust experiences, but does not feature traditional images of the war and genocide. Instead, she draws from her memories of the particular landscapes and architecture that surrounded her. She says her references are "suggestive and deliberately ambiguous." While her work is rooted in the personal, the personal experiences behind it are not always obvious. Brand believes the sentiments that her work evokes are as universal as they are particular.

Brand's exhibit in Minneapolis was just one of many group and individual shows of her work. She has exhibited her works at the DeCordova Museum (Lincoln, MA), the Biennale Internationale de Ceramique d'Art (Vallauris, France), the American Craft Council Gallery (New York, NY), and in other venues.

Sources: chgs.umn.edu/museum/responses/brand.