Dr. Sharif Bey is an Associate professor of art at Syracuse University. Bey earned a B.F.A. in ceramics from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, an M.F.A in studio art from the University of North Carolina and a Ph.D. in art education from Penn State University. He is a teaching artist with extensive experience in ceramics, sculpture, art community programming and art teacher training. Bey continues to conduct workshops and facilitates collaborations in the visual arts for children and adults in schools, museums, arts centers, and universities throughout the United States and abroad.

In addition to being an active teacher and scholar, he is a prolific studio artist who exhibits his ceramic works internationally. In 2010 the United States “Arts in the Embassies” program commissioned Bey to create one of his large-scale “conceptual bead” installations for the United States Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan. Bey completed an additional project, in 2018, for the new U.S embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Over the past 15 years, he has served as a resident artist at The Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia, The McColl Center for Visual Art, Hunter College, the John Michael Kohler Art Center and the Pittsburgh Glass Center. Bey is the 2017 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship awardee in the Crafts/Sculpture category and the 2018 recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Grant. His work ranges from functional vessels to ceramic/mixed-media sculptures, which are influenced by function, ritual, and identity. Bey’s work is featured in public collections including: The Carnegie Museum of Art, The Renwick Gallery-Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Hickory Museum, and The Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African-American Art.