Rachel Heibel

Rachel Heibel is a sculptor and educator based in San Francisco. Raised in Michigan, she grew up in a midwestern culture that valued labor and craft, shaping her deep connection to ceramics. A former competitive athlete, she brings a physical awareness to her practice, using clay to explore discipline, touch, and memory. For her, making is a way to make sense of the world- a way to process and project.

She earned her BFA from the University of Michigan and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she developed an interest in material histories, ecological perspectives, and ceramics as both artifact and everyday object. Her work balances function and abstraction, investigating how ceramics shape social and ecological systems.

Heibel co-manages The Clay Room in San Francisco, where she designs classes, curates glaze selections, and builds a ceramics community. Passionate about ceramics education, she learned to teach while working alongside incredible faculty at the institutions where she studied and taught. Through teaching and making, she remains dedicated to ceramics as a practice of care, inquiry, and connection.