Madeline
Cheng
Artist, marketer, and builder — working across ceramics, tech startups, and fashion. Currently exploring how creative practice and business intersect.
Selected Projects
Artist, marketer, and builder — working across ceramics, tech startups, and fashion. Currently exploring how creative practice and business intersect.
Selected Projects
Madeline Cheng is a ceramic artist, marketer, and creative thinker whose work spans art, technology, and fashion.
In ceramics, her sustained investigation explores the tension between lines and curves — specifically, how horizontally carved ridges on spherical vessels alter our perception of three-dimensional form. Working on the pottery wheel with speckled stoneware, she leaves exteriors bare to emphasize light and shadow, finishing only the interiors with an obsidian celadon glaze.
Beyond the studio, Madeline has interned with Swsh, a shared photo album startup, where she conducted outreach to music festivals and athletic events, leading to several successful partnerships. She's currently interning at HATCh, researching boutique retail strategies for Ghostforest Surf Club.
How can I explore the tension between lines and curves by varying horizontally carved ridges on a spherical vessel? This body of work investigates how the depth, spacing, and number of ridges can accentuate or change the way we perceive the spherical form.
The exteriors are left bare to draw attention to how light plays on the form and the shadows cast by the ridges, with an obsidian glaze on the interior only. Each piece evolved through experimentation with collaring, coil-building, and trimming techniques on speckled stoneware clay.
Swsh is a shared photo album platform that centralizes fan-generated content for live events — music festivals, concerts, and sports. Fans access albums via QR codes with no download required, and the platform's AI auto-tags users in photos to drive organic social sharing.
As part of the Extended Growth Team, I conducted targeted email and DM outreach to music festivals and athletic events across the country. My on-boarding efforts led to several successful partnerships, including outreach to Rolling Loud, EDC Vegas, Dillo Day, and dozens more.
An ongoing journal of my work at HATCh, where I'm researching boutique retail strategy, conducting brand analysis, and creating marketing materials for Ghostforest Surf Club.
Week 1
My first task was to curate a targeted list of boutiques aligned with Ghostforest Surf Club's brand identity. I started by defining the aesthetic — eclectic, worn-in, neutral colors, rooted in location, beach but multipurpose, functional, layering, androgynous.
I then identified comparable brands like Visvim, 3Sixteen, and Marine Layer to find where they stock their products. This led me to compile a list of target boutiques that matched Ghostforest's positioning: outdoorsy, high-end menswear retailers across Arizona, California, Colorado, and the Pacific Northwest.