Ceramics Monthly Articles (Simple)

I contribute to this as a maker and as an educator. I’ve spent the last nine years teaching ceramics at various art centers and institutions and value education as a powerful tool to shape our culture.

Makers have the opportunity to help heal, however, by manifesting ideas and emotions into the world through physical objects that transcend time, culture, and language.

I am always looking at the physical beauty and interesting forms and textures in the natural world: plants, animals, humans, cellular life, and inanimate objects.

The forms and surfaces draw upon ceramic archetypes such as the neoclassical wares of Josiah Wedgwood and other prevalent manufacturers of sprigged ware in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Color brings energy to ideas of play and joy, both in historical and contemporary use. Spanning generations of evolution, bright hues have reliably predicted nourishment, becoming intertwined with joy.

In college, I was never a very good painter, but loved the combination of color and texture from thick layers of paint. So, I approach my glaze decoration process like a painter, using glazes instead of paint.

My process starts with automatic drawing. I pick up a pen and let whatever might come out emerge onto my page.

I use the personification of animals to soften the awkwardness and vulnerability of human interactions. I think about how instincts drive animal behavior, while our instincts as humans are clouded by insecurity, guilt, shame, and embarrassment.

I like to leave hints of the pot’s history and how it was made. By utilizing the water-etching method, I curate and abstract the surface information and process marks into historically-based status imagery and patterns.

My practice involves continuous making, and each piece becomes a multi-headed hydra of potential options for each subsequent piece. So, one issue tends to be in synthesis and deciding when and where to impose limitations.

Keep being authentic and making work you enjoy. The more you practice, the better the work will be. The discipline of showing up leads to more practice and new discoveries within the small things that inform the work.

I like to think of what I do as sewing with clay. The thin slabs of clay are the fabric, which I cut into threads to build structures full of seams, very much like a seamstress working at her mannequin.

I pull inspiration from things within domestic spaces such as old wallpaper, textiles, and smaller details that are often overlooked—like a worn seam on an ottoman. Things such as this stir up memories from a simpler time in my life.

My pieces are built using a combination of various ceramic techniques: slab construction, coiling, stamping, press molding, pinching, wheel throwing, and carving.

I make pots that are intended for use in everyday life, and I want everyone to be able to use and experience my work. I think that a relationship can be developed with the work through use.

My forms derive from multiple sources of research and inspiration. I look to historical ceramics as well as the dishes I use in my daily life as the foundation for proportions, practical solutions, and a starting point of my pots.

I hope my artwork both challenges and encourages my audience. While it is not a brand-new methodology, once I started to make multi-media work in my own studio practice, I started to notice and be drawn to that type of work in general.

The pictorial protagonists of my work come from the natural world: winged creatures, bugs, flowers, and fruit. And it is this contradiction between their desires and their abilities that defines the work.

Almost everything I make is inspired by cars, specifically classic cars from the 1950s and 1960s. For my surfaces, I choose bold colors that are reminiscent of cars from that period of time (fun colors like teal, pink, Bermuda blue).

My interest in architecture and mid-century design influences the layered motifs I use to divide the surface and provide contrast to the form. Leaving evidence of the pinched construction creates a weathered-looking surface.