I first fell in love with clay when I was a little kid: in the summers, my grandmother would take my cousins and me down to the local creek to play, and we'd spend hours chasing water-striders, picking flowers, and hunting for fossils. I'd often dig up the brown clay silt from the creekbed and fashion little pots, baking them in the sun. Many years later, I took a few elective college courses in Ceramics and worked with stoneware clay for the first time. I was hooked! But I didn't yet have faith that I could make a living as an artist.

As it turned out, I would spend the next 8 years working as a teaching assistant and studio technician in the same ceramics program: teaching students, firing kilns, making clay and glaze from scratch, learning as much as I could from my mentor and investing myself in developing my work. Thanks to this space and the support of so many, I realized that, yes, an artist's life was possible!

My aesthetic has been shaped by a practice of lingering in contemplation on the details of the natural world around me, and my functional work is a joyful, celebratory response to the beauty of these forms. I love their ordered complexity, intricate detail, the vast diversity of them even in repetition, and the elegance of forms finely attuned to their function. I delight in their fragility, impermanence, and imperfections, held in contrast with their profusion and tenacity of life. I'm also inspired by contemporary Japanese ceramics and Art Nouveau architecture like that of Antoni Gaudí.

Most of my work begins on the potter’s wheel and is finished off the wheel with carvings, piercings, slip work, slab work, and other hand-building techniques. I work in stoneware and porcelain, firing to over 2300 F in a gas- or wood-fueled reduction atmosphere.

My pots are very tactile, very much the work of my hands. I pay close attention to detail, and I love creating intricate, complex, and cohesive forms and surfaces. In my forms I also look for balance: graceful curves and an elegant form and weight.

I can see that there’s a seed—an essence—of something in my work, and I’m on a journey to pursue that essence to its finest, most beautiful expression.

I earned a BA in biblical & theological studies and am currently in seminary pursuing my dream of earning my Master's degree in Theology! My areas of focus include New Testament interpretation and the intersection of theology & the arts. I’m passionate about linking my art-making with theological reflection, and I love designing liturgical ware in reflection upon biblical texts, sacramental theology, and theologies of incarnation and new creation. Your support helps move me toward my dreams of becoming a teacher, researcher, writer, and artist! Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Thank you for sharing in my journey and in the work of my hands.