Artist Statement

My current line of artistic inquiry utilizes a combination of ceramic objects and actions to craft external, physical metaphors that explore the internal, metaphysical landscape of my selfhood. I gain understanding of difficult concepts and tackle complicated questions through these metaphors. This use of artistic analogues combines with my interest in the intersection of art and action, allowing me to create art objects that help me navigate my lived reality and gain insight into my perpetually emerging self. Intersections and contradictions– interior and exterior, sharp and soft, beautiful and grotesque– form contrasts and collisions that allow me to explore the point at which the inner world of my self meets the outer world around me. 

To create new work, I focus on a concept that I’m looking to understand and begin searching for metaphors in the world around me. I find these mostly in natural forms. Being outdoors and getting in touch with my physical body allows me to slip into that liminal space at the intersection between internal and external, and the forms I see– rocks, seed pods, leaves– build up into a cache of artistic imagery. Simultaneously, I engage with the material quality of ceramics, seeking to evoke those natural forms in the studio. I am particularly interested in developing texture and using the repeated imagery of the vessel, spikes, and moving forms. I enjoy combining traditional ceramic finishes such as engobes and glazes with more experimental approaches such as flocking and wax to create surfaces that prompt interaction and interest.

I am influenced by fellow artists, writers, and thinkers interested in art and action. Particularly formative in my art practice has been the writing of Suzi Gablik. In her book The Reenchantment of Art, Gablik writes about art as a creative, constructive force that can be used to build our futures. Other inspiring artists that combine art and action include Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen, in particular her work Being Human Being. I love the destruction and humor and grit of Man Yau’s work Porcelain Decks, which prompted in me an interest in breaking ceramic that culminated in my work Self-Portrait with Bar of Soap with which I sought to gain a better understanding of emotional resilience through time, practice, exposure, repetition. In this performance, I drop unfired porcelain bars of soap into an internally spiked vessel until the shards build up into a high pile. The final dropped form hits the top of the pile and does not break: resilience through repetition. 

These influences and developing practices combine to form my current body of work in which I seek to craft the analogue of my own internal experience in the external world.