The Artist

Reinvent Your Daily Rituals

My journey in clay started at Plattsburgh State University of New York where I received my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in drawing with complements in graphic design and ceramics. Upon Graduating in 2012, I moved back down to Southern New York where I began pursuing my graphic design career. After focusing on design for two years I decided it was time to find a local studio where I could pick up clay again. Finding the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, NY re-awakened my love of clay and I was eventually supported by my teachers and peers to end the design job and pursue an apprenticeship in Washington State. The apprenticeship was not a good fit, unfortunately, so I moved back to the East Coast and the Clay Art center where I worked as the Community Arts Assistant for their outreach programming and a teacher for both on and off-site clay classes.

Over the past 6 years I have had the space to play with my making process, moving from wheel throwing to hand building and from soda firing to heavily illustrated electric firing. My forms and surfaces are a result of the need to tell stories and connect with others. I continue to work out of my home studio while working full time for Casamigos Spirits Company as their Assistant Art Director and with various events, groups and galleries centering around ceramics.

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The work I create is a meditation on memories and experiences, hopes and desires. By its repetitive nature, the medium of clay is a meditative process in its own right and I apply the experience throughout the entire making process. I am interested in awareness of self and how one’s experiences shape their personality and worldview. I choose to create functional work because the connection between object and memory is strong – it can ground our pivotal moments in ways more concrete than memory on its own. The desire to create those lodestones through clay and storytelling fuels my practice and stories.

As a way of creative storytelling I use animal characters to tell the stories that I wish to engage my audience in. Through the vehicle of storytelling I hope to create a moment of thoughtfulness and meditation, bringing my audience full circle to the core of my making practice. We are all connected in our moments of growth no matter how varied the direct causes of them may be, and my work should be used as a catalyst for that exploration of connectedness.