My wheel-thrown and hand-built clay creations are experimentations in forms and finishes.  My deep and abiding interest is to create objects that resonate with people as embodied creatures who are mired in nature through our social environment.  My approach is to invoke not only the beauty to be found in nature but also the way we create meaning through the stories we tell, in our complicated relationship with nature as we have increasingly learned, as a society, to harness its force, yet simultaneously remain at its mercy.

Much like nature itself, results in ceramics can be somewhat unpredictable.  I use glaze techniques and alternative firing methods, often through high temperature reduction firing in a gas kiln, which yields movement and a sense of dynamism on the surface.  The objects I create implicate us, beings laden with beliefs and purposes and who inescapably bring our ever-diverse personal histories and culture to bear as we interpret. 

As such, my pieces tend to be vessels, that is to say, objects with purpose – seamlessly extending the intention and agency of the user embedded in society – to hold, store, carry, and deliver.  But sometimes the main purpose of a piece is simply to be an object to behold, carrying meaning that can itself be held and culturally transmitted to and by the beholder. 

My current preoccupation is with onggi pots, traditional Korean earthenware vessels that have been used for centuries for fermentation as well as food storage. Onggi vessels are traditionally known to “breathe”. The unique structure of the clay, natural ash glazes, and firing creates an ideal structure in the vessel, whereby air passes through microscopic holes while the vessel remains water-tight, and helps to regulate moisture and temperature to facilitate the growth of beneficial bacteria making them ideal for fermentation.

My body of work draws on this traditional form but is far more interpretive than these functional pots are designed to be, as the objects I make are profoundly shaped by the myriad landscapes that I have called “home,” reflecting the unique combination of my philosophical training in conjunction with the multiple places I have lived in, and the disparate worlds that I have learned to navigate.

Making vessels that “breathe” allows me to combine my twin passions of yoga and ceramics, by exploring the ways that each modality employs the skills of breath, bodily attunement, and mindfulness. Working with earthen vessels lets me explore how embodied selfhood is shaped not only by the inexorable forces of evolutionary change, but through interpretation and adaptation. The vessels I create display the aesthetic beauty that emerges from persisting through change, and in particular, shows the process of immigration and assimilation as a deeply idiosyncratic and personal interplay of creation and destruction, being and becoming.