As an eldest daughter and granddaughter, awareness to others and meeting a need has been engrained in my hands from an early age. This beginning wells up a demand for creating objects that are functional while also allowing myself opportunity to be playful in the exploration of materials and form.

This idea of utility has been essential to my work while also looking at connection between myself and the user. I sit with objects in a slow making process to consider what they can give to the receiver or make items in sets of two to offer a link between the two pieces. The need for functionality goes beyond if a pot or broom is useful, but also examines our need for sensory objects to ground us in our daily lives. In our age of constant stimulation, grounding oneself to physical hand crafted items challenges modern convention and harkens back to working with our hands, taking care of the things we have, and the need for community to grow one another. 

In my current ceramic practice, using the materials from the places I have resided the most like my yard, the creek, or receiving clay from friends and families has felt like a sacred bond between the places I am sourcing as well as the individuals I am being gifted clay from. This bartering between myself and the land ensures that I am continuously looking for moments of reciprocity, whether picking up the same weight of clay in trash at the creek or trading the clay received as a gift to the original giver in the objects I make. This return and care feels like an extension of what I have always wanted my work to be, an offering to myself and others.

Broom and brush making has been a natural addition in my exploration of objects that are both utilitarian and sculptural. While still early in this tradition, creating brushes from clay I have sourced, making handbrooms in a group of friends, and learning how to make floor sweepers to have life long heirlooms for generations feels like it goes hand and hand with what clay means to me.

As I continue in this need for function and connection between my making and the person using my work, I aim to develop a body of work that represents the need for craft not just in our homes for daily use but also within ourselves as a form of kinship between one another.