Art Statement

Certain objects and imagery are heavy with meaning.  I particularly like tools, figures, houses, native species, and natural ephemera which often translate into ceramic prints, sculpture, drawings, transfers, or cast objects and assemblages. Related themes include the earth, growth, survival, resilience, work, memories, love, family, and how humans fit into the story of the universe. Using these images and forms in my work allows them to transform and exist in the space between the tangible and intangible. They become charged with associations and narratives from collective experiences. Sometimes I make an object that is useful or has its’ own power, but often the material thing created is secondary to my internal growth or re-emerges as part of another piece. The work is inseparable from the life that I’m making and relationships with family, community, and the cosmos.

Teaching Artist Philosophy

Making is tied to the ability to transform ourselves and our world. This is true for any media: building homes, working on cars, landscaping, raising kids, playing music, going to parties, creating community- it’s all making something and it’s all connected. It can get pretty ugly and messy, even boring, but it’s worth a try, because the moment we start, we’re already doing it.

During the creative process, if we make something that we don’t like then certainly it isn’t finished yet. So often we stop or get stuck because different monsters show up like shame, fear, or unworthiness. If we can move past these obstacles of the ego and come to a place where we are satisfied with the work, that could be a signal to take a break; it might be finished! In this way the process becomes a path to awareness- which permeates every aspect of life and beyond.

Art is the hands’ answer to the heart. The calling to create comes from necessity, like a caterpillar building a cocoon. It is an ancestral invocation written in the cosmic blueprint of our beings. In answering the call we are transcending, nurturing, and emerging into the next version of ourselves.  Everyone is worthy and capable of this tender evolution.