“Everything has the energy of its making inside it”.

-Andy Goldsworthy

a majority of my life is spent as a poet, teacher, publisher, bodyworker, and diversity/ inclusion activist. long hours are occupied in reading, language, the thinking through writing, touch, and the act of rewriting. this process much like my work with clay sustains ideas of possibility: every line, stanza,  page, draft can contract or become something larger, where rules such as grammar serve to insist. i bring this practice to my ceramics.

i am drawn to the making of sculptural vessels that often occur as functional works. i’m interested in the ways clay and atmosphere speak to history, relics of violence, and longing intrinsic to existing in/through durational violence. because i am an immigrant, a person of color, and a woman my work often avoids linear narratives and their retellings, hence; i cannot separate myself from my context—its landscape, its touch.

my current body of work contemplates the disquiet in its making, experienced through physical embodiment and materiality. i want to capture singularities of energy, rhythm, form, and the natural environment—the marks between marks. living in the PNW, this landscape with its abundance of water, elemental green and blue hues, its volcanic field, thinning glacial crevasses are referenced in my pots by the use  of ash, sand, fire, crushed river-rock and shoreline debris that convey my surroundings. each pot through its making and materials begs the question: how can one survive and exist within a hostile environment and come out intact?