STATEMENT

My pottery brings together soft forms and painterly surfaces. I use thrown and handbuilt methods to create functional pots that carry softness and comfort. To bring people together for meals creates ritual and intimacy, and I want to encourage that through my functional pots. My work draws from my background as a painter and my chosen career path as a potter. One without the other feels unfinished, and unresolved. I enjoy the two dimensionality of my surfaces on three dimensional objects, and that the object serves a purpose. I dream that my pots are a comforting companion for the full breakfast spread or friend to gossip with at the picnic.

Colorful, painterly images on my surfaces are built up using underglaze to add watercolor-like layers. My palette uses warm colors with an array of heavily saturated skintones; each character expands on my fashion and colorful aesthetics with bright blush, eye makeup, and lipstick. The surface is visually full with bold colors, with resting points of white clay underneath. My satin matte clear glaze highlights the vivid colors with a soft, sugary finish. The variety of surface applications like underglaze transfers and sgraffito carving create a layered environment that invites the viewer to see each object from all angles, and allows for discovery with each turn.

My forms have plump bellies, curving stomach rolls, and protrusions that elbow out as handles. They convey the fullness of a body that takes up space, and their asymmetrical alterations are much like people with their scars and imperfections. Wrapping semi-realistic and stylized figures over the bottoms and edges of the pot, I am abstracting their forms and the narrative to flow around the pot. These characters, as the protagonists of each story, stretch across the pot in ways that are not physically feasible, but their bent limbs allow me to spread their story across the entire object. Their arms or legs curving around the foot of the pot allow an entirely new space for exploration. The figures become more symbolic in their abstraction, and I am able to shift focus to specific parts of my narrative by contorting their shape.

Each character is a heroine within the space of the pot and allows me to explore my own perspectives of domestic comforts and eroticism. The characters in my work are feminine, but the viewer determines their story, gender, sexuality, love, and life during their time together. Multiple characters draw upon concepts of sensuality and intimacy. My new focus is to create narrative through multiple objects within a set. My pots hold the rough but sweet aspects of my femininity like body hair and stretch marks which I have come to love over time. After years of self portraits, I have shifted my focus to other body types for inspiration and I pose each person by meshing several different figure reference images.

I want my pottery to feel comforting and familiar in the same way I feel in my own skin, and for people to see themselves or their stories in my work. Each piece I make is an encapsulated moment of my own romantic idealism and daydreams. As I get comfortable depicting different facets of myself, I would like to delve further into erotic themes and expand my forms into larger serving sets with multiple pieces.