Artist Statement

My art explores my body in relation to material culture. My body is an ever-changing material intertwined with human and nonhuman environments. I draw on queer/feminist ideas about the body and clay’s deep and diverse humanist tradition. Clay is equal parts material and body to create a form. As an ancient form, it wonderfully endures and I am fascinated by how it connects to contemporary ecology. I work across media, but clay is my primary medium because it evokes close associations to my body, and, by extension, to the next body grasping and holding my ceramic sculpture. Through queer/feminist thinking and social history, I learn how ceramics are “useful” and point to broader human behavior and normalized socialization.

For eight years, I’ve crafted clay whistles with multiple mouthpieces. The forms are figural abstractions, referencing my body and those I am intimate with (human, nonhuman) and representing something between monster, beast, and human. Gripping the form, pursing the lips and pressing them against it, and exhaling one’s breath are uniquely individual gestures. Combining my forms with social interactions, I open space for play, sensuality, wonder, and liberation from the confines of the mundane.