Artist’s Statement

 

My growth as an artist and as a person has come from very many directions, but nature is my first and greatest teacher and my inspiration. Since I was young, communing with trees, birds and dirt has kept me grounded and connected. Nature has both instilled and informed my art practice. This deeply rooted instinct to craft and make art led me to earn my bachelors degree and teaching credential in fine art at UC Irvine and to seek out diverse masters of art and craft who have generously shared their skills with me. 

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Nature serves as the central muse in my creative process. It is the master artist. Pure, authentic and sometimes unpredictable - it is unapologetic, transparent, honest and ever present. When I create, I seek to capture the presence and expression of nature in my work. My practice is an embodied experience as it happens - about beauty, conflict, decay, being human, and about indulging in the sensuality of the materials

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The materials I use are also my teachers, especially clay. Clay is an actual piece of the earth - of nature - that has been around for 4.5 billion years. It has much to teach me - about patience (because anything worth doing really does take time), acceptance (because often things don’t work out the way we expect), and mindfulness (because paying attention in the moment is the whole point). Making art is like life. Everything is a practice. My current passion is thrown and altered forms fired using alternative methods including saggar, pit, and raku. The resulting work is ever experimental and unpredictable, like nature itself.