Drawn from the Ground
Drawn from the Ground, gas fired North Carolina local clay with hand drawn animations projected, 72” x 38” x 7”, 2023
Statement for Drawn from the Ground:
I long for rhododendron, the deep green of its waxy leaves reflected in a river's flow.
I can see mica shimmering in sand on the bank and up through the ever-changing currents.
I can remember my skin getting stained purple from picking black raspberries and the briars leaving scrapes on my wrists, making the berries an even sweeter reward.
I long to see a shed snake skin caught on barbed wire, a reminder of transformation and how sometimes even the sharp encroachments made by humans can become a part of the whole.
My work represents observations of the environment that I grew up in. It is a remembering of the Appalachian landscape that is quickly fading before my eyes and beneath my feet.
By working with wild clay from North Carolina my work is rooted to this place. I enjoy creating dynamic surfaces and textures on my clay pieces to highlight the details in each flower of goldenrod, each drupelet of a berry, each barb of wire. I can feel these creations moving through me and into the clay, perhaps already in its memory, waiting to be shaped.
My drawings are characterized by my own lived experience and offer a glimpse into intimate moments. When they are brought to life through animation, it feels as though time is being eclipsed. They are a representation of what I am reaching for, what is dancing out in front of me, and things that I have already let go of. They are history and prophecy tied together.
By using clay as a drawing material and hand drawn animations as a digital glaze, I create installations that represent the tangled webs of land, water, time, and human bodies. It is a way to remember the resiliency of these things that move in circles, cycles, and seasons. My installations and the process of making my work is a way to record the past and have hope for the future.
Webs, Berries, and Goldenrod
Webs, Berries, and Goldenrod, salt, wood, and gas fired North Carolina clay, thread, graphite, and walnut ink, 72” x 30” x 3”, 2023
The Spaces Inbetween
The Spaces Inbetween, wood fired stoneware with hand drawn animations projected, 46" x 40" x 2.5", 2022
Statement for The Spaces Inbetween:
In August of 2021, I moved myself and my dog 700 miles away from home to Columbia Missouri, a place I did not know much about, but that was promising the opportunity to keep working with clay. I expected to be overwhelmed by the differences between the midwest and my home in the Southern Appalachian mountains, but I found a landscape filled with many things that reminded me of North Carolina: rocks, bluffs, gorges, rivers, and gently sloping hills. If western North Carolina is an angular cocoon of blue and purple, central Missouri is a web unfurling, full of open spaces and gradients, fields and heavy blushing skies washed in amber and orange light.
My ceramic forms and my animations are abstractions of my experiences getting to know this area of the midwest. They are characterized by the shapes and shadows I’ve seen in the rocks as I’ve overturned them, the water as I’ve waded in it, and this broad landscape as I've experienced it. My work in clay is a collection of forms interacting to create patterns and spaces inbetween. The pieces are wood fired with no glaze, allowing the element of fire the final say in how they will look.
The relationship between my ceramics and my animations represents the ways people and land are inextricably connected and how they mutually affect each other. The projected animations create a digital glaze and bring a living breath to the clay.
When I’m walking in nature, time seems to slow. I feel a suspended focus. I get a similar feeling when I’m creating. There are continuous threads that I have discovered in my work and in my experiences of the natural world. Small things and big things. Looking up at the sky and looking down at the rocks. This body of work speaks to overturning new things, walking on new ground, gathering in new perspectives, and is a realization of the abundance of color, energy, and life in the world all around us.
The River // Reflections in the River
The River // Reflections in the River, stoneware with hand drawn animations projected, 18" x 30" x 5", 2021
Statement for The River // Reflections in the River:
I know the feeling of rhododendron bark, bumpy and cool on my skin as I pass a tree on the path. I know the soft whispers of a heron’s wings soaring over the river. I know the movements of dirt, mica, and river rocks as I stand at the water’s edge - fully engulfed in the aura of the blue ridge mountains rising around me. Growing up in Appalachia, I have always been amazed by the majesty of the mountains and the ways they change each season, every day really, but often in very subtle, cyclical ways. I am mesmerized by these mountains and I started making pottery and animations to capture the aliveness and the magic of the landscape around me. The relationship between my animations and my ceramic vessels conveys the inextricable connections between humans and nature and the ways in which people affect the land and the ways in which land affects people. Clay is like a body, like a landscape. The animations projected onto my pottery create a digital glaze and bring a living breath to the clay.
When I’m walking in nature, time itself seems to slow. I feel suspended, focused. I get a similar feeling when I’m creating. It is vital to capture, through animations, a few seconds of clouds blowing across the sky above the mountains, or a hand skimming over dry grasses, hands holding each other, a river flowing, or figures moving and dancing. It is also vital for me to touch and experience clay in my hands, which in itself is constantly morphing: drying, cracking, hardening, forming, being fired. The way clay changes and morphs is similar to how a body ages and how landscapes evolve over time. We live in a world that promotes constant expansion and productivity over the cyclical and the regenerative. My work shows viewers the deeply rooted connections between humans and nature as well as the connections between ourselves and others. It is a reminder to delight in and honor the uncapturable details of the world around us.