Ceramics
Hand Built Stoneware
MADE FROM EARTH
Clay starts as dirt.
Add water and suddenly it can be pushed, stretched, cut, carved, joined, broken apart, and rebuilt.
That transformation is what first pulled me toward ceramics. The materials are incredibly basic: earth, water, minerals, fire. But together they can become something permanent.
Something soft enough to change with your hands can eventually become stone.
That still feels a little impossible to me.
BUILD. THEN REMOVE
I usually begin by building more than I need.
A thick wall. A heavy block. A form with enough material that I can start cutting back into it.
My process is influenced by Kurinuki, a Japanese approach to clay that uses carving and subtraction to discover form. Rather than starting with a perfect shape and trying to preserve it, I’m more interested in making something substantial and then finding out what happens when I begin removing parts of it.
I cut. Scrape. Hollow. Carve. Change my mind.
Eventually the piece starts telling me what it wants to be.
I like that the final form is shaped just as much by what is missing as by what remains.
LEAVE THE EARTH SHOWING
I love dark clay.
Deep brown, black, iron-rich bodies have a presence that I don’t want to hide beneath glaze.
So I often leave large areas exposed.
That creates a conversation between the surfaces: raw clay against glossy glaze, rough against smooth, dark against luminous.
The exposed clay also keeps the finished piece connected to where it started.
Even after the firing, even after the glaze, you can still see the earth.
FIRE CHANGES EVERYTHING
This is where we learn to let go.
Glaze starts as powders, minerals, oxides, and chemistry.
It can be measured, tested, layered, and carefully applied.
Then it goes into the kiln.
At high temperatures, those materials melt and move. Colors shift. Glazes pool inside carved areas, break across sharp edges, run into each other, and sometimes produce things I never planned.
That unpredictability is one of my favorite parts of ceramics.
I make the choices.
The fire gets the final vote.
