Artist Statement

Whether empty or full, whole or broken in pieces, ceramic vessels reflect history and cultural practices. My ongoing fascination with ceramic ware, ranging from vessel forms created in antiquity to contemporary works, is rooted in my interest in revealing the beauty found in the mundane. My delight in exploring the quiet beauty of what many might consider “ordinary” vessels has led me to use ceramic vessel forms as resources for my work from across cultures: Korean fermentation jars and cups, Roman storage urns, pierced pots of Finland, Japanese tea bowls, and black on black Native American pottery.
 
In 2021, an unexpected development in my practice was my embracing working with clay to explore vessels in their entirety. I now throw functional vessels on the wheel as part of a meditation practice, while also building pieces using ceramics to expand on themes from my paintings like transience, voids, fragility, and balance.

The universality of ceramic vessel forms, particularly cups, intrigues me because the process of creation has remained unchanged across time and cultures: Dirt, manipulated by human hands, is hardened with fire, created to serve the purpose of containment. The size and the functional aspects of cups and vessels span from everyday use to ritual ceremony. But cups in particular reflect an intimacy associated with the object itself—scaled for hands to hold, to pass, to share, to carry up to lips and mouth, to nourish, to provide what is contained within. 
 
My fascination with vessels and cups has led me on an unexpected journey in employing vessels as subjects in my paintings, prints and mixed media works for two decades. Recent series of paintings and prints revolve around utilizing cup forms as building blocks to focus on pattern, repetition, surface, and form. Using the accumulation of layers and marks, with the cup form serving as both anchor and departure point, I am interested in investigating the space between representation and abstraction. In my pottery, I am exploring the same building blocks, and the bodies of works inform each other. Underlying my work is also my attempt to capture a sense of nostalgia for the quiet objects that are often overlooked in everyday life, and the things we take for granted.