This body of sculpture explores the concurrent ephemerality and gravity of text and modes of communication in our lives. We are in an age where information itself has become political – and this is confusing. I employ unconventional uses of ceramic material with inherently traditional approaches in hopes of reaching a level below – or beyond – language. 

Words are elastic: loaded yet hollow. Communicating is slippery. Epistemology is fragile, brittle and tangled. Clay can be all of these. This work explores the concurrent ephemerality and gravity of language, attempting to embody and expand phrases that resonate on both personal and socio-political levels. I construct clay vessel forms and drawings that function like the mouth-to-ear- telephone game in which messages are warped, broken and reconfigured. I utilize meticulous, repetitive methods like coiling or slip-trailing by hand (rather than 3d printing) to make what is virtual visceral. In our ever-shifting, chaotic and overwhelming psychological and physical landscape, my practice seeks the small revelations of bringing together new and old, sense and nonsense, destruction and play.

To move beyond my private experience, the mixed-media Fearshare Project grew from a curiosity in early 2024 about what people around me were most acutely afraid of. Through crowd sourcing, writing in porcelain, synthesizing people’s fears one by one through drawing and creating an intimate space, I hoped to honor the candor and complexity of this universal psychological state. Wielding fear to unify rather than divide – to build rather than break down – is a powerful exercise in empathy. As many of the shared fears now become reality, I look forward to wrestling with this project with both the urgency and agency it requires.