On making

I first made ceramics at nine years old, in the Geneva studio of Marie Jo Hainard, where Thursday afternoons became the fixed point of my week. My practice went quiet for years. I came back to it in 2013 through classes at CityLit, studying under Jim Gladwin, Carina Ciscato, and Annie Turner among others, before committing to my own studio in Forest Hill, which I share with the ceramicist Melissa Dora.

Somewhere in that return I understood what I was actually interested in: making a small range of forms and paying close attention to what the clay and glaze do together. For most of my practice I've worked within a tight set of materials: one clay body, one or two glazes. The alchemy between a clay body and a firing can take a piece somewhere you didn't plan. I've learned to trust that rather than correct for it.

I'm drawn to work where you can see the time it took. Where the material was allowed to do something the maker didn't fully control. That's what I try to make room for.

There's a tradition in ceramics of treating functional objects with the same intention you'd give anything that hangs on a wall. A bowl you eat from every day, a cup that fits your hand in a particular way. I find that more interesting than work you only look at. Something made well and used often becomes part of how you live; which is why much of what I make is tableware. Meal times are one of the few occasions left when people actually sit together. I think the objects on the table are part of that. I want my vessels to be the ones you reach for every day, not the ones you save for best.