I am interested in creating art that celebrates pleasure and the body. I explore the often confusing boundaries between pleasure and pain as it relates to sexuality and gender. My work expresses a personal journey of actively choosing queerness and laying down the societal expectations that bind us to fear and self doubt.

If my work seems disparate, it’s because it is - some created specifically for the atmospheric effects of the soda kiln, and some with detailed underglaze paintings. As a neurodivergent person I’ve felt self-conscious about my inability to commit to developing a singular body of work. Instead of beating myself up about finding my one true voice, I am embracing the idea that I have many voices: related but not necessarily cohesive. It is not a weakness to create in this way, but instead, a strength. I contain multitudes, exploring multiple concepts simultaneously allows me to work on projects in ways that honor my unique brain.

My underglazed work is full of jokes and puns. It is irreverent, created with the goal of making people laugh. We are so often told that we need to hide our queerness, to keep it tucked away in an effort to make other people comfortable. The work is unquestionably sexual in nature, even when it is tongue in cheek. I am here, I am queer, and I am proud.

When I’m creating work for the soda kiln I use clay bodies that develop well in atmospheric firings. The work explores the body, as a means of creating functional sculptures. Chains, left raw, emerge shiny and full of movement. I’m inspired by my experience living in a body that often feels uncomfortable, unwieldy, shameful. Sculpting the body using extruded coils allows me to build bodies outside of my own, and to reclaim all of the parts of myself that feel unloved. Covering them in chains is speaks to desire for freedom for all.