Fences of Portland, ME

MFA Student

Major: Ceramics

Graduation Year: 2020

Artist Statement:

Frequently moving around the country throughout childhood, I developed a deep sentimental attachment to the living spaces and things that surrounded me. With constant change, I found that a relationship with an object goes beyond its utility becoming a way of archiving our place in time. Collected objects carry familial continuity and hold a sense of belonging. Using the iconography of the domestic, I explore the emotional valence and affect of interiors, exteriors, as well as the spaces in-between.

My work stems from family traditions of weaving, gardening, and jerry-rigging. Sensitively documenting objects in clay, baskets, chairs, and screens all stand in for a felt experience. Through the addition of hemp fibers and the strain of kiln firing, I seek to create ceramic forms that viscerally move. It is in the balances and tensions between pattern and plainness, soft and heavy, stable and precarious, that my work lingers. Both intimate and monumental, the objects and interior spaces I create speak to the perennial need to be and belong.