About Me

Don’t worry! I almost know what I am doing.

I picked up pottery in the Summer of 2021 as a way to rejoin society after the totally definitive end of the Covid-19 pandemic. Social skills? Still working on them, but clay? Clay, I could work with. I started taking classes at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center, eventually becoming a studio monitor to learn the ancient magic of operating kilns (turns out, it’s mostly just pressing buttons in the right order, but let’s not ruin the mystique). Now, as the world continues its slow-motion unraveling, I’m out here making mugs with feelings because someone has to.

“That’s nice, but what about the art!”

Glad you asked (or at least, politely kept reading).

I grew up in rural Georgia, where emotions weren’t exactly a hot topic. You could be happy, sad, or mad. Anything else was just fancy talk. Fast forward to my adulthood therapy, where I was introduced to Robert Plutchik’s Emotion Wheel, a tool designed to help emotionally-stunted adults (like me!) identify what they’re actually feeling. Suddenly, there were so many words for emotions I only read about in storybooks. What’s the difference between being “bored” and “annoyed”? What about “proud” versus “optimistic”? How do you even see these emotions on someone’s face?

Since clay lets me create literally anything, I decided to work through this emotional deep dive in the most chaotic way possible by sculpting it. My work is a modern take on Appalachian face jugs, stripping down expressions to just eyes and a mouth, shaped by how I interpret different emotions. Sometimes the faces are tired. Sometimes they’re deeply disturbed by the state of the world. Sometimes they just look like they need a nap. Relatable, right?

Where do we go from here?

That depends. Are you just here for the backstory, or do you want to see some mugs that look like they’ve had a long day? Either way, thanks for stopping by. If you want to adopt a face, check out the shop. If you just want to watch me try not to set things on fire, follow along on social media.

Either way, let’s keep feeling things and making weird, wonderful art about it.