My introduction and initial love of ceramics centered around the vessel, both functional and as art object. The satisfaction of making something useful, the intimacy of these objects with hands and mouths, the never-ending contemplation of form and ergonomics, where design and sustenance intersect – all of this will never grow old for me.

In graduate school I started exploring groupings, installations, and especially site-specific installations. These inquiries triggered in me a somatic awareness of space/environment, and a sense of wonder. I began placing work in a way where a gallery remained a gallery, a hallway a hallway, or a field a field, but suggested an overlay of another time, place, or occurrence. It felt powerful, and a bit theatrical.

The feeling of being able to walk through a work of art, and sometimes notice ways in which the environment might change the work or vice versa, opened new vistas for me. Rather than standing apart among static elements, I was enveloped, sometimes spatially, sometimes conceptually, in a reciprocal space. Foreground and background aren't usually a topic of three-dimensional work, and I find it invigorating to explore this connection between art and where it's shown, how each might transform the other, as well as the larger field it refers to.

My hope is that this kind of exploration gives others a more alive sense of the environment they find themselves in, a sort of foreground/background reversal, where context becomes more a player.