From throwing lines to story lines, and from production pottery to commercial photography, my work seeks to validate and celebrate human expression through acts of documentation. Documentation becomes historical record, disrupting conventions and expanding understandings of what is possible.

Documentation can take many forms: an image, a fingerprint, a video, fired clay record of touch, suspended glaze which moved in a hot kiln, a 3d scan, a cast, a skid mark on concrete. 

Access to that record or document can take just as many forms: a projection, a screen, a sculpture, a print, Instagram, a gameboy, touch, visual symbols, a CNC-milled model, augmented reality.

Growing up in Los Angeles, I remember the biggest stars recording the simplest gesture of self, a handprint, in the sidewalk. The Grauman’s Theater sidewalk is a document of a field, an archive, a clay tablet. I document similarly simple gestures: an item placed in a photo scene; the beauty of a wedged ball of clay, vitrified into permanence; discarded objects collaged into exciting compositions.

Despite being nearby, Hollywood was not ours; the permanence, recognition, and celebration of that sidewalk archive was never for us. When I first touched clay, I remember hearing, It’s archival. That was the first time my hands, my movement, and my touch were recorded in stone forever. I learned to allow myself the same opportunity to be celebrated, documented, and remembered.

In my work, I connect my own history to the larger intertwined stories of ceramics, photography, action sports, and humanity, building upon what’s already been done. In skateboarding, ‘spots’ become linked to people and their feats. Whomever comes next adds to the story of that place, and to the larger story of skateboarding. 

Throwing was my first ceramic obsession. I looked to George Ohr’s masterful twists as I explored the acts of throwing and resolving form, whether the result was a functional pot, or not. While I have a deep love for making and using functional pottery, with my Wheel On Wheels, I divorce throwing from production pottery and its conventions. Every leverage point understood from the stationary wheel is changed, and even the terrain becomes a variable. This work draws not only on pottery’s long history, but also on the absurdity and showmanship of artists like Clayton Bailey, and his work, The First Artist In Space. And, while photo and video documentation present opportunities to curate a viewer's experience of a WOW performance, resulting pots also become documents of the always-new and terrain-dependent act of throwing.

My work is a personal recognition of my own worth. I hope to extend this realization of self-worth to others, expanding access to creative empowerment through community engagement. Reclaim The Cup, a traveling iterative workshop I’ve developed, offers opportunities to remix discarded materials (ceramic and otherwise) into new cup inventions, expanding notions of cup and usefulness, and empowering participants’ creative agency. The last part of every Reclaim The Cup workshop is documentation— though new innovative cups may not be glazed or watertight, each is visually-vitrified and archived via photo.

Mediums are tools for artists to use, not to be defined by. No matter the medium, I record often-overlooked moments of resolve and human experience, in my attempt to document moments where we can recognize and embrace each other’s humanity.