I didn't start out as a potter. Along my path to this profession, I’ve taken on all sorts of jobs: actor, baker, teacher, writer, editor, manager. I spent my early career frustrated by the limitations of the work I chose—sometimes creative, often confining. Independent and agile in my learning, I'd feel flattened by even my more alternative career choices after a time.

I came to clay during a spectacularly painful period of burnout. I was exhausted, plagued by guilt, and convinced of my own inadequacy. Sick and sick of myself, I enrolled in a wheel throwing class in a wild attempt climb out of the hole I'd fallen into. I sat down to the wheel that day with a noisy, evil narrator screaming my shortcomings in the back of my brain. But when I stood up at the end of the lesson, I realized that I had not heard from her for hours. The quiet! The relief!

It was a moment that I can really only describe as transformative.

I have not been able to tear myself away from clay since. After that first short course, I joined a community studio where I could trial-and-error my way to competence on my own. I sunk days, months, years into practice. And every day that I sit down to the wheel, I feel the same wild gratitude that I did on that first day.

The gentle hypnosis of the turning wheel. The full-body creative flow. The focus of pulling a form into being from the formless. The boundless curiosity and experimentation. It is the only thing I ever want to spend my time on.

I am a potter shaped by experimentation, a desperate love of the process, and the wisdom of a strong community of incredible makers. Compelled by form, texture, and utility, I am a potter patiently making work that will stay with you through your whole life.

The mug you drink your coffee from in the first moments of the day. The plates your family eats dinner from every night. The pitcher you use to serve sangria to your friends on a sunny afternoon. Through these pieces made by my hands I am, in some small way, there with you, too.