Photographic Ceramic Sculptures

Returning to Clay

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In 2020, as the world went into COVID lockdown, I returned to ceramics after nearly 30 years away. I needed something to ground myself. I began watching videos of potters hand-building and throwing on the wheel, and by beginning a daily practice in the studio I slowly relearned the skills I had once abandoned. Yet the experience of clay—and my instinctive feel for it—was still in my bones.

 

I began making tea bowls, then rice bowls and vases, and eventually moved into sculpture. At the same time, I was continuing the photographic series I called Offerings. Now I could digitally collage my own photographs into images of these new ceramic bowls. And through this process, I found a way to bring that series to completion.

 

After creating those 40+ pieces, another question began to emerge: What would happen if I moved beyond photographing my ceramics and instead incorporated my photographs and digital collages directly onto the sculptures themselves? That question became the beginning of a three-year exploration. I experimented with materials, processes, scale, surface, and ways of bringing the photographic image and the physical object into conversation with one another.

 

This new series is the result of that exploration—a place where photography and ceramics merge, where the digital and the handmade coexist, and where an image becomes part of the object rather than simply a record of it.

What began as a way to ground myself during an uncertain time ultimately opened the door to an entirely new body of work.