Description

Three coil-built ceramic heads—abstracted, layered with slips, resists, glazes, mixed media—my face; stylized: hybrid human–animal–reptile forms that shed, camouflage—queer, female, gender-fluid. In Ecdysis, Crypsis, and Penumbra, a shell breaks and something softer, still forming, comes forward. Animals molting, casting off outer layers—the cracked surface, tender flesh. Red clay flowers reach up like roots exposed: vulnerable and sturdy at the same time, an expression of something unrooted, an honoring of the material itself—red clay, earth, rawness. Staples and nails press into the surface. Patterns emerge and recede—metaphors for my experience: Black, mixed ancestry, African, Anigiduwagi, and European. Holding space—rhythmic, silent, a shrouded yell—under the earth, through layers of fabric, through references to my lineage, some through history removed from my reach, stretch, yearn, searching through clay vessels, fabric patterns finding and not finding. Rooted in the earth beneath me and in the people who move before, after, and beside me. Clay holds healing and transformation, speaking to building and erasure. Color builds through layers of slip, glaze, and resist; shapes move—spinning, dripping, climbing—color and line becoming improvisation, a visual rhythm. Each layer removes and reveals. Wire, nails, staples, thread, and fabric press into the clay—linking fragility and strength, holding a slow conversation between concealment and emerging. Clay cracks from being fired multiple times; those fractures, like skin, become part of the form, carrying evidence of what the material has endured. An honoring of artists whose hands came before mine—women who pushed, insisted, and made space. Clay is both earth and lineage: a material that connects me to the people and histories that shaped my path. This work reflects a search for grounding, authenticity, and belonging. The making is physical, intimate, and questioning. Clay records everything—it cracks, resists, remembers. I carve, layer, rebuild, and refire surfaces until they feel alive with a story, history, rhythm, and presence.