In fire there is passion, possibility and transformation. I find beauty in my embarrassment. I welcome the silly. If the objects I make want a rat-tail, like a boy, I let them have it.
I have found throughout my life that what I resist the most persists. The more I pushed away from making vessels, the more prominent they became in my practice. They are important to me and I am not really sure why, being that when I was growing up handmade objects were not revered. I have certain obsessive-compulsive tendencies. I like to repeat myself. With this notion declared I feel like I have found a bit of understanding in why I make functional objects. Through repetition I make formal inquiries into familiar things. I have an intimate relationship to objects of all kinds.
My dad is a collector of sorts and as a result of being his daughter I collect and form emotional attachments to inanimate objects too. I remember the day our microwave died. It felt like a pet dying. I felt that deep ache in my heart and insisted on taking pictures with it as it sat on the curb to be taken away by the junk men. This brings me to a very important point about when things are out of sight and die; essentially we can forget them but the memory is what makes the ache come back.
The physical act of painting brings up memories that I have forgotten a long time ago like a fight with my sister or walking home with freezing cold feet from playing in the creek in January. Sometimes I just think of smells like the smell of my Mom's perfume or the way the old Minyards grocery store smelled just up the street from my house growing up. I long for moments in the past even though it puts me in a somber mood. As a maker of objects, I am making the impermanent, permanent.</p
