“I’ve spent the last two years making and teaching at The Steel Yard in Providence, RI, and much of my creative process has been shaped by connection with other makers and students in this community. As a teacher, the novel, unencumbered ways students interact with an unfamiliar medium presents me with new possibilities as a maker. The individualized life experiences that inform each student’s process often demonstrate ways of doing things I wouldn’t have thought of. Revisiting and breaking down fundamental skills while teaching introductory jewelry classes has proven to enrich the quality of my own work.

As a maker, it’s through my connections with resident artists, staff, and instructors at The Steel Yard that I began exploring ceramics, echoing each of the processes shared with me until I started to find my own. Moving through failures and successes in ceramics altered how I work in metals, and processes from metalworking found their way into clay. Connection with other artists, across mediums, and between teaching and making is what keeps my creative process from going stagnant: nothing happens in isolation.

Additionally, what I make is rooted in a conversation between function and expression, and ultimately becomes a collaboration between myself and whoever chooses to wear my jewelry or incorporate my lamps into their space. My work depends on this connection formed through collaboration to evolve as it gets enveloped in another person’s reality. How I have learned to perceive and express melds with other ways of understanding, and the context of story and emotion that have shaped my work is adapted to another’s context."