Artist statement

My inspiration comes from flowers, particularly their delicacy, impermanence, and constant cycle of growth and decay. After my father passed away, I spent time living at my parents’ house while my mother was away in China. My husband and I began gardening as a way to care for the small front yard and, in some ways, as an escape from my grief. I also hoped the garden would become something my mother could continue to tend to and a way for her to care for the home my family had lived in for so many years. Gardening made me more aware of the passage of time. Each season arrives and disappears, and there are only so many years in which I can plant, tend, and watch a garden change. Flowers have consequently become connected to my ideas of memory and keepsakes: something fleeting can hold the memory of a person, place, or moment, and something temporary can be transformed into something that can be kept.

I work primarily in porcelain, building each floral form by hand from individual petals inspired by different flowers. I am not interested in recreating a specific flower, but in creating a representation of one through the combination of forms, shapes, and movements. Some petals are intentionally abstracted or unrealistic, allowing each form to exist somewhere between recognition and imagination. My process is intuitive and spontaneous, with decisions about the shape, placement, and movement of each petal developing as I work. I am interested in the tension between strength and fragility, perfection and imperfection, and the way these qualities can exist within a single form. I continue to return to floral forms because they offer an endless vocabulary to explore through color, shape, scale, and movement. By translating something ephemeral into porcelain, I am interested in creating forms that can carry a sense of memory while also existing simply as objects to be experienced and interpreted by the viewer.