While preparing my MFA portfolio, I find myself reflecting on how clay beautifully echoes the journey of self-discovery. I’m currently creating a series of exploratory pieces centered on the face — exploring eyes, noses, mouths, and ears. For each feature, I craft several versions and then choose the most compelling ones. These are not traditional portraits, but rather fragments of identity, each expressing its unique gesture, rhythm, or emotional quality.
There’s something truly inspiring about breaking the face into parts. It gently reminds us that our identity isn’t always clear or complete all at once. We get to know ourselves little by little — through special moments, memories, and small discoveries. Repeatedly shaping these features becomes almost like a calming meditation, showing us that self-discovery is a beautiful, ongoing journey.
I hope this work can grow beyond just fragments. To foster more of a conversation, I’ve started adding both wheel-thrown and hand-built pieces. On the wheel, I enjoy throwing vessels and then gently transforming them—bending, carving, or adjusting their surfaces to reflect quiet expressions. To me, these vessels become meaningful metaphors for the body: practical containers that are shaped and reshaped by personal features.
On the hand-built side, I love exploring slab and coil forms that evoke the feeling of architectural fragments or conceptual containers. These pieces beautifully suggest themes of structure, memory, and the layering of identity. They serve as gentle reminders that we aren’t just faces in space — we’re made from our experiences, supported by frameworks, and sometimes held together by the quiet strength of unseen walls.
Together, these explorations create a beautiful journey: pieces of the body, vessels as containers of our essence, and structural elements that hold and unveil hidden truths. This is the heart of Kinetic Becoming — an ongoing process of unfolding, revealing, and transforming, rather than a final destination.
The clay gently guides me through each step, reminding me that becoming isn’t about reaching a final form. Instead, it’s about embracing change, welcoming distortion, and being open to those unexpected gestures that truly bring a piece to life.
Hands to clay, eyes to the future.
