I started my journey with clay by taking a few hand building classes at Sooki Studio in Los Angeles starting in 2024 with Alyson Iwamoto and Natalia Sookias. Aside from playing around with air dry clay I had no experience with the whole process. But I think working a lot with my hands in other mediums helped me a lot with the process. 

It feels like I'm still finding my way around this ancient medium but here are a few thing's I've made with some notes to go along.

2025

This year I switched to using Laguna B-Mix Cone 5 because I wanted to try something with less grog for doing sgraffito. It's very pale so the contrast with black and reds is very satisfying.

Snakes 

2025 was the year of the snake so I tried them in several forms. This wall hanging is unglazed, you can also see my signature on the back.

Similar style for 2 clear glazed plates.

With this little tray I experimented with plotting a morphing pattern using an underglaze pencil, then I colored the patterns with blue underglaze. The corners cracked a bit so this is not a great example of a finished piece but it was an experiment in pattern making.

 I like these forms made with a paper template and some folds. This one has a subtle underglaze texture that is almost obscured by the blue glaze.

More experiments with texture and weird vessels. This one is intended to be a self watering pot so it was two parts that mate.

And a bigger one with similar black and red underglaze markings and carved texture.

2024

Carved Little Guys

I discovered that I enjoy the process of carving the clay when it's leather hard to create these very faceted shapes. The deer creature was made with Laguna Clay 52 Buff w/Sand which is why the texture is a little rough. I painted it with Amaco black underglaze and scratched the lines.

Weird Vessels

These weird vessels started coming up after a large scale hand building class with Natalia Sookias. Made with Laguna LB6 clay and decorated with Amaco underglaze. These are textured by hand and fired to cone 6, no glaze.

Creativiy works in mysterious ways. A couple of years ago I started drawing these "weird vessels" with no intention of turning them into objects. They started as just bottles and then began morphing into plant and mushroom-like things on the page.

I was a little surprised when I actually started making them out of clay this year. Maybe there was some prescience in the sketchbooks, or maybe this is just what comes out of my hands when I'm improvising.

Here are some of the sketchbook images:

Early Projects

Some early pieces, 3 footed vases, coils on plaster molds, a tray and some sgraffito wolves on a planter.