Phoenix, AZ I think a lot about the history of objects, especially those that has been used and seen in many places, and valued for diverse reasons; once useful perhaps, then a discard, then a discovery by an archaeologist, an object of study, then swooned over in a museum, then maybe again, found lying on its side in a storage room, or on the floor of a gallery, being grouped with other objects by a curator who is piecing together another, more complicated story. I want my work to have that same flexibility and to ask the viewer to participate in making the work live in different contexts and orientations. My work draws from and responds to motifs, patterns, and structures found through history and pre-history that rebound into contemporary art and life. The processes of life and ooze are important too. Like all of us, I have absorbed the marks that people around the globe use to decorate their pots, furniture, linens, buildings, and themselves; they are filtered through me and end up on my work. I work with clay because the nature of the material exhibits time, process and change, much like our bodies, our species, our culture. It tells the story of geologic origins, environmental conditions, technological developments and every moment of the artist’s process. I think by studying the past, (which includes the present), the universal is approachable. I study artifacts, and see the connections with other cultures as a way to move forward. In an artifact, I see its many possible guises, and this notion of an object travelling through time and being held in varying degrees of importance makes me shiver. Both the object and the decoration are means of communication through time, a way to find common meaning among cultures. I want to continue that conversation in my work.