I walk and bike and take transit almost everywhere, so I end up engaging with a lot of different people, all of the time, often not by choice. I work in a store that serves all community members and provides a product (food) that everyone needs to survive. I parent in public: at the park, at the library, on the sidewalk mid meltdown from a long day at school. People talk to me. Often, when I recount these conversations, others are mystified: “why do so many people talk to you” they ask.

And in truth, I ask myself this same question! Why do so many strangers talk to me? Why do people constantly ask me for directions? Or comment on what I’m wearing or eating, or carrying on my bike? Do I look like I know where I’m going? Do they think that I (on my bike) am some special parking guru who can tell them if it’s legal to park here or not? Is there a sign on my back that says “ask this person for tissues”???

On my way to work the other day a man came up behind me and said something. At first I didn’t hear him over my music, and honestly I was fine with that. But then he got closer, and he repeated his question: “do you know what kind of tree this is?” I told him that it was a tulip magnolia and he said he really liked it, so I pointed to a tree on the next block and said “yeah that’s one too and it’s still in the bloom phase with all the flowers”. He smiled and walked with me down the street, describing other plants and trees he liked to visit. I turned the corner and he followed, pointing at another tree and we paused. “Kwanzan Cherry. A type of Japanese cherry tree. I like it because it has the bigger blossoms than the other cherries.” We continued to stand and appreciate the tree. “Thanks,” he said “I’m going this way, to check out that other tulip one now, have a nice day.”

I continued my walk to work alone, awash in nice feelings. This man was very likely experiencing homelessness. On first approach I hadn’t wanted to engage in conversation with a random person. I was just listening to music on my way to work. And yet, that moment of connection, of taking time to observe the plants, it was truly life giving.

It’s in these small moments of little ‘c’ community that we get to know our neighbors. When, on my walk to work at 4 am, someone asks me if I know of any stores that are open. When I pull out my phone and help them remember the name of the place they got their nails done one time for their birthday. When they ask for advice on a bus transfer and my child pipes up and says “yeah that’s the number 8, you’re in the right spot”.

We spend so much time online now, professing the benefits of building community. There are even entire online communities where you can pay to be a member of an exclusive club of people you will never even meet. What do we lose when we fail to engage with the people we actually live with and instead only meet people in sanitized spaces with established hierarchy?

I hope people keep chatting with me about the trees and the flowers and the murals. I want to continue to engage with my neighbors. I hope you’ll engage with me too! Wave and say hi if you see me out in the wild!

Upcoming Events & Classes

For the third year in a row I’ll have work in SEAF! I have both fine art and store art available. The festival is so fun and inspiring, I really recommend checking it out! I’ll be there on Sunday to check out the show! The ticketed show runs April 30 - May 3rd at Seattle Center.

I’m also going to be teaching a few upcoming workshops at the studio. One of them, Healing Hand Building, is something I’ve been working towards for several years. We’re going to work together to create vessels and barrel fire them. It feels like a really personal offering, and one I really feel pressure to get right. I hope you’ll consider joining me as we explore combining writing and ceramics.

Studio Updates

I continue to chug a long slowly and steadily, sculpting, carving, and letting things dry. We’re coming up to the edge of the necessary drying time for firing work before the next woodfire. I always run into the issue with trying to push it to the limit, so I’m trying to remind myself that I can always save work for future firings instead of rushing it.

All the things I do when I’m not working

Eat ice cream, poke around weird thrift shops, dig through the back rooms of used bookstores, sit out on the balcony with my partner. I take so many fewer photos now that I deleted my instagram, but here are a few fun ones I’d love to share!

Hope you’re hugging your loved ones and enjoying the spring weather we’ve had over the past few weeks!

For much of my life I didn’t think about food. I thought about only when absolutely necessary. Like my father, I found no joy in eating, only seeing it as a practical solution to a bodily need.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like food. I found many foods to taste good, but I just … wasn’t hungry? My body, conditioned by decades of ignoring hunger cues simply did not engage with thoughts about food. I might feel hungry, but twenty to thirty minutes of ignoring it later, and boom, the pain was gone, successfully tucked away for the next few hours.

By the time I was 8 I was already a master at tuning out my hunger. I knew that eating food made my stomach hurt. It made me race to the bathroom, sweaty and doubled over in pain. I asked to see a doctor. My dad, recognizing his own patterns, told me that it was normal. I was fine. I just had a ‘weak stomach’. “Avoid fats,” he said. “And dairy. And sweets. Anything spicy. Bland foods are best.”

So, following his advice, if I ate a food and felt sick afterwards, I tried to avoid it in the future. And yet the thrice daily bouts of diarrhea persisted. The further I was from a bathroom, the more urgent the pain became. I knew to expect two bouts in quick succession, and then another one a short while later. I knew that bright red blood meant it was my skin tearing, and I developed coping strategies to deal with the pain of wiping with cheap school toilet paper. I knew where every portapottie was on every athletic field in the tricity area.

Finally, when I was 16 I self referred to a GI specialist. “I think you have celiacs” he said looking at the bloodwork, “But for an official diagnosis we need to put a camera down your esophagus to check”.

I knew that sounded expensive, so I booked the follow up for a few months out, hoping to gather the courage to ask my parents since I would need their permission. What I didn’t know was that the doctor was out of network, and so was his lab. My parents were livid. They made me pay the nearly $650 bill out of my minimum wage paycheck from my part time job. I cancelled the follow up.

It went on like this for years: decades. Eating caused pain, ergo I would only eat when absolutely necessary. Food cost money and buying it seemed silly when it directly resulted in excruciating physical pain.

Eventually, in the last few years, I made my way to a team of GI specialists. I’ve had a few endoscopies now. I don’t eat gluten anymore. I haven’t had to strip down naked in a public bathroom in order to keep my clothes from becoming drenched in the shit sweats in at least six months. I no longer sprint towards the bathroom after every meal, biting my knuckles to avoid crying out in pain as my food makes a quick exit.

I like eating now. I’ve been trying new foods and reveling in new flavors. I like thinking about food. It’s almost if we, a species that must eat multiple times per day, evolved a hunger mechanism to alert us when we should do the eating. And now they’re pathologizing this thing that is crucial to our very survival. They’re demonizing eating, demonizing desire.

What, then, is the point of living, if we can’t desire? If we lose our ability to feel? Here, take this pill, feel less human. Here, use this robot algorithm to quell your need to retain knowledge. Thinking, eating, wanting: all problems we can solve, all things we can stop doing.

I wonder, truly, if people taking the drug know, really know, what they’re giving up. Are we really so vain as to give up our own satiety to fit into a smaller pair of pants? Are we ready to give up our humanity to corporations that tell us we’ll never be good enough for them? Why are we so eagerly complicit in our own demise?

*These thoughts are brought to you by working in a bakery where people force me to listen to their diet complaints with no regard to my own mental health or relationship with food. I am also forced to listen to an ad for GLP-1s play through the loud speakers approximately every 20 minutes during my work day. We live in hell.

In the Studio

It’s going slowly but surely. I’m still working on my medieval medallions and really enjoying creating personalities for all of the pussies. I’m also working on some more practical items like low bonsai and succulent planters, as well as a porcelain sculpture that I hope to illuminate from the inside 🤞

Tomorrow (Sunday, April 5) is supposed to be nice out so I’m hoping to get out to Cal Anderson and do another pop up sale. Say hi if you see me!

Don’t at me about the “health benefits” of (ab)using a glp1. I’m not interested in your concern trolling for us fatties, especially from fellow fats.

In this moment I feel like my life is the most balanced it’s ever been. I have the most time and space for my creativity and passion to grow and blossom. I have enough time to rest my body from my very physical job. I have enough time to get into the studio and work in productive chunks. I have enough quality time with my kids. I (mostly) have enough time to maintain and clean my home. I would enjoy more time with lovers and friends, so when our schedules align I jump at the chance to see them, often setting aside chores or rest, knowing that on my death bed I won’t be sad about the pile of dishes in the sink.

I am really, and truly, proud of myself. I have been anxious about money for my entire life. As a child I would roll my coins into those paper sleeves and store them in my grandpa’s old cigar boxes. The smell of those wooden boxes brings me right back to moments of me crouched on the floor, one knee bent, counting the rolls over and over again. No matter how many rolls I managed to amass, it was never enough.

In college I raced through coursework and managed to graduate a year early so I could save money. One summer I was so focused on saving money that I had a daily food budget of less than $1. I ate so much peanut butter that I gave myself kidney stones. After graduation it wasn’t much different. I calculated the cost of each meal down to the penny. Most days I skipped meals to save money. I married someone who also had money anxiety. He too, never believed there was enough. My anxiety spirals increased.

I remember standing over my bike halfway up a major hill and still a mile from home. My toddler was on the back of the bike. And there I was, my vision going in and out, on the precipice of passing out from low blood sugar, and I was calculating the cost of eating a fruit strip from my bag. Should I eat two fruit strips? Or save $.50 and just eat one?

Last night I ate a $10 pint of gelato. It was so good. Creamy and cold and just the right amount of sweet. I savored it, watching with satisfaction as I scooped it out of the container onto my spoon. It feels good to eat now. I’m proud of myself.

I’m proud of myself for building a life where I can have balance. It means not having many things! It means sharing a bedroom with my kids. It means not owning a car. It means living with my broken old phone and thrifting out of necessity. I time new purchases to align with the extra associate discount days that corporate offers at the end of slow sales periods. I buy a lot of markdown groceries.

I know there will be weeks with big, unexpected expenses, but I’m less worried about those now. I know I can pick up extra shifts. I can make do with what I have. I can borrow things from friends. I believe in myself more now than I ever have.

CLASSES

Come play in the studio! A significant part of how I pay my studio rent is teaching classes! Sign up and help me keep the studio going!

This month I’m teaching a pipe making class! We’re going to build fully functional ceramic pipes! Last time I taught this class we had a blast and I have no doubt this time will be similar!

IN THE STUDIO

I’m still working on my medieval medallion series that I wrote about early last month. I’m really enjoying sinking down into something and I feel like I’ve got a good groove going on at the moment with timing. You can read more about the project here:

SURVIVAL

I hope you’re all surviving in this capitalist hellscape. I hope you’re taking the time to love yourself and your communities. This regime will fall. Nothing lasts forever. Let’s keep each other safe so as many people as possible can survive to see that happen.

A seagull, a seagull, two bags of trash and a seagull
A mazda, a mazda, two bags of trash and a mazda
Some broken glass, some broken glass, two bags of trash and a seagull
Police car, police car, to bags of trash and a mazda

My kids, laughing as we rode along, we simply naming things we saw. It was gray that day, and windy, with crumpled leaves and old trash swirling around by our feet. I love living in my neighborhood. I love the old brick buildings with the crumbling window sills and the mixed use environment that puts apartments over bars and corner markets. I love how the park comes alive every weekend and evening: people sitting on benches smoking and reading, selling art, laying in the grass.

I’ve lived many places in Seattle but I’ve never lived in one where the space was more activated and alive. Sure, there’s trash and needles and dog shit (stop no why), but there’s also artwork and the smell of tacos and joy. I love my messy neighborhood and all of the people and life it contains.

Early spring is one of the most beautiful seasons in Seattle. By late February our most intrepid cherry trees start to blossom. I wonder each year if it’s too early, but the same trees make the first move every time, so they must know something I don’t. Today I biked past the first blooming Tulip Magnolia of the season. It was budding last week, but today I was lucky to witness it in all it’s spectacular glory. I also spied a few Star Magnolias down by Lake Union. It’s the perfect time right now to enjoy some early blooms before all of the trees start releasing their thick yellow fertility goo (aka pollen) making bike rides miserable and covering our (my) face in a fun mix of snot and tears at all times.

I also spent some time hanging out in Cal Anderson selling things on Sunday! It was such a beautiful day and it was really fun to hang out and chat with people for a few hours! I hope to get out there more during nice weather!

Class Updates

The backend of maintaining a website often makes me want to poke my own eyes out. It’s just so tedious and, on top of that, they’re always changing how the backend works so I feel like I have to constantly relearn where things are! But we will persist!

You can now sign up for the pipe making workshop at the end of the month! Discounts available for BIPOC participants.

There’s also the monthly Queer Clay Club on the last Sunday of the month! I’ve updated it so dates are available for March / April / May. Note that the one for March is going to be held a week early on 3/22.

Studio Creations

I’m plugging along in my studio continuing to work on my series inspired by medieval pilgrim pins. I’m really enjoying the direction this work is going and I hope to fire these works in the wood kiln in May!

What’s one stupid1 thing you really want to make but haven’t given yourself permission to spend money, time, or energy creating? What would you need to allow yourself to start?

It seems strange that time keeps moving forward when someone you loved is gone. I go to work and bake the cookies and whole families are dragged off in unmarked vans, deposited in concentration camps: left to rot. The sickly sweet smell of chocolate chips and maple pecan flavoring filling my nostrils all day while people are dying.

My friends text me “I’M GONNA SCREAM!” and I vacillate between silence and screaming back. We must fight, we have to fight; we are drowning, we are being pulled under.

In the Studio

I’ve been working on a series of sculptures inspired by medieval pilgrim pins. Religious pilgrims would wear these pins on their journeys, often to indicate their piousness or where they had been. Researchers are still unclear on the role of pins shaped like vulvas and penises but I like to think that medieval people, likely so much more intimately connected to their bodies than us, would deign to worship pleasure and bodies. Medieval art and manuscripts often contain imagery that we (modern people) would consider profane or overtly sexual. And in a time where almost no one outside of the church had the ability to read (or access to said manuscripts), one must wonder about these pious kinksters!

I’m excited to keep going with this idea and I’m really loving solid sculpting! Of course you never know how things will turn out in pottery, but I’m hoping this one makes it to the kiln!

Fired Up

I hope you’ll join me on Friday, February 27 from 6-9 pm for an art exhibition! My work is included in a group show celebrating current and past apprentices at Pottery Northwest! I have four pieces in the show, three that have never been exhibited before! Included are my new works that are solid sculpted and pit fired and I’m excited to show them!

Pussy Pipe Sculpting

Join me on Sunday, March 29 from 5-7 pm for a pipe sculpting class! Create your very own smokable pussy/bussy/tdick pipe! We’ll create functional artwork with plenty of options for customization!

Follow Up Links

My friend Beau passed away suddenly last weekend. He was a wonderful friend, an engaged community member, a caring partner, and an incredibly patient parent. He leaves behind his partner and their two very young children (7 months, 4 years). You can read a wonderful tribute to Beau here. A loss like this is unbelievably hard on everyone involved. If you’re able, please support Stevie and the kids as they try to regain some stability.

Last month I posted about organizing for a general strike and you can can involved in organizing efforts with the Freedom Socialist Party! Here’s a write up about a recent meeting: Town Hall Builds Support for a General Strike

Hug your loved ones, kiss your friends on the forehead, buy yourself the pretty flowers. We are not promised tomorrow.

I’m a strong union proponent and union organizer in training. So when a friend asked me if I thought we had the momentum for a general strike I wanted to say yes. And yet. I know exactly how hard it is to rally support around a strike. This past summer my union of more than 3,000 workers voted to close 90% of all grocery stores in the Puget Sound if our corporate overlords wouldn’t come back to the bargaining table. We had a robust strike fund and the union has a strong history of backing strikes. We had other industries who would be paying into the fund while we were taking strike pay. We live in a state that had just passed legislation (but would not yet pay out) mandating unemployment benefits for striking workers. We had the backing of other unions who vowed not to deliver to striking stores so that they couldn’t use scab labor.

And it was still a hard sell. Many people were afraid. They believed the corporate propaganda and fell for illegal strike busting lies. They were, like the majority of people in this country, just one paycheck away from becoming homeless. They didn’t think they could withstand the duration of a strike or even of receiving strike pay a few days later than their normal paycheck.

In the end we voted to authorize a strike. The vote was 98% in favor. Weeks of practicing striking had worked. The walkouts had worked. The quiet convincing had worked. The flyering had worked.

What I learned from that experience is that organizing a strike is a marathon, not a sprint. And organizing for a general strike is something even more grueling: a 100k through the desert in the heat of summer. We are scared. We are disenfranchised. We have been beaten down by the slow creep of fascism. And now that it’s here we will continue to lose our rights at an ever increasing pace. It will become ever harder to organize the longer we wait. Much like planting trees: the best time to organize a general strike was 30 years ago; the second best time is now.

They come for the queers first because we scare them. With our ability to shun the nuclear family and build our own networks of community and care outside of the government sanctioned ones, we are powerful. We who dare to transform, to imagine a new world. We are dangerous. We have ideas. They attack us first because we are an easy target. Then, once they’ve convinced the world that we’re monsters who can’t be trusted, they come for their real target: the true scapegoats.

Queers: do not let them silence you. Do not let them scare you into hiding. Your existence is resistance. It was not simple happenstance that Renee Nicole Good was a queer woman. Queerness is political rebellion. May her memory be a blessing. May it be your impetus to fight, to organize, to band together and rise up against fascism.

In the Studio

I’m finishing up a number of pieces for a big submission this week. Some of the work was a fired last January and some of it I just got back from the kiln a few days ago. Wood firing is like that. Sometimes you just have to sit with the work for a few weeks, or months, or years, before you can really appreciate all of the work that went into it. The weeks of labor, the decades of tree growth, the centuries it takes to build up minerals in the soil.

I hope to see you out there on the picket lines in 2026. None of us are free until all of us are free. And remember: only the working class can stop fascism!

Choosing Queerness

Being queer is a choice. Growing up we were told that being gay isn’t a choice. We were told that some people are just born that way. They can’t help it. Because if they could, the theory holds, they wouldn’t. Who would choose such a fate? What with its pain, its ostracization, its disease. No one! No one would choose to live such a horrible life, so then it stands to reason that it must not be a choice at all.

It is, in fact, a belief that I held for a long time! Sure, I found women attractive. And yes, I fantasized about kissing my best friends, and of course I developed deep, messy, romantic friendships that blurred the line between friends and lovers. But I wasn’t gay because I could choose men instead.

I could choose compulsory heterosexuality. It was, after all, much easier. I didn’t have to interrogate my feelings for boys. They were easy to come by. Wait long enough at any college party and by the end of the night there was someone to go home with. I was hot and I knew it. I knew how to dress, what to say, how to preform for men. I could be exactly what they wanted.

A month before my wedding I knew. I knew I wasn’t happy. I knew I had doubts. I knew what I wanted to say. I called my best friend crying, trying to get it out. It was on the tip of my tongue. But I couldn’t say it. I simply couldn’t say that I wanted to end my engagement because I wanted to intentionally date women. So I didn’t. I chose straightness.

I took the path of least resistance. I stayed on the train. In many ways it was easy. I was a woman and here was my husband, a man. People respected me for it. Society rewarded me for it. No one asked me prying questions like “how does sex work” or “whose on top”, or my personal favorite, “are all lesbians really virgins”. They respected my partnership. They gave me health insurance and tax breaks. They assumed parentage.

And I was so jealous. I was jealous of my friends who had chosen queerness. I was jealous of their freedom, of their love, of their expanded concept of family. I wanted it. I wanted to be sixteen again, making out with girls in the parking lot. But this time I didn’t want to pretend that we were “just practicing” for kissing boys.

I told myself that I could be queer in a hetero-presenting relationship. Bisexual visibility baby! I wore pride pins and read queer romance novels. I lusted after women. I even dated some! But then I went home to my straight life and I wanted more.

I wanted to get up and choose queerness every day, not just on days where I had a sitter and could go on a fun date with a cute nb from hinge. I wanted to choose friendship and community over the nuclear family. I wanted to stop downplaying my queerness; making myself smaller to be more palatable. And so, when I was given an ultimatium: choose the appearance of straightness over the love of found family, I chose queerness.

I walked away from the easier life.

It’s been nearly a year now. I live and work in a new neighborhood, the gayborhood. I am constantly surrounded by queerness. I can walk into any bar and no longer question wether the woman at the bar is looking at me because she’s into me or if I have something weird on my face. I stopped caring about what men like.

In the end, we all get to choose. We can continue to yearn for the life we dream of living, or we can take conscious steps towards intentionally building that life. We can take the risk of telling people that we love them and that we want to live with them in a giant co-housing commune, or we can stay small. We can redefine family or we can keep going home to people who don’t make an effort to understand us. We can live in a teeny one bedroom apartment with our children’s bed lofted up above ours, or we can keep playing house inside of compulsory heterosexuality and dreaming of the suburbs.

I made my choice, and now I am free.

*Look it up yourself! I’m gay and tired, if you’re straight you can do your own research okay!

Capitalism is SO LOUD. It is always yelling at us to buy more and do more and be more. I hope this email finds your inbox blissfully free from the extreme shopping noise of the season. I hope you read it, and you enjoy it, and maybe you send it to a friend. And also I’d like to acknowledge that I too am sending emails to your inbox screaming LOOK AT MEEEE, BUY MY THINGS!!!!

Shop Update

It’s wild how much work it is to post work online for sale. Photos and measurements and editing and making listings and wow I really don’t enjoy this type of work! I’d much rather sell my work in person, but I also know that it doesn’t work for my schedule at the moment.

I’m hoping you’ll take a moment to check out all of my work and find something you want to take home with you! I spend a lot of time with the work. From wedging the clay, to throwing, to trimming, to adding handles, to the first firing, to driving it to Oregon, to gluing on wads, to loading the kiln, to firing through the night, to grinding the shelves, to polishing the bottoms, to hiking with the work, to photographing it…these are my babies.

Adopt a work of art

Atmospheric pottery, and especially wood fired pottery, is considered the potters pottery. It’s mostly purchased by hardcore collectors or by other potters who can appreciate just how much work goes into this method of firing. And! I hope my work connects with people who know nothing about pottery! I hope anyone can pick it up and appreciate the subtle color changes and how it feels in your hand. So please take a look! And if you want to touch stuff before you buy it, just shoot me a note, and you can come by the studio to check it out IRL!

I’m going to keep adding more work over the next week or so as I can process the images. I wanted to do one big drop, but there simply aren’t enough ADHD meds in the world that would make me sit still long enough to finish all of the sale entries at one time 😅 If you’re hoping for oil pourers or bolo ties they’re coming I promise! With more than 100 pieces, there’s plenty to choose from!

Studio Updates

Come join me in the studio in December!

I’m hosting an ornament making workshop and Queer Clay Club. Sign up now to hold your spot!

I’m still figuring out how everything in the studio works. For example, the temperature and moisture content in the new studio is totally different than the old one. This means I have to work much faster because the work dries so much more quickly! No more boiling my throwing water in the winter, now I’m changing into shorts when I arrive and drenching my t-shirts in sweat!

I also have to figure out a new way to take photos, and one without any natural light. While I prefer to photograph my work outdoors in natural settings, I also realize that it isn’t always (or even often) practical. So I’ve been working on rigging up a photo station. I think I finally dialed in the lighting, and I’m excited to try out different backgrounds in the future.

Events/Markets

I’m not doing many events or markets this year. In fact, up until last week I wasn’t doing any. But now I’m excited to report that you can find my work in person at two events, this weekend and next.

This Thursday - Sunday (12/4-7) I’ll be at a fun pop-up at RailSpur in Pioneer Square! Shop my work and other local artists/makers at ‘Wish You Were Here’ a 4-Day holiday hang with a full gifting popup shop and activations by @inbetweenmarket at @railspur.seattle. Pick up your holiday trees and wreaths from @marigoldandmintbotanicals, find the perfect gift for friends with vintage and handmade goods and sip festive drinks from @cafebeeba with special guest @dancerandprancerband on Saturday! The celebration kicks off with @pioneersquare #firstthursdayartwalk and rolls straight through the weekend! December 4-7 - 4-9 PM Thur, 11-6 Fri+Sat & 11-5 Sun. Come wander, sip and shop. Wish You Were Here.”

Next weekend (12/12-14) I’ll be back at the old studio space, for the annual holiday market. Find my work along with work from the current studio occupants Mud and Mortal and others!

Small Business Links

We all want cool local businesses in our communities! They add color and creativity to our lives. They take chances and host fun events! They are run by real people who live next door to us and help us when we get locked out or need to borrow a ladder. In order to keep these resources around we have to support them with our actual dollabucks! We have to show up to their events! We have to tell our friends about them! Check out some of my favorite local business, and send me yours in return!

I love checking out all of the yarn at Tea Cozy in Ballard. Emily is amazing and has been a supporter of my studio since day one!

Sour is my taste of choice and Urban Family Brewing is run by Andy - who is a really cool dude and another supporter!

Rain City Clay and Rat City Studios are both a wonderful studios, and taking classes with Deb is a really expansive learning opportunity!

I love tacos and Carmelos (the OG location especially) is my favorite place to get them.

Used books and cats?! Find me at Twice Sold Tales any rainy day petting kitties and enjoying the smell of old books.

There are approximately one million more places in my community that I love, and I would love to hear about your favorite spots too!

Studio Progress

When I first moved into the studio I gave myself a month to do the build out. At the end of September the studio was still not even close to finished. I had been working six days per week at the bakery and only getting into the studio for a few hours once a week. October wasn’t any easier schedule wise, but I had friends willing to spend evenings and weekends helping me organize and mount shelves. As we edged into November I could finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.

This week I was finally able to work with clay in my new space! I’m sure I’ll continue to move things around and make changes as I settle in, but it’s so exciting to be able to create! It’s also scary! I can no longer avoid making work because I’m “still moving in”. I actually have to show up and translate my ideas into clay.

Visit the Studio

Come and visit the studio! I have a number of events planned and I’m excited to welcome people into the space!

Join me for Queer Clay Club this Sunday, November 16 at 7pm!

Visit in December for more QCC and an ornament making workshop. Plus come by the studio to pick up holiday gifts while supporting a local artist!

In January I’ll host another QCC and another pipe making workshop!

May your fall be filled with majestic trees and the space to sit and reflect with a warm beverage. Hope to see you soon!

I also think fall ushers in a slower season. In this land of rain there’s so much pressure to do all the things during the summer months. My fall calendar is less full, leaving more space to sit under quilts with friends and drink mugs of tea. This season of long dark is the time for holding close what we love and resting our soft warm bodies. We may be in a free fall into fascism, but at least we have each other…

Studio News

I’ve made the move! It took many bodies and hours of packing, but it’s slowly coming together! Last week some friends visited from out of town and I harnessed their collective strength to finish removing the carpet. It was a four person job to haul it out, so I’m glad for the extra help. This week I moved some shelves around and set up my wheel. Next up is the sink, and then I can start making again!

Shop Updates

I’m putting the finishing touches on some work and I’ll have an online shop update coming on October 27th! I’ll have soap dispensers, oil bottles, mugs, and cozy bowls, perfect for fall soups.

I’ll also be offering another workshop on pussy pipes and one on sculpting pussy ornaments for your holiday display, so stay tuned!

Queer Clay Club

I’m excited to get back to hosting a monthly queer clay club! I’m hoping to hold the first one in November. I am going to be changing the fee structure a little bit. I want to offer sliding scale pricing - but I find that people who don’t pay anything are also the least likely to show up. Since the club sells out every month this is a huge bummer because it means that people who want to come may not be able to!

Because of this, I’m going to remove the free tier from the website. I don’t want this to be a barrier to attendance, so please reach out if payment isn’t an option for you and we can figure it out!

I’m also going to offer punch cards for people who would like to pay for three sessions in advance (at any tier). You’ll then be able to register for future classes using a code.

What I’m Reading/Eating/Crafting

I just finished up an amazing novel about two queer teens, one who embraces their queerness and one who represses it. The story is written in two voices as they dance around each other during early adulthood, coming soooo close to colliding, and yet…their choices manage to keep them apart. It’s a Peak Pick at the library and definitely worth the read!

I want to be eating more soup! Send me your favorite soup recipe! I’m hoping to make one with black beans and pulled pork this weekend.

Now that it’s getting cold again it’s time to finally finish up my new cowl that I’ve had on the needles since last winter. The poor thing has been languishing in a drawer but my neck is cold so it’s time! And then of course onto the annual project of knitting mittens my children will lose instantly. It’s truly a mystery where they go!

Thank you and

Thank you for all of your support! I truly couldn’t do it without you!

And! I am but one person working multiple jobs while also trying to maintain my relationships and parent small people! I’ve gotten a number of emails lately requesting refunds for classes that people did not attend. As a micro business each individual sale is important! When classes sell out I can’t move people up from the waitlist if you decide not to show up. Unlike amazon, I don’t have billions of dollars to invest in space ships. So please I beg you, if you sign up for a class or workshop, please put it in your calendar! Unfortunately I can’t offer refunds because you forgot to come!

Email is the best way to get in touch with me! You can respond directly to this email or use the EMAIL ME button on the bottom of the home page if you’d like to reach out!

I’m not on social media at the moment, but I’d love to hear about what’s going on! Feel free to send me cool things you’re working on or fun events you think I’d like!

So the studio party for Saturday is now going to run from 2-6 pm. There will still be music and snacks, but it’ll be much more chill and relaxed. Come buy some art if you can! I’d love to sell some work before I have to pack it all up and put it in storage for a little bit. I have a bunch of new wood fired pieces that I’m excited to share with you!

You can also help me sort and pack! There will be a lot of smashing! We’re going to smash all my old work that I no longer want and all the pieces I don’t feel like finishing. If you need pieces for garden mosaics, come by and collect some! Broken bisquewear is the perfect filling for planters because it’s absorbent and provides great drainage.

I also have old paintings and a collection of large picture frames that need new homes! I’ve been making and selling art for 15 years now, so I have a ton of work that I’ve been carrying around that I’m finally willing to part with. Plus supplies and experiments!

Kiln Updates

Like I said in my last email, work will be ready at the end of the month. I really appreciate your patience! Since switching to all atmospheric firings for my own work I just haven’t had the critical mass necessary to run a glaze fire in my own kiln! But with the pussy pipe workshop, some mugs friends made, and a few last pieces from the holidays, I finally have enough to run it!

For the uninitiated, while it’s possible to run an empty kiln - the work doesn’t fire evenly and it has trouble reaching temperature, which can cause over or under firing. It’s possible to stuff the kiln full of kiln furniture and extra shelves to retain excess heat, but it’s best to fire a full kiln load.

I’ll email everyone with work in the firing when it’s done! Pick up options will be in Ballard or Cap Hill.

Hope to see you this Saturday!!

Pussy Pipe Workshop

We spent hours combing the sand for shells. My mothers favorite were those small orange ones, matte on the outside, iridescent on the inside. They were so thin you could see sunlight shining through when you held them up. I loved the horseshoe crabs and the purple sheen of the oyster shells. The conch shells you could hold up to your ear and hear the whole ocean inside of.

Every day we’d bring our haul back to the glass table on the pool deck, our feet full of splinters from the splitting wood and rose thorns from the brambles along the path. We’d walk back barefoot from the creek along the gravel road. You had to have thick skin on your feet to get anywhere at my grandparents house.

At the end of our stay we’d load the shells into old cigar boxes plundered from the fireplace cabinet. We’d fill the boxes to the brim, then stack them in the car for the long drive home. We stored them in the basement on wire shelves in the workshop where they’d sit, unnoticed, for most of the year. Every so often though, someone would have a craft project and we’d pull down all the boxes of shells and open them up, sorting through the soft edged glass and crab claws to find just the right treasure for our school project or birthday gift. The boxes smelled like my grandparents, they smelled like the beach: they smelled like home.

I returned from my second residency at Sou’Wester last week. Each day I walked to the beach several times. I went in the morning when it was still cool and cloudy. I went in the afternoon when the sun was high and bright. I went in the evening as the fog rolled in and the wind whipped the sand into my eyes. Each time, as I walked down the path lined with wild roses and scrub pines, that same scent of home filled my nostrils. I never saw anyone smoking a cigar, and yet there was always a whiff of it in the air. The wind cracking branches to the exact same tune as when I’d crack open those old cigar boxes, hinges stiff with sand and salt.

Since returning from my trip many people have asked me what I did on my residency. The answer is: nothing. I really didn’t do much of anything. I spent hours sitting in the hammock contemplating the color of the sky. I spent a lot of time thinking about the properties of sand and if each grain has it’s own soul, or if it is one being, fractured and scattered throughout the world.

May we all find the opportunity to simply sit and think about nothing at all. May it be as transformative for you as it has been for me.

Pipe Making

There are still a few spots left in the pipe making workshop! But sign up soon because the queers walking around Cal Anderson have been smashing that QR code and registering with lightening speed!

Party People

Join me on August 16th for a studio party! I’ll have ceramics for sale plus hands on clay activities! I’ll also have clay and glazes for sale, plus some studio fixtures and shelves!

Work Updates

If you have in progress work that needs to be finished rest assured that I am *finally* going to run a glaze fire! I apologize that it’s taken me so long to finish up and thank you for your patience. Your work will go in the kiln mid-August and be ready by the end of next month. I will email you about pick up!

Of course June is the holy month of my people, so we spent a lot of time celebrating and generally just being as queer as possible out in public. I danced with friends and kissed people in bars and watched more drag performances than I thought was even possible. My legs ache from dancing, my pores are filled with glitter, and I can’t get the sweet smell of hundreds of sweaty queer bodies out of my nose. We sang, we danced, we reveled in our joy. We are here, we are queer, we aren’t going anywhere.

I also had the opportunity to fire again at East Creek, and I love the new work! I’m hoping to sell most of it in person at my August studio sale, but whatever’s left will be posted in a web drop come September.

Classes and Events

I’m teaching one last class at the studio, and it’s going to be so fun! We’ll be sculpting functional pipes in the shape of pussies! I hope you’ll join me!

I’m also excited to be throwing a studio move out party! We’re going out with a bang! The party will be an opportunity to buy finished pieces, studio supplies, and clay and glazes. It’ll also be a celebration! We’ll be sculpting and getting our hands in the clay, making weird things, just like always! There will also be snacks, drinks, and generally fun vibes! Come by and say hi!

In the end

We seem to be living in the end times. The downfall of this empire. And yet it is also so normal. We go to work and watch our shows, and witness people being kidnapped off the streets and disappeared. To my loves who have been fighting: rest and recharge this season, so you can return soon with more life in you. To my loves who could be fighting more: now is your time to step up and relieve some of the pressure; to take on some of the burden of resistance. This is a team effort: we need each other to survive.

I love you.

When I first decided to move out of my studio space I felt an enormous sense of relief. It came over me in a cool wave. No more studio. No more paying rent on a space I haven’t been using. No more feeling like every waking moment I must be creating new work to justify paying the rent, no more upkeep, no more guilt.

I have loved this space. I needed it so much. It held me in my grief. It taught me that I am strong, I am capable, I can do this. And I will do this. I will build out a new space, eventually. One that is closer to my new home in Cap Hill. One that will serve me until it doesn’t, and then I will change again. My dreams are not static, and neither am I. I am morphing and changing and growing all of the time.

This summer I’ll be taking some time away from my apprenticeship at PNW to work on wrapping up the studio. I’ll host a few more Queer Clay Club nights and then have a big sale and party to go out with a bang. My plan is for that to happen the first weekend in August, so stay tuned for the invite.

This isn’t the end of me making work, on the contrary, I think I’ll be able to make more work, better work, once I’m not being pulled in so many different directions. I look forward to continuing my apprenticeship in the fall, and then slowly looking for the right space for my own studio in early 2026. Hit me up with any leads! And if you’re looking for a great studio space in Ballard, I know just the person to talk to about a lease!

Where to find my work

Check out Fired with Pride, a show celebrating queer wood fire artists! This show is so special to me because it is being organized by the same people who put on Queer Cat, which was my first introduction to the art of wood firing! I had wanted to try it for so long but was intimidated by the high entry costs and long drive. Participating last year changed my entire practice. It changed how I view myself (strong, capable) and has given me the confidence to make work that feels truly my own.

I’ll have three pieces in the show next month so I encourage you to check it out if you’re in Portland!

Queer Clay Club

There’s still a few spots left for June so sign up now! If you came to the first meeting back in February and opted to fire your work - it’s done with the bisque! Let me know what your plans are for the pieces!

Artist Residency

I’m headed back down to Sou’wester for another artist residency this July. I’m going to be teaching a two day workshop on slab built chain vases!

Sou’wester is an amazing and magical place and I’m so excited to return and see it in a different season. If you’re looking for a weekend trip to the coast, I encourage you to give it a look! And if you do visit, see if you can spot the stickers I hid around the resort!

Post Script

Working on your mental health is hard! It takes so much time and energy to actively confront trauma and rewire your brain to develop new coping skills. It takes so much resilience, when all you want to do is run away and ignore everything! Admitting you need support and then asking people to show up for you is hard! Figuring out who you are alone is hard! And as much as I have loved the studio with every fiber of my being, and as hard as it will be to let it go, I know I’m not less of an artist without my own dedicated space. I know I’m not a failure.

So if you needed a nudge - here’s one! Set up an appointment with your therapist! Tell your friends you love them and you need them! Ask for hugs! Invite people over to eat frozen pizza on the couch in your messy apartment in the middle of the week because you crave connection! Attention seek when you need attention! Walk away when you need a break! Sleep in a hammock when you’re tired!

Rest, my love. The revolution needs you for a long time: it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Luckily I’ve been in a creative funk before, so I know it will end. I don’t know exactly when, but I can trust that the spark will return and when it does I’ll be dying to get into the studio and make.

In the meantime I’ve been working on decorating my new apartment, spending time exploring my new neighborhood, and cooking. The other day when it was sunny out a friend and I hiked down to the creek with our pottery and took some glamour shots of recent work.

Upcoming Shows and Sales

For the second year in a row I’ll have work available for purchase at the Seattle Erotic Arts Festival (SEAF)! The festival is held at Seattle Center every year and is so fun! There’s so much great art and creative performances. I’ll have work in both the store and as part of the juried art collection. Get your tickets here!

I’m hoping to do an online drop in the next few weeks, but I don’t want to overcommit by picking a specific date yet. My day job is really physically demanding and it turns out I need a lot more sleep to recover!

Queer Clay Club

There’s two slots left for QCC next week! Join us and make a fun collaborative sculpture! No experience necessary, and everyone is welcome at this monthly sliding scale event.

PS: I’ll have some brand new, not even photographed yet work available! It came out of the reduction cooling of the anagama and it looks amazing! I hope you can come check it out!

I knew I wasn’t a woman in 2016. It was a visceral feeling, deep in my soul. I had been experiencing dysphoria for years but didn’t understand quite what that meant. I didn’t want to be trans. I wanted to be a normal, regular, everyday woman. So I pushed the feeling down, squishing it, banishing it to the darkest part of my mind. Each time it pounded on the door I would burst into tears, worried that I might actually say it aloud: make it real, make it something I couldn’t take back.

In my childhood I spent hours in front of the mirror, gazing at my own reflection. I would sing, poke and prod at my face, argue with imaginary lovers, put on make up, tweeze my eyebrows. But at some point along the line I stopped looking in the mirror. At first it was just in public. I didn’t want people to see me looking at my own reflection, so I’d wash my hands quickly while staring down at the water. But then, ever so slowly, I stopped looking all together.

I only looked at myself in photographs. It was somehow easier to see myself in that once removed space than to see myself in the mirror. In the mirror you can lean in close, see everything; a photograph is held out distant: it stays small.

In 2022 I decided to separate from my spouse. I wanted to explore my queerness in ways I couldn’t do in that relationship. I shaved my head. Got new tattoos. Called around for surgical consults. Injected medications to stop my body from producing estrogen. I finally felt like I had ownership over my body. I didn’t have to preserve myself in time for someone else. I could transform.

My work, too, changed. The power of firing in atmospheric kilns is that the work enters unglazed and is transformed by glass and ash. It’s covered in these swirling, melting, wild sprays of color. It’s created in community: each piece affecting those around it. In this way the work shares ideas, supporting the group as it finds its way.

I still don’t look in the mirror. I know I’m experiencing gender euphoria in the way I walk, the way I feel grounded down into myself, the way I speak, and dance, and sing. I don’t think those of us who wish to transform will ever truly feel like enough: we are always in the process of becoming. We are the open ones, the ones willing to push through the fire to see what possibilities are on the other side. We are the ones who push boundaries and ask: what else can I become, if only I open myself up to the potential of being anything? We are stardust.

Studio Updates

It’s been both really busy and really quiet in the studio! I’ve been traveling back and forth to rural OR several times already this year, with a few more trips planned to finish up the anagama reduction firing. Wood firing is so much work! It takes significantly more time and effort than electric firing.

I’m working on fine tuning my plans to offer private parties at the studio. These would be geared around a specific hand building project and allow for BYOB and time to snack in the front room.

Additionally, I’m working on my ideas for a Queer Clay Club, a place for queer people to come together and make on a regular basis.

Join me for a slab mug workshop at The Works in February.

My work will be on sale at Good Earth Pottery as part of their Winter Warmers Cup Show until the end of the month!

I’ll be at Handmadeland at Magnuson Hangar during Valentine’s Day weekend (2/15-16) from 11-5. Come say hi and check out my newest wood fired work!

I’m also working on revamping the front display to make the space more conducive to sales! And I’d love to feature some additional artists as well, so if you’d like an opportunity to sell your work let me know!

Plus!

I’m also doing an apprenticeship at Pottery Northwest! This means I’ll be working in the studio weekly and learning more about the work required to successfully run a nearly 400 person community studio! I’ll also be taking classes there and working on some BIG sculptures that are too big to fire in my own kiln. If you see me, say hi!

This was an incredibly vulnerable post to write. Thanks for reading. I love you.

I grew up in a home where love was rationed. I was told that I was too hard to love, unworthy of love, incapable of forming lasting relationships. I was too much. For a long time I believed it. I hid myself. I twisted myself into knots trying to be what other people needed me to be. If I wanted to be loved I had to someone else. I spent years trying to be less.

But I am not less. I am more. I love quickly, madly, deeply. I love my friends, my children, my romantic partners. I love the way the moon looks behind a thin veil of clouds. The way gravel crunches underfoot, the cool air moving across my shaved head. When I walk I turn my palms out to the world and press down through my feet. I breathe in deeply and look up at the sky and exude love.

In the past six months I’ve ended two incredibly important long term relationships with people in my life. I have felt grief, and relief, and freedom. I have spent hours in the studio pressing my hands into clay, tears dripping into my splash pan as I bend over the wheel.

And this is my space. I get to use it to write about my practice, my work, my mess: my love. I won’t promise to segment out class interest lists with my writing on queerness or my experience living and making art. If you want to unsubscribe, I understand. I am not for everyone. I am for me.

When you’re in the studio you can pick up a last minute gift for yourself or someone you love!

I’m working on writing more about my residency experience last month, but between holiday prep and getting ready for some big wood firings coming up I haven’t had time. I don’t expect 2025 to be more chill, but here’s to hoping anyways!

I loved my residency last month but have been go-go-go getting ready for the open studio and making work for upcoming wood firings. Hoping to write more about the experience soon!