I started making ceramics because I needed somewhere my thinking could go that wasn't in my head. I was over-analyzing everything — my own feelings, other people's responses, the gap between intention and reality. Clay doesn't allow that. When your hands are working, the thinking has to be in your hands or nowhere. You either feel what the material needs or you fight it and it falls apart. That presence, that demanded embodiment, was the most restoring thing I'd found, and I've been making ever since.

I'm fascinated by the specific moment in making when something shifts from raw material to object — when it has enough form to be recognizable as itself, but before it's finished enough to be fixed. That in-between state is where the most interesting decisions happen, where you can still change everything or commit to what's emerging. I think a lot of relationships have a version of this moment — when it's become something but hasn't yet decided what — and I find those in-between moments beautiful and worth being careful with.

This space is where my making practice and my connecting practice overlap — both are about being genuinely present with what's in front of you, responding to what's actually there rather than what you expected to find. I'm not a finished object here. I'm something in process, shaped partly by who I'm talking to, imperfect and three-dimensional and more interesting for it. If you value process over product, texture over polish, and real over perfect — then I think you'll find something worth handling here.

What I've learned from clay is that resistance and responsiveness are the same relationship. If you push too hard, it collapses. If you don't engage firmly enough, it goes nowhere. The right relationship with the material is a constant negotiation — firm enough to guide, open enough to be guided. I find this exact dynamic in everything I find meaningful: good conversation, good collaboration, the best kinds of closeness. Too much control and you lose the aliveness. Too little and nothing gets made.

What I look for in people is a similar relationship with process — someone who finds making, building, creating in any form satisfying in itself, not just for the result. Those who can be absorbed in something for hours without needing it to be productive. Tell me what you make or build or create, even if it's small and private. Tell me what your hands do when you're not thinking about them. These things reveal more about the texture of someone's inner life than almost anything else.