Through my work, I explore the performance of identity. As a queer person, I often found my West Virginian upbringing isolating and unforgiving. I struggled to balance who I was with who I needed to be in order to survive a social landscape that was unaccepting. I interpret that experience through the vessels I create, with forms that reference relatively everyday silhouettes but upon closer inspection, posses a disjointed surface and construction.

Through the merging of slab built construction with thrown forms, I depict the internal turmoil that I experienced while attempting to seem like everybody else. The distressed slabs encasing the thrown form and completing the silhouette of the vessel represent the way in which the environment of my upbringing shaped the way I presented myself. The hand built components are left unglazed to not gloss over the pain of those hardships, to erase the grit of my experience. The body of the vessel is thrown and glazed in a dark color palette to portray the truth of my emotions suppressed within. My vessels as a whole show the struggle of trying to fit within the perimeters of what is socially accepted.

In adulthood, I have been able to process my past and step into a world where I am authentic to myself without feeling any societal pressures to conform. I hope that through my work, I can inspire people to evaluate their own identity and do the same.