About

I paint and make pottery, and I tell my story using the combination of these two mediums. I hand build and carve clay forms, then layer glazes and texture onto their surfaces—balancing the control of the brush with the unpredictability of the clay and firings.  

I am deeply influenced by the physical world and fascinated by how we shape our surroundings—and how those spaces, in turn, shape us. My work examines context, with a particular interest in how things (humans included) come to be via our environments. 

Through painted plates, I revisit Chongqing, where I was born but left as a child. Over my lifetime, the city has erupted into a cyberpunk megapolis of 30 million residents where towering buildings are connected by endless stairs and elevators.  The "Chongqing Plates" are an exercise in nostalgia and exploration of an unreliable memory. The plates are loosely based on my own fading memories, clouded by my travel to other places, and biased by the old Chongqing in Wu Guanzhong's paintings.  I wanted to capture what little of the city I had left, permanently in clay, before it diluted further. 

I’ve also been exploring the stories held by hands. Hands are living landscapes of the lives we lead— muscled, wrinkled and shaped by the way we use them. By tracing and molding their forms, I’m working through the quiet strength and layered narratives our bodies carry through our hands.

While I have been fortunate to be able to call many places home, I currently make public policy and art in the Boston area.