Artist Statement (courtesy of the artist)

In preparing for this exhibition, I wanted to create ceramic objects that feel as though they have been collected from another world.

I have aphantasia, a neurological trait that means I cannot voluntarily form mental images. Rather than picturing things in my mind, I discover them through making. Clay has become a way to give physical form to ideas that feel just out of reach: dreamlike creatures, impossible objects, and imagined worlds that seem both familiar and unknown.

Using slip-cast fragments of vintage dolls alongside hand-built forms, I create vessels, creatures, moons, and small curiosities that blur the line between memory and invention. Familiar objects are removed from their original purpose and given new lives: as relics, specimens, companions, or places for living things to grow.

With this body of work, I was drawn to the tension between the comforting and the uncanny. A doll's hand becomes a simple vase. A porcelain head becomes a garden. Long-legged animals wander beneath imagined moons. I hope these transformations invite viewers to reconsider objects they think they know and to linger in the space where recognition gives way to curiosity.

My practice is rooted in experimentation and play. Rather than illustrating stories, I build worlds one object at a time, hoping each piece feels discovered rather than made: part artifact, part keepsake, part impossible specimen. Together, they become a collection that embraces wonder, mystery, and the strange beauty found in looking closely.