As ceramics is a craft medium, my practice draws from traditional pottery and its range of functions, whether they are ritualistic, like in tea ceremonies, or utilitarian, like cooking in a palayok, or clay pot. History and cultural specificity show us what we’ve valued for millennia, how we’ve lived our lives.

My sculptures exist as meditative totems or micro-worlds, depending on the piece. My home objects are more straightforward: chawans for matcha, vases for floral arrangements, vessels for incense and candles.

Spiked and bubbled appendages are the visual through-line. As biomorphic forms, they do not directly represent nature, but they evoke it, lending life to the structures they adorn. They are repeated wherever they appear.

Through repetition, we make small things meaningful. Repetition relays obsession, commitment, care, and more. In literature, it compels readers to consider additional meanings, even to reconsider the first one. In life, it amounts to a little more: our everyday habits become routine become ritual become everything we’ve known.

Through small details, we can see the big picture. Through tiny repetitions, we see what matters enough to do it again and again. I decorate my sculptures and home objects in similar ways, putting those levels of occasion on equal footing, elevating the everyday and grounding the artistic. — AD