Everything is connected and survival is en masse. Hope lives not in isolation but through the potential of collaborative movement. My ceramic practice acts as an emotional and frequently visceral filter for understanding cycles of grief and regrowth, collective and intimate, microbial and energetic. As we attempt to understand repercussions of the anthropocene, we merely fuss over them in human terms, so often selfish in intent. My hope is to grow empathy for human and nonhuman living organisms by paralleling our bilateral symmetries, stimulating the potential in cooperative existence.

Robin Wall Kimmerer through Braiding sweetgrass suggests, “In a garden, food arises from partnership. If I don’t pick up rocks and pull weeds, I’m not fulfilling my end of the bargain. I can do these things with my handy opposable thumb and capacity to use tools to shovel manure. But I can no more create a tomato or embroider a trellis in beans than I can turn lead to gold. That is the plants’ responsibility and their gift: animating the inanimate. Now there’s the gift.”

As in the garden, communities, and any relationship, clay requires tending to. Something will come next, so why not imagine with hope and action.