When I tackle a new piece, I’m rarely trying to perfectly recreate a traditional story. Instead, I find myself hunting for a specific visual language—especially when it comes to snakes. I really wanted to steer clear of traditional, textbook-realistic reptiles. I wanted something that looked genuinely different. That search led me straight to the iconic,…
Meet the Blue Lobster: The Ceramic That Refused to Die We’ve all been there. You’re at the wheel, totally in the zone, feeling like a pottery god… until you push your luck just a little too far. That is exactly how this piece started. I was throwing a cylinder, got a bit too ambitious, and…
The Evolution of the Beast The Head & Body: In the early stage, the dragon’s head was smooth and blocky, primarily focusing on getting the silhouette right. By the bisque stage, I carved in a deep, piercing eye socket and covered the snout in fine, interlocking scales. The jagged spine plates now sharply pop off…
I’ve been experimenting with new surfaces for my ceramics, and I realize that a vase is a excellent canvas. The height gives me more space to capture detailed subjects, like the magnificent robot from Laputa: Castle in the Sky. For this piece, I decided to try painting the robot along with the golden Laputa emblem…
Behind the Mud: Going Tall with a Glaze-Driven Tumbler When you spend a lot of time at the wheel, your hands eventually want to push upward. I had been practicing throwing taller pieces, which naturally got me thinking about what I could do with a larger vertical canvas. I didn’t want to jump straight to…
The most fun I ever have playing with mud—both hypothetically and practically speaking—is when I just step back and let my inner fanboy completely take over. That’s exactly what happened with this latest batch of experimental cups. If the handles look a bit like legendary weapon hilts, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. They are directly…
Behind the Mud: Embracing the Mess on a Challenging Form Every form you throw on the wheel brings its own set of rules. For this project, I wanted to step away from standard vertical cylinders and try a classic, flared latte cup. It turns out that wide, sloping walls are a much tougher canvas. Carving…
Behind the Mud: Building a Battle in the Background As you spend more time with the wheel and the carving tools, you start to realize that what you leave flat matters just as much as what you carve. With my earlier mecha pieces, I focused heavily on the mobile suits themselves—letting their giant features morph…
Behind The Mud: Squeezing a Giant Robot Into a Small Canvas Every now and then, the studio presents you with a purely technical riddle. After working on highly exaggerated, chunky sculptural pieces, I found myself holding a much smaller cup and wondering: How much of a giant mecha can I actually fit onto a canvas…
Behind the Mud: Let the Clay Decide the Mecha Morph Every now and then, it’s incredibly grounding to dig back through the studio archives and look at pieces that pushed our boundaries. Looking back to November 2019, I remember sitting at the workbench with a fresh cylinder of wet clay and a desire to try…