Summer of clay, cartoons, and paintings in my studio

Recent paintings (2025-2026), oil and acrylic on cotton, linen, or wood and a mixed media work on paper

This summer I am working in clay and cartoons. I have a studio full of paintings, some that I love, some that I hate, many that you will never see! I really wanted to only work with paint on a substrate, but my limitations keep pushing me to expand so I’m going with it. Clay and fiber are coming back into my practice and painting will stay. I am not quite sure what this means yet but there is a lot bubbling in my studio.

Earlier this year I finished the Canopy 2.0 program under the mentorship of Matt Phillips and Catherine Haggarty. I found the program very helpful to keep me making new work and get feedback on my work. I also found it a bit sudden to just end the program (it was online) and then go back to no regular structure for viewing and sharing my work. So I kind of panicked and signed up for a Saturday morning ceramic sculpture class. After that, I got notification that I got accepted as a fellow in the Public Ceramics program, which has been amazing. I am working out of Gasworks studio, taking a wheel and hand-building class, and finishing up a ceramic sculpture class at Powerhouse Arts. My husband and I are also taking a Figure Drawing for Cartoonists class taught by Tom Motley, which has been incredibly hard and inspiring.

I really enjoy working in clay because it is tangible and also abstract. You can manipulate it in endless ways but you also need to have some technical knowledge to have any idea what it will end up as after firing. Glazing is a whole other world of complications and the end result can either be exhilarating or frustrating. For me, it is the perfect balance of control and unpredictability. I’m trying to figure out how and why I want to use it in my next body of work.

Cartoons have always fascinated me and since my husband used to draw cartoons, the figure drawing for cartoonists class is a nice way for us to do something together and work on a skill. During the long break we go down to the foot of the building and quickly have a drink, then go back to drawing either a live model or for an exercise. I am feeling a lot more hope about drawing figurative work and also that I will never, ever be as good as I would like to be because it truly takes so much time and that is something that even if I do have, I am not necessarily going to spend it drawing (though I am now drawing faces for my daughter to ‘ink’ which is fun).

For now, I’m playing and practicing, with the goal of working on a new body of work for either exhibiting in a future year and applying (again) to grad school. I may take years to build this work, but I guess that is why it is called an art practice.

Save the date: Sunset Park Open Studios Saturday, October 17th.

I will be participating in Sunset Park Open Studios on Saturday, October 17th, 1-6pm. Come see my new work, and hopefully some very new, new work.