“My hands are my tools. I am a potter working with traditional firing techniques. The clay taught me that art does not discriminate, you come to the clay as you are, there is no imperfection, only honesty, my work is all hand built, my fingers and my spirit imprint the clay…” Alex

For me, the wheel was a machine that demanded something I couldn’t give it, perfection. It’s not even a concept familiar to me so instead of watching the hypnotic process of fingers to clay and a pot magically growing tall as the wheel spun, we just clashed and nothing, n o t h i n g happened. My pots were of another gravity, perspective, dimension, tipping, flattening, collapsing. My wheel work just wasn’t. So if your point zero is not like all the potters around you and the machine can’t accommodate your differences, how could it possibly work? The wheel didn’t want me but… the clay did. The clay is of the earth, the ever changing flow of rains and rivers, it is shapeless and has a shape of it’s own and so do I. So I stayed with the clay and not with the machine and have learned to give in order to get. I have been taken back in time to the old ways of potting, I have experimented to replicate ancient glazes and wear and I have met the fire gods. They allow me the hard work and intention but they are the ones that have the power and they decide what the end result will be. Pulled from the fires, the unknown, the unexpected, it is my work, my spirit is in the clay but with their presence, the signature of fire.