Clay as avatar: a tactile autobiography. 

My practice centres on field-based ceramics, where seasonal processes and site-specific materials shape vessels that embody lived experience. Each piece begins in a state of readiness—unpote—its transformation echoing my own. I treat clay as a proxy for memory, emotion, and ecological connection. These ceramic forms are expressive portraits, co-created with nature and flux.

Clay as lineage.

When I first arrived in the Low Weald, I discovered that clay was everywhere beneath my feet—orange with iron, softening in water, shaped by time. I later learned that journeyist potters once travelled across England, including Sussex, seeking clay-rich sites to share their craft. These itinerant artisans carried techniques, stories, and embodied knowledge, leaving traces in the land and in the fragments I now collect from creek beds. Working with local clay connects me to their legacy—not just through material, but through movement, adaptation, and reciprocity. In shaping vessels from the same earth, I enter into dialogue with those who came before. As John Weller of Brede Pottery once wrote:

“It is from clay I made myself, / Now I am turned to clay myself.”

The cellular kinships I once traced in regenerative biology continue to echo here, in clay and community. For those curious about that lineage, my publications are gathered on PubMed.