My 40 Ceramics Pieces With An Attitude That I Upcycled From Unwanted Dishes

I’ve since moved to a bigger community studio — Gasworks NYC in Brooklyn — and have put up signs everywhere asking others to leave unfinished projects on my shelf for me to glaze or sculpt on top of. Working with an almost endless supply of unwanted pottery keeps me from taking anything too seriously. Badly misshapen, lumpy, and poorly thrown pots are some of the most fun to transform. 

When I start working on a piece, I try to paint myself into a corner and then find a messy path out. That means starting to write a sentence on the outside of a vase without knowing how I am going to finish it. I like when the mistakes show up. Mutations are important to evolution. I take a lot of inspiration from hand written signs on deli doors or advertising yard sales — they get the message across, but aren't concerned with too many best-practices and rules of design. Convincing myself to ignore a few rules is the best way to get over my insecurities and start something new.

Most of the pots I work on don't have space for me to write more than a sentence, so I try to cut out any unnecessary words and let the reader fill in some blanks. My favorite messages — ones like “I’m sorry your new baby is illiterate,” “these flowers are from the fancy deli, not the regular deli,” “I didn’t know what to get you, so I got you this dish. It was $700” use a few words to move from something conventional to something very slightly stranger. I aim for messages that are grounded in real situations — giving a gift, labeling a container, making a meal — but wind up somewhere unexpected.

By making a lot of pieces every day and not spending too long on each one, I am able to avoid overthinking things and get some strange results. I have 100,000 bad ideas in me. I need to get all of them out into the world so I can start getting into the good ideas that come next.

I think it is okay to do things the easy way as long the easy way is my own unique easy way. The easy way for me is to take a dish and just start painting or sculpting without too much of a plan. A lot of ceramic work is about the beauty of the craft and working toward an ideal form. I tend to move in the opposite direction — I love to make something that looks all wrong, doesn’t cost much to buy, and is somehow too memorable to throw away.

I live in a small apartment in New York City and make things until I run out of storage space. Once my apartment is full I have a big sale on my website, mail everything off, and start working on new stuff. I’ve seen my work grow and change over the years, but it is still centered on making funny faces and writing down whatever I can to make myself laugh.