I’ve been covered in clay since before I could walk.
As a kid, I spent most of my summers with my aunt, Sarah Howe a potter in Durham. At her pottery camps, she showed me the beauty and possibly of this diverse material. Those years gave me a love for ceramics that stuck.
At the age of 14, I met a local potter, Mark Hewitt, while at his studio tour/kiln opening in Pittsboro, NC, and asked about his apprenticeship program. I was too young to help then but two years later the opportunity came up again when Mark mentioned to one of the cashier's at the local co-op he needed help prepping for his upcoming sale. That cashier happened to be my older brother.
I helped Mark and his apprentices, Adrian King and Hamish Jackson, sand pots from their latest kiln firing. Mark then asked me back to help prepare for the next firing. Later that year, I found myself rolling wads while watching an efficient team load over 1,500 pots into a massive woodkiln.
In April of 2016, I started my apprenticeship that lasted till December of 2020. In January 2021, I built my first woodkiln. I didnt have the money to buy brick, but I had an optimistic attitude and the idea of making brick sounded fun. With loads of help from friends and family, we mixed about 10 tons of clay and sand, chucked it into wooden molds to make brick and then built a 20 foot long, wonky beaut of a kiln.
Now my partner Hannah Cupp and I are trying to balance work in our studio at Three Springs and building our future one in Seagrove, NC.