Growing up on a horse farm in Eastern North Carolina, I had a healthy appreciation for going about barefoot, and playing in the dirt. One day, after a particularly industrious day at daycare, my mother came to pick me up and observed that I was covered head to toe in dirt. She asked wasn’t there anything else I could do for fun, to which I proudly replied “Mama, I’m just a diggin’ in the dirt kind of girl.” Little did we know how much my life would be shaped by “dirt” nearly 30 years later.

From a young age I was serious about art, but I didn’t experience working with real clay until college. From the first ceramics class I was completely hooked on it, and earned my Bachelor of Fine Arts with Concentration in Ceramics from East Carolina University in 2014. My junior year I was unbelievably fortunate to study abroad in Italy where I fell in love with the art history and traditional maiolica pottery, which had a big impact on the direction of my work. Since then, Italy has become a second home to me, and my time there only increased my desire to learn about art, other cultures, and as much as possible about clay.