These are wheel thrown 12 pound platters with hand built masks attached, rendering them unfunctional. My normal pieces are functional, and this was an exercise in stepping away from creating functional ceramics and leaning into something more expressive and vulnerable.

These Platters explore the psychological concept of Masking. Because of a lot of things that have happened to me in my life, I fell into consistent “people pleasing” tendencies over the years. I feel like I serve people, or groups of people, different in-authentic versions of myself to please them, make them or myself more comfortable, or to gain acceptance. I think this is normal to some degree, but I feel like I took it too far. I've lost myself, and I sometimes don’t know where the mask begins or ends. I’ve been trying to break that down and explore what it means to show up more authentically and true to myself in my community and relationships.