“From dust to dust (for Opa) (detail),” 2024. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Windgate-Lamar Fellowship
2025
Recipient of the Marlin Miller Family Award for the Windgate-Lamar Fellowship
We are all of this earth. Clay, soil, and earth are inseparable from our humanity—it is no mystery why many cosmologies are based on humans formed from clay. We have worked with clay for millennia. I find this relationship innate, healing, and grounding. In the same way, clay is a result of thousands of years of natural cycles; we as people are a result of countless cycles converging to bring us to this moment, now. This deep connection to the earth as body fuels much of my work.
As an ethnically mixed American—Okinawan, Filipino, Spanish, and Dutch—my work explores belonging, mixed identity, and ancestral connection through using earth as material. As a sculptor and ceramicist, I find that material and process are inseparable from form and concept. Much of my work is made from clay native to Southern California, where I’ve grown to call home. Harvesting my material by hand, I deepen my connection and respect for the Kumeyaay land I inhabit.
Working with ceramics, especially wild clay, requires presence with the material—adapting to it, caring for it, and listening to its needs. Ceramics is alchemical, and art is magic. My craft teaches me to stay present, to let go, and to understand the world in new ways. It has given me a path to connect to my familial stories, ancestors, and cultural lineages. My work is a celebration of the liminal—of being from neither here nor there. I invite viewers to contemplate identity, belonging, and our shared human connection to land.
Selected works
“Conception,” 2024, fired clay, hemp rope, paper mache, sand, and muslin, installation dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“Conception (detail),” 2024. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“From dust to dust (for Opa) (detail),” 2024. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“From dust to dust (for Opa),” 2024, adobe, muslin, and St. Francis of Assisi figurine, installation dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“Of This Earth,” 2024, artist’s hair, adobe, and wood, 55 in. x 5 in. x 5 in. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“Kazuko (for Cha Cha),” 2024, fired and raw wild clay, sand, and glue, 22 in. x 11 in. x 10 in. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“Kazuko (for Cha Cha) (detail),” 2024. Photo courtesy of the artist.
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