Story Objects
Story Objects are less concerned with function and more interested in memory, place, and transformation.
Many incorporate reclaimed materials from the desert: rusted metal, minerals, old mining remnants, weathered textures, traces of human use.
Some ring in the wind. Some hold fire. Some simply exist as reminders that objects can still carry presence.
Mining Melodies Bells
Approx. 14” h × 5” w × 5” d | Cone 5 Rocket Kiln, Reduction | Completed Sept 2025
Mining Melodies Bells use locally mined iron and copper minerals to build layered surfaces that mimic the patina and corrosion of aged industrial metal. Designed to catch the wind and ring, the bells translate regional mining history into functional objects that quietly mark place, memory, and material culture.
Rust Becoming
6.5” w × 6.5” d × 12” h | Cone 6 Electric, Oxidation | Completed Nov 2025
Rust Becoming draws from piercing as initiation, where pain, vulnerability, and endurance open a threshold into transformation. Reclaimed rusted nails pierce the vessel like relics of both ritual and labor, merging sensuality, decay, and renewal into a form that treats corrosion not as ruin, but as evidence of becoming.
Prairies Under The Hashknife
Vessel: 10” w × 10” d × 14” h | Total: 11” × 11” × 36” | Cone 6 Electric, Oxidation | Completed Jan 2026
Prairies Under The Hashknife reflects the lasting imprint of cattle culture on Western grasslands, where brands once marked animals and now mark the land itself. Local sand, iron oxide, grasses, and reclaimed fencing materials form a vertical landscape that holds tension between open-range mythology and the fragile prairie struggling to regenerate beneath it.
Pit Fire Rattle Snake
7’ w × 7’ d × 7’ h | Glass, Metal, Rope, Found Materials | Pit Fire Installation | Completed Oct 2023
Pit Fire Rattlesnake was a large-scale, site-specific installation commissioned for the Cochise College Pit Fire Festival. Constructed from glass, metal, rope, and regional plant materials, the sculpture took the form of a coiled rattlesnake, an animal deeply embedded in Sonoran Desert ecology and mythology. Designed to activate through fire, the piece remained bound until the pit fire burned through its restraints, allowing the form to open and shift as heat and gravity reshaped the work in real time.
Created in collaboration with students from the Cochise College 3D Design program, the project treated fire as both material and storyteller. As the central installation of the festival, the sculpture functioned as a focal point for several thousand participants, using flame, tension, and release to frame change as a visible and irreversible process. Beneath the structure, hundreds of ceramic works by artists from across the region were buried and fired by the heat of the sculpture itself, linking the destruction above to the creation occurring below.