Clusters of One
Are formed through multiple firings and layered materials, stoneware, porcelain, glass, metal, and stone. Relationships develop through the making, and alongside them, poems or stories begin to surface.
I’ve come to understand that I am a noticer. The work is intuitive, shaped by the invisible, by what is felt, and by what is seen.
Discipline is something I’ve learned to build over time, an internal structure that holds the work steady.
Each piece exists within Clusters of One, yet remains individual. Their titles and stories emerge during the making, or once made. My relationship to each piece, and the story that comes with it, feels equally important.
At the same time, I leave space for the viewer. There is a balance between what I share and what remains open, allowing each person to form their own connection and experience.
Made on the west coast of Canada, just outside Vancouver, in the village of Lions Bay on the edge of Howe Sound, the work emerges from a small boathouse on the water’s edge.
Born from the shoreline, a vessel of tide and gravel, ripped from asphalt and rubber, the Sea to Sky built into him. He stands as the watcher, part seabird, part boat. Within his calm body, an engine held like breath, steady for another crossing.
Barka means a boat, barge, or vessel. Symbolically, it represents a journey, a crossing, or being carried safely through difficulty.
He stands with quiet resolve — stoic, self-contained, and tenderly melancholic. Named by listening to the silence between the making and myself, I heard Rachmaninoff whispered through the clay.
Like his namesake, the composer of longing and restraint, he carries a nostalgia for lost homes and the ache of beauty remembered. He listens to the wind across the water, a stillness echoing the cadence of a nocturne.
Whispered through the clay, I heard Rachmaninoff.
A cadence of earth and longing.
Cyrus — radiant one, walking patiently through the day, watchful over others.
Dependable, tolerant, and kind. His word — golden.
You know you can land well with him by your side.
