wonderings…
Serious Play
I spent most of my life thinking of myself as a maker, not an artist.
I was always creating something: collecting bits of found objects, photographing faces hidden in everyday things, filling journals with ideas, sewing creatures, or building miniature worlds. I am seeing now that creativity was how I moved through the world, but I never gave myself permission to call it art.
Then I found clay. What began as curiosity quickly became a doorway into discovery. Clay gave me a place to experiment without needing to know the outcome, to follow a question, try something strange, and see what happened. A failed piece could become something new. Tools revealed possibilities I hadn’t imagined. A scrap of material could become a creature, a shrine, or an entire tiny universe.
This is what I love about taking play seriously: it allows us to approach the unknown with openness and joy.
I have aphantasia, which means I cannot voluntarily create mental images in my mind. When I close my eyes and imagine an apple, I know what an apple is, but I do not see one. For a long time, I assumed everyone experienced imagination the same way. Now I understand that my imagination works differently. Rather than seeing finished images in my mind, I discover them through making.
Clay has become a way to give form to things I cannot see: my memories, my feelings, impossible creatures, underwater landscapes, miniature rooms, and worlds that feel both familiar and unknown. The process is not about recreating a picture in my head, but rather about having a conversation with the material and allowing the clay to surprise me.
The freedom to play quiets my inner critic. It gives me permission to ask, “What if?” and follow the answer wherever it leads.
A tiny creature from a childhood story can become a ceramic companion. A snorkeling adventure can become a coral reef that lives on my shelf. A strange object found at a thrift store can spark a new body of work. The ideas don’t arrive fully formed; they emerge through curiosity, experimentation, and the simple act of putting my hands in clay.
Play is not the opposite of serious work. It is often where the most meaningful work begins.
For me, making is a way of staying connected to wonder - creating spaces where imagination, memory, and possibility can exist in the physical world.
Inspired by my CreativeMornings Charlottesville Talk on May 22, 2026
This is My Gimmie Story
June 4, 2026
I was six-and-a-half years old when I wrote my Gimmie story.
Like many children, I kept a journal and wrote in it almost every day. Every story came with illustrations, usually one or two drawings. This one got three.
The entire story read:
"Gimmies are big creatures
They are mean they live
on a planet called glona.
They eat bus they have long
tongues they have spaceships
They are cute and fuzzy
They bite people. They
only like them thevsleves
and they are very smart
they are pink and blue
and they live in space”
Looking at it now, it still makes me laugh. The Gimmies are terrible and adorable all at once. They are bus-eating space creatures with long tongues and spaceships, but they're also pink, blue, cute, and fuzzy. The story makes perfect sense and no sense at all • the kind of logic that lives in a child’s brain.
Then, as often happens with childhood creations, I forgot about them.
Years later, in my twenties, I stumbled across the story while digging through old journals. Reading it felt like receiving a message from a younger version of myself. I was charmed by these strange little creatures and decided to sew a few Gimmies into reality, carrying them from the page into the world. A few dolls became many. Before long, they were scattered across the homes of family members and friends who were welcoming little ones into the world…
Then they disappeared again. Or at least I thought they did.
In my thirties, while taking a graphic design class at Piedmont Virginia Community College with the wonderful photographer Stacey Owens, I found myself digging through old journals for inspiration. There were the Gimmies again, patiently waiting. They found their way into one of the projects we created, reminding me that some ideas never really leave us.
Then, in 2024, they emerged in clay.
I was taking a handbuilding class focused on creatures with Steve Palmer at City Clay. Our assignment was to create canopic jars with a personal twist. The moment he described the project, I knew exactly what I wanted to make.
The Gimmies, not the drawings, not the sewn dolls - Ceramic Gimmies.
For the first time, the creatures that had lived in my imagination since I was six-and-a-half had weight. They became vessels, guardians, companions, and characters. They multiplied and developed personalities. They could exist in the world. And now I can't stop.
Looking back, I'm struck by the fact that the Gimmies have followed me through nearly every stage of my creative life. They began on a planet called Glona in the mind of a six-year-old, and somehow they've found their way into sketchbooks, sewing projects, graphic design assignments, and now clay.
I find myself pondering whether creativity is less about inventing something new than about paying attention to what keeps returning. Apparently, for me, it's bus-eating creatures from space!!
From Glona, With Love
One of the first sewn versions of a bus-eating space creature!!
