Structures of Play I

This body of work begins with a simple, familiar impulse: the desire to stack slender, stick-like elements into small, temporary architectures. It is a gesture rooted in childhood—a quiet choreography of balance, intuition, and play. Yet in clay, this act becomes something entirely different.

What once existed as fleeting constructions in wood—structures that could collapse at the slightest breath—now take shape through a material in its own state of vulnerability. Before firing, each clay element is as fragile as a dry leaf. As I stack them, connect them, and attempt to hold their alignment, the process becomes a delicate negotiation between intention and gravity. Building with these brittle, unfired pieces is often more precarious than working with the original wooden blocks. Every touch risks failure; every connection requires patience, breath, and stillness.

But once the structure survives the fire—once it endures the transformative threshold of the kiln—it emerges with a strength and permanence the ephemeral wooden constructions never had. What was once fragile becomes solid. What was once temporary becomes enduring. The pieces carry within them the memory of their own instability, yet stand with an unexpected confidence.

These sculptures are small tables—coffee, plant, bedside—yet they are also echoes of childhood architectures translated into adult materiality. They hold the lightness of improvisation, the spirit of play, and the ephemeral energy of the original stacking gesture. But they do so in a form that has weight, presence, and a newly earned resilience.

In this work, I explore the paradox of permanence born from fragility, the transformation of a fleeting impulse into a lasting object, and the quiet poetry of structures that should never have survived—yet somehow did.