THE ORIGIN

I was born in Moab, Utah—where canyon walls,
river stone, and desert light sharpen one another.

The Southwest is not gentle.
It carves, erodes, compresses, reveals.

My mother was a potter.
My father a miner and driller.

Clay and stone were not metaphors.
they were the framework of relating to the land
and how to wisely obtain and use resources.

I learned early that materials have memory:
what they hold, what they resist, and what they refuse.

Growing up in the southwest,
I returned to Moab again and again,
drawn back to my touchstone. My home.

I come from a lineage of process, not sentiment.
It is a relationship to matter built through common sense.
And hard work.

EDUCATION

I studied Ceramics and Biochemistry in Tempe, Arizona.
Art and science became parallel languages—structure, ratio, reaction.

I spent two years shadowing surgeons in a burn unit
and conducting clinical research.
Western medicine revealed something critical:
the body is geometry in motion—tissues, stress, scar, regeneration.

Upon graduation from Arizona State University in 2005,
I shifted to extensive research on essential oils.
neurochemistry, endocrine pathways, meridians,
the interface between physiology and traditional Chinese medicine.

A pattern emerged.
Daily ritual is not luxury.
It is structure.

The body needs rhythm the way vessels need form.

I chose to design objects that nourish everyday ritual
instead of treating what happens when ritual collapses.

Clay gave me space to build rather than mend.

THE WORK

I design vessels, adornments, and altar wares for daily use.

Pieces that are held, worn, poured, washed, filled, lived with.

My work is informed by:

• minerals and exposed strata of desert geology

• sacred geometry and ancient architectural ratios

• the rotational patterns and medicinal chemistry of native plants

These patterns do not decorate the form.
they are determined by it.

Form follows function.
Function follows form.

TECHNIQUE & MEDIUMS

Ceramics, bead-woven adornments, carved prints,
digital illustration, textiles, paintings.
Each medium is a different expression of the same geometry.

Clay
Thrown or handbuilt.
Stamped with hand-carved blocks.
Carved with diamond-tipped tools.
Inlaid with underglazes.
Glazed and fired to cone 6.

Paintings
Sacred geometric tiling.
Landscape as pattern. sediment rendered in layered texture.

Beadwork
Seed beads woven into lattice and radial structures
mirroring the architectures of desert flora and sediment.

Prints
Hand-carved stamps pressed into paper, fabric, or wet clay.
a transfer of form from tool to surface.

Digital
Patterns translated from hand to screen to textile
without abandoning their ratios.

I carve with diamond-tipped tools.
Precision is the starting point, not the end.
breath decides where line flows.
ratios of the form dictate where it breaks.

A pattern becomes a carved stamp.
The stamp becomes a textile print.
The stamp presses into wet clay.
The pattern becomes bead geometry.
The geometry becomes a vessel.

Every piece carries the evidence of its making.

The PRACTICE

I work in small batches—six to eight bodies of work per year.

Each series refines existing forms while opening new direction.

The pace is deliberate: form, patience, fire.

No shortcuts. No mass production.

LIFE IN MOAB

I live and work in the heart of Moab, balancing motherhood
with a studio practice that demands presence, discipline, and respect for material.

In 2024, I served as Community Artist in the Parks for
Arches, Canyonlands, Hovenweep, and Natural Bridges.

The work was titled “Desert Bathing”.
a translation of shinrin-yoku,
not into forest immersion,
but desert immersion.

Desert bathing is exposure to shifting sands, petrified sand dunes, wind that redraws the landscape and light that shift the palette by the moment.

Geologic time operates at a scale the human brain cannot hold.

Plants become the bridge living at human scale
while carrying millions of years of evolutionary intelligence.

Native plants teach geometry and chemistry simultaneously.
Their blooms express rotational tiling and radial lattices.
Their compounds act on human physiology the way essential oils do— structurally, molecularly.

Across ecosystems the same patterns repeat,
even when species do not.

Pattern precedes plant.
Design precedes organism.

This is the land as woven enchantment.
not myth, but consequence of form for adaptation & endurance.

The desert teaches erosion, timing, austerity.
I do not rush the work.

Desert Edge Design creates artful tools for artful living
objects that translate ritual into form.