What is your favorite type of art to create?

I am a sculptor who likes to take clay to the limits of its own structural integrity, creating complex forms without supporting armatures, building instinctually on an idea and allowing it to find its own balance, physical and conceptual. I am a largely self-taught artist who loves to experiment and embrace the unexpected.

Where do you find inspiration?

Everywhere. But firstly within my own struggles to make sense of the world around me. I think of archetypes and who we are in relation to who society, history and culture, shape us and then categorize us to be. I search for beauty and meaning in those contrasts and I often explore the intersections of classical art, ceramics tradition of functionality, and abstraction, condensing those thoughts into form.

What would you do with $25,000?

I would make art. Is that banal? But what other answer is there??? In seriousness, this prize would allow me to create art the size of my imagination — larger scale works, bolder projects, materials I can’t currently afford. I have a vision of art that speaks of the human heart connecting each one of us across time and distance and divide; of the joys and sorrows of resilience; of grace under pressure and of the higher consciousness which contains it all. I would try to tell that story.