In the winter of 2020 AJ took a handbuilding class and as soon as their hands met clay it felt as though they had found what they’re meant to do with their life. They didn’t anticipate monetizing their work but their passion for ceramics coincided with the uprisings around Black Lives Matter and there was an influx of community support for black artists. It started with friends insisting on paying for the miscellaneous things they would make, then stores asking them to do pop-ups, and then inquiries about wholesale.

Realizing that their community saw value in what they were creating, they considered that their art had the potential to create a better future for all of us. With this in mind, they began donating their work to community raffles for mutual aid efforts; the idea that something their hands made could not only get their own needs met, but also pay someone else’s rent or feed a family, filled them with overwhelming joy, and a sense agency no 9-5 ever could.

Their work is abundantly functional, clean shapes with whimsical illustrations, but their relationship to clay is rooted in ritual; any work they create is as much, and often more, about the entire process of creating as it is about the final product.

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