Homesteader at Heart:
Who am I? I’m someone who likes being out in places where you can’t hear a sound. The only thing you will hear is your own heartbeat and the wind rushing by—places untouched by man, somewhere where you feel like nothing else in the world is happening. This is my ideal place to be, in my mind and heart, and where my feet lie, reconnecting to the ground beneath me.
I love gardening and all kinds of plants, friend or foe. I enjoy them all. I always have as big a garden as I can, even if it means tearing up all my parent's grass in their backyard to have more space to grow vegetables, trees, or even bamboo. Even out here in the extremely cold and extremely hot desert, I love bonsai and have dozens of trees I’m constantly maintaining year-round. No matter where I am, I have to make sure they survive in their small pots, and as long as they’re alive, I am too. If my trees start to droop, I will too.
My passion for plants is what forms everything about me—from being a potter to where I walk to what I think. They have such a big influence on me that every decision I make can be traced back to them. I have a love-hate relationship with doing hard things. I believe that the hardest things you do in life shape who you are and will forever be in your life.
I love lifting weights in the gym, doing cold soaks in the dead of winter with a foot of snow around me. I take a sledgehammer to the water that has stopped moving in the river in my backyard so I can get into the fast-flowing, ice-cold water to soak in for up to 5 minutes. After getting out, with no shoes, I walk in the snow over to a bridge that crosses the river and sit on a towel, meditating with my wet shorts still on, with a wet towel I just dried myself with over my back, focusing on warming myself. This can be incredibly mentally challenging, but it’s something that has changed my life.
My dream, one day, is to have a place where I can achieve full self-sufficiency in my food production—growing, hunting, and fishing for everything I eat—while doing everything I need myself, from building my house to all the essentials you need in life. My goal is to be able to go and never return.
Falling in love with pottery.
My pottery journey started by stumbling upon some YouTube videos about the process. The first videos I watched were by the legend Florian Gadsby, and you can still see that influence in my work today. Even now, I try my best to break bonds with all the influences I've gathered.
In the beginning, I purchased a very cheap wheel from the internet and started learning how to throw pots. After doing this for about 10 months, I kept falling more in love with it, and I finally decided, after earning some money, to invest in a small kiln and wheel. My passion for pottery started to deepen, and I began toying with the idea of doing it full-time. But I knew I had to be different somehow, so I started experimenting. This is when I first thought to use malachite in my glazes, and I had no idea that I would discover something totally new and unique to me.
I’m often asked about my training—where did I learn to do all of this? The answer is simple: I’m completely self-taught. There was a time when I really tried to find a school or an apprenticeship where I could learn, but with the decline of schools teaching pottery and good apprenticeships being increasingly difficult to find, I finally decided to give up on that path. I chose to find my own way and figure things out when I needed to.
There is a potter named Akira Satake, whose way of thinking and doing pottery I admire. He says, "Being self-taught is the best way," because it allows you to find your own voice without external influence, which is one of the most challenging things to accomplish. I’m still working on this every day I walk into my studio.
Past to present.
My Past: 2
After being very upset with what happened at my previous job, I wanted to make sure that what I did next would be the correct path to a long-term career. It seemed clear that ideally, I would work for myself, by having my own business. Although I loved the idea of starting a pottery business, I was concerned about the difficulty of being able to financially survive as a young potter. After speaking to several successful local Utah potters, who spent their early careers working jobs in addition to pottery, I decided that starting a non-pottery business together with a pottery business made the most sense. Subsequently, I started working as a remote lands fence builder, being trained by a friend who was retiring from the business, with the intent of taking over the business at some point. It was physically and mentally demanding and dangerous work but being up in the mountains all day and not trapped at a computer was a big positive for me. I really enjoyed the majestic beauty of the remote locations. However, after only a month, I had a potentially life-threatening accident and some interpersonal conflicts with my boss, which again made me realize that this wasn’t the right path for me. The risk to life or of serious personal injury was simply too great.
My Past: 1
After high school, I decided to take a job opportunity with a neighbor who had a start- up automation and robotics business. After working for him for about a year, I decided to go back to school at my local technical school and two years later graduated with a certification in automation and robotics. During that time, I upgraded my pottery equipment and became enthralled with the creative process of pottery. Shortly after graduating, after some challenges arose in that start up business, I decided that I needed to move on to other opportunities. Although difficult, given that I had spent 3 ½ years developing what I thought would be my lifetime career path, through self-reflection I realized that I did not enjoy working for others, working a standard 9-5 type schedule, or the majority of what was done in the field of automation and robotics. Unfortunately, I had actually begun even hating parts of it. I decided I wanted to take a different path moving forward.
Present:
So that takes us to the present, where I decided to go all in with pottery, working out of a garage in my backyard, doing what I love—making pots! Recently, while spending two weeks in Japan visiting my brother, I was able to stand in Master Shoji Hamada’s previous workshop and feel his passion and draw inspiration from it. Now, back home, I’m experimenting with building and glazing techniques, to create unique and beautiful pots, that others will find special and hopefully inspire them to follow the ‘left-handed path’ in their lives in some way.
