Inside the Studio: The Witness Series

Witness is my series of freestanding ceramic sculptures, each one built entirely by hand from individually formed elements that stack up into a single standing column. They range between three and five feet tall, which puts them roughly at human scale. Standing in front of one in the studio feels less like looking at an object and more like sharing a room with something.

Each column is made up of separate hand-built sections, and every section carries its own surface, texture, and glaze. Some sections are smooth and cool in blue or green. Others come out of the kiln in warm orange or deep red, with rougher, more textured surfaces. No two columns are alike, even when they're built using a similar stacking method, because the individual elements never repeat exactly. Once they're assembled, the whole column reads as one continuous form rather than a stack of separate parts.

I think of these pieces as quiet company rather than statement pieces. Witness I, II, III, and IV each have their own coloring and texture, but they share the same stillness. None of them are trying to get your attention. They just stand there, present, the way a person might stand quietly in a room without needing to say anything.

Every Witness piece is hand-built and fired in my studio kiln in Potomac, Maryland, and new totems are added to the series as they're finished. Pieces are available for local delivery and installation across DC, Maryland, and Northern Virginia, and I welcome studio visits and commissions by appointment.

Shana