What happens when art meets love? A little bit about us…

At the heart of it, this story is a love story. We make stuff together, but, mostly, we make each other happy. Read on to get to know us (and our particular brand of weird) a bit better.

Jess:

I secretly enjoy sappy movies. Even the really really bad ones. Even the ones where you’re 97% sure they used some kind of Mad Libs for the script. Behind all my eye-rolling and fake gagging sounds at the lines oozing with cheese, I kind of like them, and I always cheer when they finally smooch. As in, literally fist pumping. I don’t so much buy into the “you complete me” bit. I’m quite complete on my own, thankyouverymuch. But, sometimes you just resonate with someone. You just sigh deeply into them and are completely yourself. They help you embrace all of the weird, wacky, wonderful, beautiful parts of yourselves that others might have told you to hack off. You have permission to be wildly you. You can make up theme songs for your poodle. Actual theme songs that basically just describe what’s happening, but in jingle format. You can channel Mae West. Frequently. Hamming up a 40s noir accent and dropping awesomeness like, “I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.” For - no- reason. You can strut into a room pretending to walk like a particular animal shouting “guess! guess!” and instead of speaking to you in a soft voice reserved for crazy people and stray animals and backing away slowly, they actually guess. (It’s usually a chicken, for those playing at home). You can invent your own language with them, based off of inside jokes and misheard interactions and autocorrect gold. They’re the person that makes you feel like you’re wearing your comfy pants…but ALL THE TIME. And, that’s Rob for me. He’s my comfy pants. And my best friend. The person I admire and the person I confide in. The one who has laughed with me until I wheezed like an asthmatic donkey, and the one who has held me through some of the most difficult moments of my life. He’ll always get me period chocolate. And watch my dumb shows. He makes me coffee in the morning because I’m not a person for 2 hours after waking up. And, he puts extra aromatherapy salts in my bath even though they’re expensive and it kills him. Because he knows me. All of me. We work together because we work together. We’re a team. We teach side-by-side, we create side-by-side, and we make horrible dad jokes side-by-side. If that’s not perfect, I don’t know what is.

Rob:

Jessica, in case you couldn’t tell from the paragraph above, is a ball of creative energy who constantly inspires me. She puts her artistic touch on everything in our lives. She has an incredible eye for color and detail and proportion, and I feel so lucky to get to create with her. She has even made me see my own creative work in a new light. I’ve always thought of myself as a craftsman, placing my emphasis on hand skills and process. In the almost twenty years I’ve worked in clay, I’ve certainly developed a control of the medium that allows me to create just about any form that comes to mind. Jessica has encouraged me to play and experiment in the studio more, and the results have been so exciting for both of us as they have led to new collaborations. We are both lovers of nature and being outdoors. We try to bring that natural imagery into both the surface design of the pieces and even the forms themselves. In our electric kiln work, we make sure to let the raw clay itself have a voice, and we apply the background slip for the drawings very spontaneously so that the drips, fingerprints, and variations in thickness add richness to the overall surface. In our wood-fired line, the interaction of the clay surfaces in the kiln with the flames rushing past depositing rivulets of natural ash glaze reminds me more of a geologic process than a controlled artistic one. When I load the pieces into the kiln, proximity to the firebox, orientation to the flow of flames, relative position to other pieces, and the overall temperature and atmosphere of the kiln all play a dynamic role in layering surface over Jessica’s delicate drawings, sometimes even partially obscuring her work. That relationship between the arduous, aggressive, and slightly out of control firing over multiple days with the carefully considered, painstakingly executed surface drawing sets up a tension that only gets resolved when the kiln is unloaded and we can discover for the first time how all the elements have conspired to create these unique collaborative pieces. Our hope is that there’s enough complexity and interest in our pieces that you can continue to discover new things about them as they find a place in your daily routine.

Timothy (the immortal poodle):

As usual, I am the voice of sanity in this family. Since neither of them told you a dang thing about pottery, I guess it’s up to the poodle. Again.

So, Rob (that’s the tall male human) makes the pieces on the wheel. He’s a pottery ninja, so I’m told, although I can’t say that I’ve seen any certificates or belts laying around the house confirming ninja status. So, make of that what you will. I have seen him throw 50lbs of clay at a time, make bowls with his feet (not the ones you’re buying, because, even as a dog…ew), and control that clay like he put an Imperius Curse on it (my female human has forced me to watch all of the Harry Potter movies recently, so all of my analogies have taken a decidedly Hogwart’s bent). So, I think one can safely say that he is pretty dang good, belt or no. Rob has a PhD from Oxford in Molecular Ecology, so he’s always wearing his fancy pants and tossing around phrases like “punting on the Thames” and “mind the gap” and other things that often fall from the mouths of Rhodes Scholars. A scientist by nature, he is always experimenting with glazes, firings, inventing processes and discovering new ways to make all of the forms. Literally re-inventing the mug. When we wood fire, he is the one chopping wood and stoking the kiln and choosing different types of wood for different effects, monitoring temperature - doing all the things that would make the old Oxfordians proud. His main focus is the intersection of the beauty of form with functionality. He does a better-than-average job of belly rubbing and is extremely stingy with my treats. He hardly ever leaves any food on his plate, either. But, he does take me on daily excursions to wander our neighborhood, and doesn’t seem to mind that I find every blade grass sniff-worthy. All in all, a 10/10 human (if we don’t factor in the treat situation).

The other one (a female by the name of “Jess”) likes to bedazzle everything.