A question I get asked (not infrequently!) is how I found “my” style. In all honesty, I’ve been exploring loose color with a bold contour for literally decades. A good deal of my work in my late teens and early twenties was made with watercolor and a Stabilo water-soluble crayon for the outline. In my later twenties and early thirties I transitioned those loose water colors to use ultra thin Sharpie contours. I was initially drawn to the style because of how quickly I could get my ideas down on paper. My always overthinking brain finally felt like my hands were working as quickly as my brain was, and it was like finding home again.
Pottery was, for a long time, not actually my medium of choice. I honestly disliked it and even more disliked the unpredictability of glaze. I’ll never forget being in a community studio working on little succulent planters for a friend’s baby shower thinking I’d glazed all twenty with a beautiful cream glaze. The bucket had been mislabeled and I used olive glaze. They were dark green. All of them. For a baby pink and champagne themed baby shower. Pissed does not accurately convey my feels here.
After settling in that I did in fact LOVE pottery, finding porcelain was really the missing piece. I realized I could do MY style of loose color illustrations with a bold outline and it all just clicked. The timing of this was also truly impeccable. I was in, as I’ve talked about, a stage of anger in my grief of my dad combined with having gone no-contact with my mom. The combo was truly brutal for my mental health and my first oranges were honestly made in a lot of anger. (Shocking, I know since they’re so happy!) I’d never expected to literally SELL OUT of my first oranges. And I was still in that space. So I made more. And those sold. And then making them made me feel less angry. But they kept selling. I realized that actually, with few exceptions, I really didn’t enjoy my pieces without oranges.
Now my oranges are really a source of joy and peace for me. They aren’t about all of the things that I feel like I missed or my less than stellar experiences growing up. Instead they felt like all the things that are great and happy. They’re watching the Dodgers with my dad, getting Chinese food for the first time with my best friend growing up, sleepovers in high school at her house, book clubs (where we don’t even talk about the book), exploring the globe with my husband (and now our child), phenomenal customer interactions where we get to gush together about oranges. Since their debut in February 2024 oranges have honestly become my entire personality in the best way.