The Names
2021-2022
This body of work seeds out of grief. It is my processing of the year I cared for my Mum as she lived and died with brain cancer. Tumors affected her ability to express herself, my role as carer included acting as translator. I read her needs through non-verbal communication. This connection was beautiful, awful, heartbreaking. As our communication fell away, so did my capacity to describe that trauma.
I returned to the studio after her passing, in search of the language to tell our story. There, the sun cast a stream of light through my window as I worked. Clay came alive, growing plant-like, shape-shifting vessels. Their shadows stretched out, informing their own becoming. Abstract wreaths, unraveling baskets, wriggling spider-hands carried me through grief toward a place of healing. I caught those glyphic shadows in cyanotypes.
The work itself is an act of translation. I transcribe loss to transform it. I search for meaning in the gaps between mediums, in the chasm of lost words. To hold what was lost, I press shadows to the page and bind them in blue.
Blue Gum
2023 (WIP)
String Figures
Fired and Unfired Ceramic studio experiments and composites 2020.
Assemblages
2020
These ceramic sculptures were assembled alongside foraged driftwood, wolf lichen, granite boulders and photographed in early morning light at Tokopah Falls, Sequoia National Park, September 2020.
SF20
July 2020
Photographs of ceramic sculptures interacting with urban green spaces around Los Angeles.
Sketchbook
2022 - 2024
Field Drawings
2020-2022
Tempera Paintings
Egg tempera on gray board, 2022-2024
Field Journal
2022-2023
I am interested in altering everyday human perception by focusing on the minute details of plant morphology. In my field journal, I draw wild neighbourhood plants, observing the tactile characteristics of my local ecology along the Arroyo Seco. I watch red alder roots breathe in the water, listening for the stories of mugwort and manroot. I learn to distinguish corolla from calyx, to recognise subtle changes as a bloom bloats to fruit. To avoid extraction, I forage the negative space between stem and branch, the serrated line at toyon-leaf edge. I find perfectly architectured seed pods in the mulch, ephemeral structures that teach how to hold, and to release. This practice of gathering is what feeds my studio work, an exploration of found forms; intertwining ceramics, drawing and writing into speculative worlds for becoming-with the more-than-human.
Shadow Drawings
2020-2021
Selected field drawings, tracing the shade cast on paper.
Clay Seed Pod Workshop
12.3.22 at Heavy Manners Library, Los Angeles
12.10.22 at Artist’s Studio, San Gabriel Valley
In this workshop, participants looked to a collection of locally foraged seed pods, in order to learn from their more-than-human architectures. These tactile forms were explored through clay, using essential ceramic handbuilding techniques to create both ephemeral and permanent sculptures; clay seed pods. Some clay pods were embedded with native wildflower seeds to be gifted back to the land, and others were filled with clay ‘seeds’, making rattlers to call in the rains.
This workshop is an ongoing offering, please contact for more information on future sessions.
Holding The River, An Underground Watering Pot Workshop
hosted by Ako Castuera and Rosie Brand
October 2022.
Artists’ Studio, San Gabriel Valley.
In this one day, in-person workshop, we used ceramic handbuilding techniques to make underground watering pots (often known as ollas). These vessels are among the most ancient and water efficient technologies for gardening in dry conditions; unglazed and low fired, they allow water to slowly release through clay walls, reaching the roots of plants while preventing surface evaporation and overwatering. With the continuation of long term drought ahead of us, the watering pot is a practical tool for delivering water to where it’s needed in the garden. To bring hands and intention to the creation & use of this vessel is a way to hold and sustain our connection to water as a living being.
We gratefully acknowledge Payahuunadu (aka Owens Valley) as a primary, living source of water that has been unwillingly diverted to faucets and hoses in Los Angeles, and we honor the Nuumu / Owen’s Valley Paiute as her stewards.
‘Holding’ allows a shift from language of money and control (“conservation” “efficiency” “savings”) towards something more personal. We hold the water that keeps us alive. We hold the water of many living bodies, all mixed up: Payahuunadu, The Colorado River, the Feather River, and many, many others. They flow into and out of our homes, passing through pipes, pumps, buckets, our bodies and bathtubs. With very basic acts, we hold and shape the river. How will the river shape us?
This workshop has been practiced with three separate groups in October 2022, It is an ongoing project, we hope to offer future sessions.
Worm School
Worm School is an ongoing collaborative project, an online meeting space held between five artists; Ako Castuera, Josh Cloud, Isobel Marcus, Zena Segre and Rosie Brand. The cohort named themselves Earthworm Symbionts and began meeting regularly during the 2020 pandemic to digest and compost excerpts of media proposed by facillitator Rosie Brand. These texts, films, articles were chosen for their relevance to the group’s shared interests in clay, ecology and craft pratices.
Worm School Bibliography
Staying With The Trouble, Donna Haraway
Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival
Disappearance of Rituals, Byun Chul Han
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin
Poetry is Not a Luxury, Audre Lorde
Gathering Moss, Robin Wall Kimmerer
The Living Stones, Ithell Collquhoun
Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys an Arans, Gladys Thompson
Speech Sounds, Octavia Butler