I work with uku, clay, the body of Papatūānuku, to give form to wāhine Māori atua and tūpuna.

Each vessel is hand-built, slowly, coil by coil. The making is a form of listening. Clay holds memory: of the land it was taken from, of the hands that shape it, of the fire that transforms it. Working this way, I am less interested in making objects than in making room for presences that colonisation tried to silence or erase.

My figures draw on the atua wāhine of te ao Māori. Mahuika, the atua of fire, is pit-fired so that smoke and carbon mark her surface in an exchange between fire, earth and air. Hineraukatauri, atua of music, takes the form of the case moth whose cocoon gives the pūtōrino its shape. She embodies breath and sound emerging from the space between Te Pō and Te Ao Mārama. Hineteiwaiwa, who guides children safely into the world, speaks to birth, protection and continuity. These are not illustrations of stories. They are attempts to restore these atua to physical presence, so they can be encountered and not only remembered.

I am also an architect. For much of my career I have worked with whānau, hapū and marae in Te Taitokerau on housing and papakāinga, addressing the legacy of dispossession and exclusion of Māori from land and place. My ceramic practice grows from the same commitment. Architecture shapes the spaces we live in. Clay lets me shape the presences that belong in them.

I am affiliated to Te Rarawa, Te Aupōuri and Ngāti Awa. My work is grounded in whakapapa: the understanding that we are held within relationships that stretch back to the beginning of the world and forward to those not yet born. Every piece is an act of reclaiming presence, restoring story, and honouring that continuity.