Jennifer starts each commission by studying the site in all its aspects. This begins with an examination, through photographs, plans and site visits, of the site’s architectural and spatial elements and the changing light conditions throughout the day. It also includes an inquiry into the area’s natural environment and culture, the site’s intended use and the people who will use it, and the emotions they might experience there. This holistic approach is key to creating an installation that fully reflects its context and creates an authentic sense of place.

Jennifer then envisions the installation to integrate with the site and connect with the people who live, work, or pass through there. She draws on the space’s use, as when we clad a stairway in crater-like forms glazed silvery gray so they envelop the homeowners as they rise to the home’s moon-viewing tower. She takes cues from the building, as when we installed shell-like forms, like barnacles on a wharf, on the walls, ceilings, and columns of a revered seafood restaurant. And she looks to the local landscape, as when we covered the exterior of a coastal home in thousands of verdantly-glazed forms evoking the mosses on nearby structures.

In this undertaking, Jennifer is guided foremost by how people will experience the artwork in their daily lives, planning compositions to create unexpected encounters with the artwork and views of it throughout the space. To help clients visualize this experience, we provide detailed renderings of the installation and physical samples of the ceramic forms.

We lovingly craft each piece, often thousands for each installation, with only our hands and basic tools. Many forms are thrown on the potters’ wheel to enhance their fluidity and individuation. We then sponge-finish each form and fire them in kilns to temperatures that transform the raw clay into vitrified ceramic sculpture. Depending on the project, we may simply leave the forms in their pure porcelain white or apply any of an array of custom glazes that turn lustrous in the flames of the kiln. Through the lengthy process of building, finishing and glazing, we touch each ceramic element innumerable times. The quality of human touch courses through each finished element and gives our installations their distinctive character.

All these efforts come to fulfillment with on-site installation. We work assiduously to ensure that we fully realize the vision of the original design, carefully tucking pieces into corners, nestling them close together, and adjusting them until they are just so. And, while the installation is carefully planned in advance, it’s also a very organic process. We encourage clients to provide input as the installation progresses. And we build flexibility into the process so we can make adjustments on site to best “fit” the installation to the built environment. For straightforward or smaller-scale commissions, we can also send piece-specific templates so a local installer can readily install it.

The resulting artworks—from vastly-scaled installations that anchor entrance halls to intimate interventions for personal residences—are as richly varied as the places in which they make their homes.