Inevitable Shapes is my MFA thesis body of work, comprised of four main pieces created over the span of a year.

“As I worked through the making of Inevitable Shapes, I was in a space of uncertainty, of an ending coming, awakening a new beginning. The ways in which I moved through these pieces reaffirmed how I understood my making during my prior body of work, Tethered Places and Sacred Spaces—my making has become a way of knowing and a practice of devotion, from consistent rituals and repetitive motions, to caring for a material and the space it exists within.

Through the endless repetitive motions of coil building or pushing clay into molds of collected objects, I realize my compulsion to create. One day, my partner and I were talking about addictions, on the ways they can consume someone without even knowing. I said, “I don’t think I have one. Do you think I do?” He responded, “Of course. It’s making things.” Never had I seen my practice in this way before, but it hit true, like an obsession. Collecting feels like an obsession, in the ways that any time I go on a hike, my eyes are glued to the dirt, searching for a rock that calls my name. As I keep collecting, I continue to construct my own sanctuary space within my everyday environment, bit by bit. Searching for the next thing, the next piece, I realize that in the end, I believe in something I can’t see, but rather a feeling—a feeling of wonder.

When I think of a junk drawer now, I think of their humanness and the ways we all accumulate. Through a type of deciphering, one soon finds that some of those objects hold something greater, something meaningful. It is in our human nature to do so, always in search of life's vastness while acknowledging we can never fully grasp it. Each time I show a piece to someone, they come to me with their own personal story, their own perspective on love, life, and loss. As I continue to make in ways that compel me, I strive for those honest interactions, because those meanings we all collectively seek, and that through devotion all things become realized.”

Inside KJ’s Making, a playlist paired with the making of Inevitable Shapes.

Photo credit: Ashley Diane Saldana.