Studio Notes · Nov 2025
Hello all,
Before I take off some time from all work in mid December, I’m happily busy finalizing orders, preparing for a big move (more on that below) and supporting my architecture students as they wrap up their semester.
In the midst of it all, I’m also excited to share new prints and ceramic wall pieces from the Devotion Series available for sale through my website.
As always, my heartfelt thanks to you all for following along. Hoşçakalın! 🧿
Seher
Glorious Ani, the medieval Armenian city in present-day Turkey.
ON MY MIND
Thick Time.
Some years ago during a research project on digital tools for representations of cultural heritage sites, I came across a quote by artist Laurie Anderson that has resonated with me since: she says she won’t believe in virtual reality “until they figure out how to put in dirt.” In Architecture Depends, writer and architect Jeremy Till suggests that we read dirt here not as literal particles, but as a material record of time passing.
Till argues that architects put a lot of emphasis on space and form but instead should consider architecture as a framework to play out various experiences of time. A space in which threads of different categories of time get entangled: Epic time (the greatest family gathering), natural cyclical time (short winter days), historical cyclical time (the return of annual rituals), linear historical time (that night when we all jumped in the pool), personal time (the years spent in that house), fuzzy time (the soft blur of a childhood room), focused time (a writing desk, a reading corner), somebody else’s future time (the instant she will knock on the door), my future time (the moment I will step outside), and on and on…
Everyday time - what Till calls the “relentless riddle of recurrence”- intersects with the idea of constant becoming. He characterizes it as thick time: a temporal space that holds the past while reaching toward the future. What spaces do I have such an immediate, layered, and deep connection to?
Devotions No. 61, 2025, stoneware clay, brush glazed, 16 x 16 in.
WITH MY HANDS
Hints of Gold.
The Devotion Series began as small sketches in my notebook, expanded into larger oil pastel drawings, and now continues as ceramic wall pieces. In these works, I carve the motif into clay slabs and experiment with glazing to explore how variation can shift the reading of a consistent pattern. Several of these recent pieces, including the one shown here, are available—more info below.
This piece - Devotions No. 61 - went through multiple rounds and more than a few “mistakes.” I first used wax resist to keep certain geometries clean, but the results were uneven. I glazed it again to even things out, only to have that layer behave unpredictably and create an even more varied surface. After a few days of leaving it as is, I wanted a small highlight, a visual anchor. I turned to gold luster to mark a few precise corners, but the liquid bled as soon as it hit the glaze. Instead of crisp anchors, I was left with soft suggestions of corners, hints, at best.
After layers and layers of multiple types of glazes, experiments with two different types of gold luster and five firings in total, I wonder if the piece even looks like I worked on it at all. In fact, it feels like it may have been in the studio since before “my time…”
Speaking of dirt, these walls have a THICK layer of it —remnants of 20 years of woodworking activity by the previous tenant, in fact. Time to clean!
FROM THE HEART
Studio Move (again!)
After a little over a year in our current space, my studio mate Riley and I are moving again—this time from our “old new” basement studio to a new first-floor space in the same building. After all the effort that went into settling in downstairs, neither of us can quite believe we’re doing this again. But the reasons are pressing: the lower level collects sawdust through the floorboards and noise through the ducts. We’re ready for cleaner air and quieter days.
Goodbye Unit B2A. And thank you. You held space for good times of making as well as long periods of not making, much-needed heart-to-hearts and lively weekends with visitors. You offered misty afternoon light through the clerestory windows, where I often caught a glimpse of the resident pup pacing above. My plants loved that light (when I remembered to water them). The debris mostly fell in the same familiar spots, but still managed the occasional surprise. The rattling machines overhead kept time like a subway station—relentless and somehow jarring each and every time. You kept us cool in the summer, and greeted us with that unique mix of sawdust and mystery musk. We grew to love it the way you grow to love your dog’s smell(s).
Hello Unit 105. Curious what surprises you have in store for us. What work will follow from long stares out of your tall windows, generous views of the sky and glorious 12-foot ceilings? You promise more quiet, maybe to be punctuated by the neighbor’s music—like the subway rider who refuses to put on headphones. We’re eager for the abundant winter light and bracing for the summer heat. It will still smell like sawdust, but particles won’t be falling on us like some post-apocalyptic nuclear shower. As the dutiful steward of Turkish cultural superstitions, I will be sure to hang a small but vibrant blue evil eye bead by the door. We promise to take good care of you and ask the same of you. Here we come.
Until next month, hoşçakalın!