What if this carefully constructed presentation of language tears apart my practice,
and even then,
you still don't see what my body can't reveal.
Ceramics has provided me with an ability to invest in the research of preservation. As a Queer and Transgender person, conservation and longevity have been displayed to me as unattainable to my identity within this sociopolitical climate. Through ceramics I can prove otherwise, and construct new methods of archiving.
The forms that make up my current portfolio are reflective in scale and (e)motion to my own queer body. These anatomically distorted, fragmented, and architecturally influenced pieces engage in political conversations of humanity. They act as monuments of resistance towards the biopolitical structures that enforce oppressive ideals of the Body. Utilizing amorphous qualities, these artworks relinquish imperialistic notions to challenge binary structures and histories of the “figure”.
Through atmospheric firings, multilayered glaze application, and textured surfaces these pieces reveal the landscapes reminiscent of those that enveloped my childhood in the Pacific Northwest. Using memories of caves carved from the oceans salt water and the rough terrain of the Cascade mountains, these ceramic forms mirror the effects of continual wear that is perceived through both erosions within landscape and trauma upon the Body.
I work with ceramics to cultivate a Queer archive of experience. Through scale and material permanence, these intimate and architectural Queer forms are transformed into Monuments. Elevating these bodies to a place of remembrance that will live past the statistically short lifespans of my Transgender community.
Daniel is a Queer and Trans Artist focusing mostly in ceramics. Through ceramics they create bodily forms that resist the limitations of biological and systematic structure, and reach towards an empathetic, critical, and political Figurative form.
From the University of Washington, Daniel received a Bachelors in Art with Honors in Sculpture, as well as a minor in Art History. Daniel has attended both the University of Colorado (Boulder) and the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville) as a Post Baccalaureate in ceramics. They have been an artist in Residence at Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Fall 2022), Rockland in the Woods (Fall 2023), Sonoma Ceramics (2023), and was the recipient of the Emily Mason - Wolf Kahn Fellowship for residency at Vermont Studio Center (2024). They have had multiple solo exhibitions throughout the United states, and have been selected for many group juried shows for their work in ceramics, drawing, and writing.
They currently live and work among the oak trees of Sonoma County, within the Valley of the Moon.