My mother’s earliest stories of me involve a sweet repetition; insisting that my favorite song be played over and over, removing a Christmas ornament only to ask her to put it back on countless times. She always obliged, and my love for the over and over again blossomed. 

As I grew older, this continued to capture me, and I found comfort in the contented repetitions of nature. Looking closely, I saw how plants produced thousands of the same leaves, flowers, and seeds. One form, again and again. The aspen organism, a series of clones growing from a single root system, does this too as it creates a canopy of repeated leaves and grows thousands of itself to fill a forest. Aspens are masters of a quiet repetition in their process of becoming monumental, and I capture this sense of immensity through scale in my sculptural work as I echo the feeling of standing before an aspen grove. 

Zooming out, nature shows the repetition of time itself: the cycling of seasons, the changing of aspen leaves from green to glowing gold as autumn sets in, again and again each year. These seasonal patterns of nature anchor us to our physical world, and invite a sense of continuity and renewal with the passage of time. 

In my making process, there is something about doing the same thing hundreds and thousands of times that makes my heart flutter. It is in my nature to get lost in it, to do something enough times that it begins to belong to you, much like aspen clones belong to their hidden root system below. There is an intimacy as my fingers smooth each curve of the clay, appreciating the ways in which they are all the same yet subtly different, much like an aspen’s leaves. 

Adopting the organic, flowing forms of the natural world, this sculptural work celebrates the quiet repetition of aspen trees and the passing of seasons. Again, and Again brings their presence to an indoor space and makes these fleeting golden moments permanent by preserving them in a forever material–ceramic.