My art practice is divided between making, a love of all materials, and research. I am a historian by nature and earnestly seek ways to bring relevance to history and the study of culture, while making the lessons of experience relate to contemporary culture. My education was heavy on art, but also included art history and archeology. My artwork has been deeply impacted by my understanding of common human needs and experiences that I learned while excavating at Ain Ghazal in Amman, Jordan and at Hadar in Ethiopia at the ”Lucy” site. My career as a sculptor and visual artist has centered around my need to create art that expresses the long journey of humans, as cultures and countries have risen and fallen, while we humans live our lives and work towards the future. I have found clay to be my favorite material, a material that is foundational to human technologies and understanding the development of culture. It is a material that allows me as an artist to manipulate it in every way, and welcomes me to leave my mark on its body, maybe telling the story of the present to future generations. Visually, my work is influenced by mark making and patterns seen across culture and through time, geometries and patterns used worldwide. I will speak about the archeological and historic references in my work, my process, and my influences—and try to tell the story that binds my art to the traditions of archeology.