Statement

I am often asked whether I consider my work art or craft. Rather than choosing one side, I find myself questioning the distinction itself.

To me, art and craft have never been entirely separate. Every work of art depends on making, and every act of making involves decisions, sensitivity, and imagination. While artists are often associated with ideas and expression, and craftspeople with skill and repetition, the boundary between the two has always been more fluid than these categories suggest.

Historically, painting, sculpture, ceramics, metalwork, and architecture were not clearly divided. The separation between fine art and craft emerged through specific social and historical conditions and was reinforced by institutions, academies, and cultural hierarchies. As a result, certain materials and practices came to be valued differently from others.

Working with clay makes these distinctions feel less important. What interests me is not whether an object belongs to art or craft, but how it is made, how it relates to material, and what kind of attention it asks from us. Craft is often understood as something functional or traditional, yet I see it as a way of thinking through materials and through the hand.

In this sense, craft is not the opposite of art. It is a condition of making. Both art and craft can create space for care, individuality, and human presence in opposition to uniformity and mass production.

Rather than asking whether a work is art or craft, I am more interested in asking why this distinction exists, whose values it reflects, and whether it is still useful today. For this reason, I prefer not to define my work exclusively as either art or craft. I see my work as visual art realized through clay and ceramics, without the need to conform to fixed categories.