- Hi Mariah, welcome to AHA.

- Hi Jade.

- Happy to be here.

- I know.

I'm thankful for you to be here.

Very excited to talk to you.

To dive in, I wanna give the audience a little bit of your creative background.

So would you mind expanding on that a little bit?

- Sure.

So I studied fine arts with a focus in painting, mixed media and art history in college.

And I lived and worked in New York City for about eight years working in the arts.

I was a curator.

I worked in a gallery for a couple years.

I managed other artists' studios.

Just kind of like learning the ropes of how to be an artist, a working artist in New York City.

- It's a grind.

- It is a grind.

It took a lot, but it was probably a better education working than it was actually going to school and learning.

- Oh god, I bet.

And what has been your like past artistic focuses?

Like print, like?

- Yeah, so mixed media actually.

So my thesis was all about context versus content and how we consume that content.

So personally I love going to museums.

I grew up going to museums and I noticed that people weren't really going to museums and seeing these grand, massive, beautiful paintings.

It was mostly students and tourists.

So I was like, where are all the people?

So I had to think about where everyone was and they're all on the internet.

So I took these paintings and recontextualize them into this blog where I put humorous drunk text messages over them so they would be more relatable to contemporary society.

And it blew up.

It was one of the top trending blogs of 2014 on Tumblr.

Got a bunch of publications.

And this concept of context versus content was really something that inspired me to keep going with my art.

- All right, so Maria, I know you have a current endeavor that I'm excited to speak about.

So what are you working on right now?

- Right, so my current project is Context Clay, which is my ceramics business.

Again, from my thesis, this whole idea of context and the content and how we consume the content.

So I find that depending on the situation, context is decisive and each perspective can shift.

It's moldable and clay is moldable.

- There we go.

- Yeah.

So I get to create new worlds and new possibilities with my business, with the ceramics, with the clay that didn't exist before.

And I like to create it with a lot of whimsy and bring in my own personal experience and spirituality into the clay.

- Hm, and now what drove you to ceramics?

Like what was the aha moment?

- My aha moment was I was actually during COVID, so I never touched ceramics before in my life.

Maybe take a couple courses in high school, but I've never touched a wheel.

And I was deep in meditation during COVID, I had a lot of free time.

I was unemployed at the time and I was just asking myself in these meditations like what do I wanna do?

What's my greater purpose?

Where do I wanna go with my art?

'Cause I wasn't really practicing my art when I was working in the city 'cause I was just so focused on everybody else's businesses and art, and ceramics really kind of just like popped into my head because it was full body.

Like I get to use my whole body.

It's very centering.

It's all the elements.

Like I use fire, water, earth, air to create it.

I just wanted to be like the avatar in the last airbender basically with my art.

And yeah, three months before I ever touched a ceramics wheel, I decided I was going to make a ceramics business, which is kind of crazy.

And then as soon as I got on the wheel, the different creative ideas just kept coming out and I wasn't good at all to begin with.

Like ceramics is really hard and it is a mastery and I really love it too because the more I practice it, the more the easier it gets.

It does become a flow state.

It does become this kind of mastery where, you know, practice doesn't make perfect, it makes permanent and you get to be the master.

And so it's a lifelong journey of me learning this medium and learning other applications and things you can do with it 'cause it is, you can build it, you can cut it, you can carve it, you can paint it.

Like there's so many different ways you can apply techniques to ceramics.

- Now I know you're very intentional about your spiritual practices and healing practices.

So how do you use ceramics as a healing device and what led you down that route to understand that sculpting and ceramics for you is a healing device?

- Yeah, so I do practice a lot of yoga and meditate and I find that to be a lifelong journey for me as well.

It's like I'm just a person journeying in this world and my art and my spirituality and my business practices are kind of the core values of that.

So with ceramics, yeah, I literally throw myself into it, pun intended.

And I really find it all kind of molds into each other.

Like if there's days or weeks I don't practice yoga, I find it more difficult to do my ceramics.

Like it's all about alignment and flow.

- And how do you, I guess, practice that alignment?

Like what makes everything aligned for you to flow?

- I think it's a clear head space.

Like really getting to a place where nothing is in the way.

Like this kind of space of empty and meaningless, which is hard to get to, especially when we're consuming things in all different areas.

But I don't know, I lose myself in it.

Like it's not me.

It's like some-- - Some like force, right?

- Some spirit that like comes through me and I even some of the work that I make, most of the work that I make, I am like not aware as I'm making it.

Like what I'm making.

And then I take a step back and I'm like, wow, I can't believe that came out of my hands.

- That's amazing, but sometimes you really do have to get to that meditative mindset to put out your best work 'cause you're not overthinking it.

You're not over critiquing.

You're not overworking.

You're just really letting kind of your lose your brain kind of take control, you know?

- And then it's muscle memory at that point.

Like the same thing with yoga.

It's like every move you stop thinking about how do I do this move?

You just go into the move.

- Just go into the flow.

- And you go into the flow.

Exactly.

- So I know you have a really awesome project going on right now.

I would love to talk about that.

You wanna break it down for me?

- So right now I'm working on a year long astrology collection.

I'm making eight limited edition mugs per Zodiac and I'm making them within the season, which is definitely a challenge just 'cause ceramics, it takes minimally three weeks for a piece to, you know, from a ball of clay to finally being fired in a kiln, a complete piece to be done.

So I am just month after month making special pieces for each zodiac and I'm collaborating with a local astrologer, Izzy Vassilakis, First House Rising Astrology, to really embody these pieces and to learn all I can about each zodiac so I can put as much of that essence into the pieces.

- Well, awesome.

Well, you heard it folks.

Feel free to check out that website and thank you Mariah for taking the time to tell us what's going on.

- Thank you Jade.

- Appreciate it.