May 26th, 2026

Hello! Finally a non-tariff related update! I have quite a lot of news - first, I have two upcoming events back to back. I have been invited to participate in Fired Up! - a show run by a group of incredibly talented and well-respected artists here on the island. In preparation for it, I have been lucky enough to join several atmospheric fires to make up a collection of work I am very excited to share. There will be salt-fired pieces from Cathi Jefferson’s kiln, wood-fired pieces from Gordon Hutchen’s anagama, and some gas-reduction ware from Peter Flanagan’s freshly installed kiln that’s just moved all the way from the Okanagan. The market will run in Metchosin Community Hall this weekend May 30-31st, Saturday and Sunday, 10am - 5pm. Immediately after, I will be photographing and listing the remaining work to have an atmospheric release online next Wednesday, June 3rd. I will send a newsletter out once those pieces are listed and a preview has been posted to the website, if you would like to recieve it you can join that mailing list here.

To provide some context about why I’ve been less active on social media this year, I thought I’d also fill you in on some large life events/updates. First is that since moving to Victoria a couple of years ago I have taken up outrigger canoe, and, since last fall, I’ve been training very hard to qualify for a crew going to Australia in June to race off Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef. This has been a massive goal to work towards, and I’ve invested a lot of time and effort into being ready for the event. We fly out in just under a month now! The second even bigger announcement is that Tobyn, my partner, got into Cornell to do their PhD in entomology and is starting this fall. This is going to be a huge change for us, but I am so excited and proud of them for getting into their first-choice lab. I will not be moving to New York with them, but have decided to move back to Calgary to be closer to my community of friends and family there (it does mean I’ve been poking around with the idea of residencies that direction though). Our summer was already aiming to be pretty chaotic, juggling an international trip together (as they are also on the team) right before a two-part sequential move across the continent, but then to complicate matters a little further, I accidentally cut off a piece of my finger two weeks ago - which you can pretty easily imagine makes both pottery and paddling kind of impossible to do for a while. I had a very tightly scheduled month, and having to take the last two weeks off has been extremely frustrating and really thrown a wrench in my plans. I had worked out just enough time to finish and release the remainder of the work I’ve made here in BC before leaving, and then this happened. So I will have this collection of work out next week and one more drop hopefully mid July that should clear out the studio before packing up and moving at the end of the month. From there it may be a while before I’m settled back into my former studio but I would expect my next available work won’t be until Halloween. I’ve been getting a lot of inquiries about when new work will be available and folks noticing the website hasn’t be updated very frequently, so I just wanted to give some sense of why my production pacing has been slower than regular this year and why it will likely continue to be until I establish my new routine later in the year, as well as the reassurance that I am still at it! [I haven’t shared much of it yet, but a really enjoyable part of this spring has been spending time pushing my technical throwing limits by making large forms and accompanying large appliques. The challenge has been very rewarding and I’ve seen a lot of growth in my practice that feels like a fun secret I’ll eventually be able to reveal.]

It’s been a wonderful time living here, and it’s incredibly bittersweet to be leaving the community I’ve just started to connect with on the island, but I am likewise very comforted by the choice of returning to a place I equally love. I'm sure a lot of travel is ahead of me - both back this direction and the opposite to the east coast to visit Tobyn - and am excited for all the new opportunities that will bring.

I hope to see some of you this weekend.

Sept 29th, 2025

I am happy to confirm that I have been approved as a CUSMA-compliant exporter, and that my courier will act on my behalf to claim preferential tariff treatment for shipments entering the US. This means that no action or information is needed from customers and you can expect orders from me to arrive without any tariffs. This coming sale on Wednesday, October 1st, will be the first time I am sending pieces out since the removal of the de minimus exemption order in late August and thus I do not know with certainty if there will be longer delays at the border for things to pass through however I have no reason to believe there will be an issue with my work making it to you - or that there will be any duties to collect upon delivery - as all my work definitively falls within the criteria for North American origin goods protected by the CUSMA. Let’s hope this is the last update I have to make pertaining to this subject and that moving forward there will be no further disruptions.

Aug 21st, 2025

As I am preparing for my upcoming release I wanted to provide a resource page for changing policies regarding US orders and tariffs. This has been a confusing and frustrating year for small businesses and artists, and news coverage of what is happening is varied and difficult to decipher for sellers and customers alike.

To begin with, I want to recap the information I know, which - most prominently - is that the de minimus exemption order which has allowed “low value” (under 800$) shipments to enter the US duty free is being removed on Aug 29th - making small scale retail susceptible to tariffs that are currently set at 35% for Canada). I am a Canadian business with an audience predominantly in the States, which means these changes threaten to have a huge impact on me, my livelihood, and the accessibility of my work to an audience that has supported me for years.

My upcoming Fossil Collection, which opens this Saturday, August 23rd, should not be affected. My courier has provided me with a cutoff date of Wednesday, Aug 27th, for parcel drop-offs to clear the border before the 29th, and, to err on the side of caution, I will be delivering orders on Monday, the 25th. While I don’t want to fear-monger, as I don’t yet know how the removal of de minimis will play out, future purchases from US customers may incur tariffs. This is the last sale, given current information, that will be able to enter the US duty/tariff-free.

A hopeful, though unclear, potential saving grace that I will be looking into and will provide updates on as I get more clarity is that my work may be covered under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), which has optimistically been pitched as a way for North American-made products to be shielded from the heft of the projected tariffs.

I will keep this bulletin updated with information pertinent to future releases and, in the interim, I can suggest the following resources if you wish to look into this matter further. My courier keeps the following blog posts - Tariffs on Canada and E-commerce and Suspension of De Minimis, frequently updated. These have been a helpful and thorough resource for me to better understand the issue at hand. While some of the information is more pertinent to sellers than customers, it provides a clear and well-explained collection of the status of policy changes and resulting functional impacts we face.

Finally, I want to reiterate how thankful I am for peoples’ support of my work for so many years. I truly hope I will be able to withstand these senseless hurdles and continue making and sharing this work for years to come.