About the Artist

Hi, I’m Josué, the artist behind Josué Ceramics.

Creating is how I turn my inner world into something tangible. It helps me understand my own thoughts and feelings and gives them somewhere to exist outside of me.

Sometimes a piece or collection becomes a way of holding onto a particular feeling, experience, or moment in my life. Held in Print, for example, came from a very specific place in my life and allowed me to give physical form to something I was carrying internally. There’s something meaningful to me about taking a moment that might otherwise pass and leaving a mark that says this happened, I felt this, and it mattered.

I think that’s part of why I’m so drawn to pottery. Once clay is fired, it can survive for hundreds or even thousands of years, and yet one fall can shatter it. I love that contradiction. Something can be incredibly fragile and incredibly lasting at the same time.

That love of contrast shows up visually in my work too. Raw clay against flowing glaze. Matte next to glossy. Dark colors beside something bright. I’m drawn to things that can be two things at once. Maybe because I think people and life are like that too.

My 1000 Hearts Project represents another part of what making pottery means to me, connection. I’m creating 1,000 individually numbered ceramic hearts, each of which becomes part of someone else’s life in some small way. It might sit in their home, become a gift for someone they love, or take on a meaning I’ll never even know about. I love knowing that something I made with my own hands can become part of someone else’s story, even if we never meet.

When I’m not making pottery, I work in community recreation, where I oversee an art and wellness program serving adults living with mental illness and other disabilities. That work keeps art, people, and human connection at the center of my life, and I think that inevitably finds its way into what I create too.

Ultimately, I think creating is my way of leaving a mark. Not necessarily a big one, but something that says I was here. I felt something. I made something. And I shared a little of it with someone else.

Josué