my story
Before discovering ceramics, I was navigating between helping my partner in a family business, being a full-time parent, and a homeschooling mom when my son got older. I moved to the US from Russia in 2011, and since then, life’s been pretty busy, but art? It was never really my thing.
Then, in 2020, during the lockdown, when there was nowhere to go, I had a chance to stop my busy life and look inside myself. The questions like – “Am I really happy?”. “Is it the life I wanted?”, started to arise. And the question was NO.
I started self-discovery path that included working with the therapist, reading books, and taking workshops on women’s empowerment and self-awakening.
A year later at the age of 41, something totally out of the blue happened. I’ve never been the artsy type but was always seeking aesthetics in my everyday life. So, when a friend of mine mentioned she was taking pottery classes, something clicked. I thought, ‘Why not give it a try?’
I found a new studio opening up nearby and decided to sign up together with my 7-year-old son. We went to our first class in February 2021, and it clicked immediately with me.
Every time I went to the studio, it felt like a little adventure. It was something totally new and exciting, and I just couldn’t get enough. I never knew I could actually make things with my own hands like that.
After a couple of months, I was hooked. I decided to become a member of the studio and just kept on learning on my own. It’s been this incredible journey of discovering what I can do and just having fun with it. It’s like I found this new way to speak without words, just through the clay.
When I realized that ceramics is what I want to do the question of turning a hobby into a business came into place. On one hand, there was a successful family business that I could contribute to, and on the other hand a totally unknown area of being an artist. Of course, the stigma of “you can’t make a living doing art” was very present in our family at the time.
However, I felt very strongly about continuing with ceramics. Ceramics completely changed my life from being a burned-out mom with an extinguished look to a live and vibrant person as I was before immigration and motherhood.
My therapist at that time suggested that I try to sell my work to gauge interest and gather feedback from the audience before deciding to proceed or go back to work at the office with my partner. I was scared, but I listened and offered my work for sale through my Instagram just 3 months after I touched clay for the first time. Guess what? I sold my first bud vase 15 minutes after I posted it in my stories and then a few more pieces in this first attempt. I was blown away by the support and decided to keep on going.
I started to explore other ways to introduce my work to the world and started selling at the art markets and local stores. Parallel to that I took 3 semesters of ceramics classes at the Los Angeles Valley College where I fell in love with hand-building techniques and switched from wheel throwing to hand-building completely.
I also opened an Etsy shop and, in the spring of 2023, just one year after opening the shop I became an Etsy Design Awards finalist. That opened incredible opportunities to work with interior designers like Studio McGee, Marie Flanigan Interiors, and others. I started to ship my vases anywhere in the World from Italy and the UK to the Arab Emirates and Puerto Rico.
In the fall of 2023, I participated in an online clay residency where I worked on discovering my artistic voice which brought me to my past personal experience of losing myself to false expectations, sacrificing myself to be the perfect wife and mother, physical and emotional burnout. The stories of women, mine, and those around me inspire me the most.
During the residency, I started a new series of works – abstract sculptures representing women. Through these sculptures, I want to share the narrative of women’s empowerment to inspire others to listen to their hearts, to stop forcing themselves and trying to fit in.
