Our Story

One of the first things I ever made from clay was a puffer fish, in a summer pottery class back in second grade. I still remember the thrill of watching that little fish take shape — and though I didn’t know it at the time, that project sparked a connection to clay that never really left me. I took every ceramics class I could find throughout high school, and later studied in the ceramics program at the University of Florida in Gainesville, before eventually completing my degree in sociology. Life had a way of carrying me in a different direction for a while.

For fifteen years I worked as a massage therapist, helping people heal through touch — work I loved, even as I quietly set aside the creative part of myself.

I was born and raised in Naples, Florida, and moved back home in 2021. That’s when I reconnected with the man who would become my husband, Justin. The following year, in 2022, we started Cypress Knees Studio together and built a shop on our property — a place where we could create side by side. He leaned into woodworking, building furniture and custom pieces by hand, and for a while that’s where most of our energy went, with me pitching in on the woodworking side too.

But clay kept calling. About a year ago, I built a pottery studio of my own on our property and returned to the wheel. It felt like coming home in every sense of the word. The joy I found working with clay confirmed what I’d known all along, and I recently left my massage therapy career to make ceramics my full-time work. That’s how Cypress Knees Ceramics came to be — the newest branch of something Justin and I started building together years earlier.

In 2026, Justin and I were married, and together with my stepson, we’re building a life centered on family, creativity, and the Southwest Florida community we love.

Today I create playful, functional pottery inspired by everyday life — morning coffee mugs, bowls passed around the dinner table, pieces meant to quietly become part of a family’s daily rituals. Every now and then Justin helps out — glazing a piece, loading a kiln — just as I still pick up a chisel in the woodshop from time to time. At its heart, Cypress Knees Studio has always been about building things by hand, together, as a family. My hope is that everything that leaves my studio brings a little warmth and beauty into your home.