Vanessa Veck began working in clay in the summer of 2023, self-taught in a rural Northern California studio. The organic forms and textures in her work are drawn from the body and the natural world around her.

She often builds cages. Some are too small for what they hold, some hold something vulnerable, some trap kinetic objects that move but cannot be removed.

Containment and juxtaposition run through everything she makes: hard and soft, linear and organic, strong and delicate. The themes are bodily and intimate. The fragility of the process stays visible once fired, the risk legible in the finished object.

Her work is hand-built in dark, iron-rich stoneware, fired to cone 10 in reduction: hard-edged, largely rectangular structures with something organic held inside. Cage forms, lattice work, and shadowboxes invite the viewer to look, then reach in. Standing in front of one, it is unclear whether the structure is protecting what is inside or keeping it there.