Barrettes! Why barrettes? I’ve been wearing barrettes in my hair since my Intro to Clay class in college. I’d worn my hair long since I was a teenager, and when I would wear it back in a braid in my first pottery class there was still a good chance that a stray hair could catch a pot and slice off the top of, say, a tall stacked vase— true story. After destroying a pot or two on the wheel I started wrapping my hair around my head and securing it in place with an assortment of vintage barrettes my aunt had given me. I liked the style and the idea so much that I started making my own porcelain barrettes when I was working on my 36 Shots of Pikes Peak series from 2014-2017. I painted so many clouds in that series that I developed a new appreciation and obsession with cloudscapes. My eyes were fixed on the skies so I wanted to wear clouds in my hair. These works are the fruits of that obsession.