I grew up on the prairie in Kansas, a few miles from the Oregon, Santa Fe, and Chisholm Trails, and the folk stories of “The Great Western Migration.” My work reflects on the complex interplay of Manifest Destiny on the identities, conflicts, and iconography that shaped the American frontier. Using both hand-built and slip-cast forms—the latter serving as a metaphor for the Industrial Revolution that quickly followed westward expansion—my work becomes a ceramic canvas for layered narratives, inviting viewers to experience it as homage, critique, or a meditation on history's enduring cycles.