The steel-gray objects of the Kindred Forms series represent my investigation of fragments, artifacts, and relics that I found myself enraptured by in the ancient ruins, museums, and crypts of Rome. They were often humble in origin - loom weights, millstones, bricks - but for me they were charged with mystery. Underlying their visual quietness was a sense of deep history. Their utility was apparent, but the specific functions were not always clear. Could I speak their formal language, and, in doing so, have access to their secrets? Tools such as those loom weights are a way of better understanding anthropological history, and in turn, our contemporary selves. My ceramic objects, made in response, share the common grammar of an inflated curve and an edge interrupting and changing the curve's trajectory. On the top of this piece is some of my material experimentation: I am interested in materials, their interactions, and their metaphors as permanent or impermanent.