Celestial Faces
States of Being
Clay and glass, shaped by light.
An original series of hand-sculpted ceramic and stained-glass mosaic wall sculptures exploring the symbolic qualities of the celestial bodies in our solar system.
What if Earth, the Moon, the Sun, and the planets had faces—not as portraits of celestial objects, but as human expression?
I use the solar system as the series' structure, drawing inspiration from both the physical characteristics of the celestial bodies and the meanings humans have associated with them over time. I begin each piece by asking what its particular quality might feel like if it took human form. From there, I develop the face, mood, materials, movement, color, and surrounding imagery that can give that energy a physical presence. The result is part sculpture, part mosaic, and part ongoing experiment.
Each quality draws from a mix of sources — astronomy, astrology, mythology, older traditions — filtered through what resonates with me personally rather than any single system. The Celestial Faces chart shows where that's landed so far: eleven celestial bodies, eleven human qualities.
The Faces
Each Celestial Face begins with a shared structure—a human face, a celestial body, and an aspect of human experience—but develops its own visual language as I work. On the chart, the Faces follow the order of the solar system. Here, I've arranged them in four groupings that describe how I experience being alive: being here, making change, being moved, and beginning again. It isn't a ladder; it's a circle. After beginning again, I'm here once more, just a little different.
Presence · Grounding · Reflection
The Sun, Earth, and Moon are the celestial bodies closest to our everyday lives: the world beneath us and the two great presences in our sky. For me, this is where it starts. Before I do anything, I'm somewhere, and I try to be awake to it. The Sun is presence, the Earth is what keeps me grounded, and the Moon is where I stop and reflect.
Making Change
Mercury · Mars
Transformation · Will
Change happens to us, but we also take part in it through the choices we make and the energy we bring to moving forward. I don't just sit in my life; I act on it. Mars is the will I dig for. Mercury is the change already moving through everything, including me. Sometimes I cause change, and sometimes I'm just catching up to it.
Being Moved
Saturn (soon Venus and Jupiter)
Strength
Then the direction reverses, and life acts on me. I'm drawn to people, places, and possibilities, and they change me. That takes strength and builds it. Each time, my world grows a little bigger.
Saturn's strength comes from having seen enough of life to stop being surprised by it: steady, a little wry, not easily knocked off center.
Saturn will eventually be joined by Venus, for Attraction, and by Jupiter, for Expansion.
Beginning Again
Neptune (soon Uranus and Pluto)
Once the ceramic face is sculpted, glazed, and fired, I begin building outward. Hand-cut stained glass provides color, movement, texture, and reflected light, but I don't limit myself to glass. I may also use sculpted epoxy clay, mirror, metal, pigments, crystals, or other materials. Sometimes a material choice ends up shaping the meaning itself — Sun's face fired an unplanned orange instead of the white I'd envisioned, and that accident became the color logic for the whole piece around it.
The Series
From Inspiration to Sculpture
Every Celestial Face begins with an idea rather than a fixed image. I explore an expression, composition, or visual metaphor before I touch the clay, then sculpt the face by hand. New to clay, I'm actually learning to sculpt as I create this series, so each new Face is part artwork and part exploration of what I can do with the material. I've sculpted some of them multiple times—when the features didn't convey what I wanted, or when something unexpected happened during drying, glazing, or firing. Learning as I go has become part of the process.
Depth
Some changes happen below the surface. We go deep, imagine what isn't there yet, and come back new.
Depth doesn't ask to be fully understood. Her strange, primordial coloring feels like something surfacing from beneath what we consciously know.
Neptune will eventually be joined by Uranus, for Imagination, and Pluto, for Regeneration. And then I'm back where the circle began: here again, the same and not the same, ready to start over.
The Journey Continues
The Journey Continues
Celestial Faces is still unfolding. Each piece explores one aspect of being, and as the series has grown, the Faces have settled into four groupings that belong to one circle. I'll keep adding each Face here as it's completed. I don't know exactly what the finished circle will reveal, and that's part of the exploration.
Celestial Faces is my first real venture into sculpting. It started for a practical reason: I wanted to learn how to make faces in clay. Rather than practice on disconnected faces, I gave myself a framework: each face would belong to a celestial body and a human quality. The deeper meanings came later. Looking for meaning and connection in things is something I've done all my life, long before I made any art, so of course my practice faces started carrying meaning.
In many ways, this series has become my laboratory. I came to it from mosaic, which meant becoming a beginner again, learning as I go: trying things, solving problems, changing direction, and occasionally discovering something I hadn't intended. What surprised me was how often the experience of making a piece began to echo the quality I was trying to give form to.
I've been writing those stories as each piece is finished, including the parts that didn't go to plan.
Read the Making Stories: Sun · Moon · Earth · Mercury · Mars · Saturn · Neptune