🍁Monarch🍁 After the more reflective portion of this ritual, we all took off our ponchos to reveal fluttering monarch wings and we danced in the sunlight of the morning! I love this picture of my wife and I - we had just fallen in love when this was taken. #monarch #ritual #misswondersmith

🍁Monarch🍁 After a delicious breakfast in the early morning glow, guests were offered hot coffee in my handmade monarch chrysalis-inspired cups. #misswondersmith

🍁Monarch🍁 breakfast was appropriately thematic, with red lentil dosa butterfly wings paired with fresh chutneys! #misswondersmith #thewondersmith #eventdesign #veganfood

🍁Monarch🍁 We soaked in dawn's first rays as we wrote down what heaviness we wanted to release. Later, we added this dissolvable potato starch paper to a jar of water and shook to dissolve it. The resulting liquid was then offered to the trees in gratitude for the release of the ritual.

🍁Monarch🍁 We gathered at sunrise, socially distanced outdoors for everyone's safety. It felt like a new beginning. #eventdesign #misswondersmith #thewondersmith

🍁Monarch🍁 Our event began with cozy gray ponchos and sunrise harp music by Riley from @wend.music . The setting was serene and peaceful under old growth ponderosa trees. #eventdesign #misswondersmith #thewondersmith

🍁Monarch🍁 Porcelain chrysalis cups inspired by monarch butterflies. I'm looking back over past events I've created... this one was the first after the pandemic, when it finally felt relatively safe to gather outside and distanced once again. I felt like I was emerging from a cocoon of isolation

🍁Monarch🍁 One fateful day in Bend, Oregon just as we were beginning to emerge from our pandemic cocoons, a fresh wave of butterflies fluttered into downtown, each carrying a message of hope and an invitation to magic... ✨ I'll be sharing more about this magical gathering this week!

🐺Feral🐺 Today we say goodbye to this event. 🐺 I hope y'all are enjoying these peeks back in time at the many gatherings I have created. #feral #misswondersmith #thewondersmith #ceramicart #performanceart

🐺Feral🐺 Raven and California Poppy - both beings that can guide to realms beyond, can pass through thresholds as if they were mist. All of the pairings of animals and plants in this set were defined by my personal connection to each. To learn more about this project, just head to my website

🐺Feral🐺 All the critters and their plant pairings I created for this project. Which one speaks to you? What kind of party would you use these for? #animalart #ceramicart #misswondersmith

🐺Feral🐺 Fox and elderflower, plus labradorite. The threshold wanderers, the glimpses of color out of the corner of your eye, the enchanting presence that tells you that you are crossing into new wilds. #ceramicart #misswondersmith #underglazepainting #pottery

🐺Feral🐺 This non-event was a reclamation of the wild within.

🐺Feral🐺Owl and Nettle: a pairing of sharpness, a reminder to pay attention and always look closer. #misswondersmith #ceramicart #underglaze #goldluster

🐺Feral🐺 In the swirling mists of pain, pairings started to come together. Owl and nettle. Bear and huckleberry. As soon as I was able, I began sculpting them in clay, envisioning a magical feast when I was finally well again. #ceramicart #clayart #animalplates #misswondersmith

🐺Feral🐺 During periods of severe pain and brushes with death, often the only reprieve I have is to dive very deep within, to explore my own inner landscape. The gentle assurance and safety of the white stag and the way mugwort always calls me home to myself seemed like a powerful pairing.

🐺Feral🐺 was a ritual dinner conceived during my recovery from a near-death experience. While confined to bed, I created sculptural goblets, gold-accented plates, and handcrafted masks for a wild midsummer feast that was never realized. When the pandemic halted the gathering, I held the ritual alone

💀Stones and Bones 💀 When this picture was taken, I really believed I was giving a cheerful smile. Now I see very clearly the pain in my eyes. The very next day I was hospitalized and stayed there, on death's doorstop. Finally they found the problem and operated on me immediately. It saved my life.

💀Stones and Bones 💀 These apple cider donuts with rose hip jam filling were a special treat I made for this event... talking about difficult subjects always calls for comfort food, right?

💀Stones and Bones 💀 As part of our ritual, we used the sgraffito technique to write messages to those we had lost. I'm sitting on a couch rather than at the table because I was (and had been) in too much pain to sit upright...if only I'd known then just how much foreshadowing there was that night.

💀Stones and Bones 💀 I sculpted these giant raven skulls by hand out of porcelain. They're both hollow and wearable - perfect to hold a ritual sip or incense... what would you put in them? They were created for the second part of Stones and Bones, but the universe had other plans...

💀Stones and Bones 💀 A room filled with the soft glow of vintage bulbs, illuminating shrines to unbecoming. Death does not have to be fearsome; it can be soft, and white, and gentle as a cobweb. Little did I know just how close to that soft embrace I was at this moment...

💀Stones and Bones 💀 Ravens: the messengers between worlds, the stealers of the sun, the sacred trickster in cultures all over the word. Who better to join us for a conversation about lost loved ones and finding our own way in their wake? #sgraffito #handmadepottery #handbuiltpottery #misswondersmith

💀Stones and Bones 💀 I invited local artist and activist @idaho_amy to lead a Death Cafe as part of this gathering, which I created for people mourning the loss of someone they loved.

💀Stones and Bones 💀 This gathering was about death, grief, and mourning... so I knew we were going to need some comfort food. I made these delicious homemade donuts filled with rose hip jelly for the occasion. #deathcafe #donuts #wildfood #misswondersmith

💀Stones and Bones 💀 Every week I'm revisiting a gathering I've done in the pasty. This gathering was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Follow along to learn why...

💕Urchin Tea 💕 Today is my last day reflecting on this mini gathering. I'm talking about it in more detail on my patreon page if you'd like to have a read. Each week I'm sharing 9 pictures from one of my past gatherings! #misswondersmith #teaparty #mermaidtea #makingmagic #fairycore

💕Urchin Tea 💕 I find so much comfort in ceramics. Every bump on this sea urchin skeleton tea set is applied by hand, using slip (liquid clay about the consistency of royal icing.) It's a meditative process that helps to distract from chronic pain on bad days.

💕Urchin Tea 💕 . I held this event when I was just too sick to travel or plan anything big; I figured that being able to share wonder and conversation with one person was better than hiding in my bedroom feeling like I was missing out.

💕Urchin Tea 💕 I made a couple little treats for this tea party - savory pecorino romano sand dollar biscuits, and chocolate urchin cakes with wild berry fondant. Sometimes doing a couple of things with detail and intention is better than a lavish spread. #teaparty #seaurchin #misswondersmith

💕Urchin Tea 💕 I'm always drawn to liminal spaces, perhaps because so much of my life has been spent "in between" and filled with uncertainty. For this intimate gathering, I wanted to find someone else who was in their own state of liminality.

💕Urchin Tea 💕 I love thinking of ways to translate my ceramic art into food (or my food into ceramic art!) These little tea cakes are a rich chocolate cake coated in a wild berry fondant and royal icing dots to look just like little sea urchins!

💕Urchin Tea 💕 This micro-gathering was an experiment: what would it be like to create a beautiful gathering to share with just one person? I chose my guest Maria from a list of people who wrote me beautiful stories about liminality. Honestly? It was a bit awkward, but also completely lovely.

💕Urchin Tea 💕 my hand-sculpted tea set in the habitat that inspired it

💕Urchin Tea 💕 This week I'll be posting about a little experiment I did for this event! For this intimate gathering, I selected just one guest from all of those who wrote me stories about liminality. I wanted to see what it was like to put together something so special for a stranger.

🐚Ephemera🐚 To celebrate the waning days of summer, guests followed a city-wide treasure hunt to unlock a secret gathering filled with nostalgia. Read all about it on my patreon! (Link in bio)

🐚Ephemera🐚 Does nostalgia feel like ethereal mist to you too? I wanted to layer this gathering with artwork and fabric so it felt like a dream or a memory. At the gathering, guests foraged ice cream sundae toppings like cherries from the glass tide pool pieces.

🐚Ephemera🐚 It brings me so much joy to handmake as many elements as possible for each celebration I plan. For Ephemera, I even made the seaweed-reminiscent spoons!

🐚Ephemera🐚 Doodle stones! My hands have always got to be doing something (hello ADHD), so for a while I carried a white paint pen around in my pocket and doodled on stones while waiting for whatever. They ended up being the perfect little treasures to hide alongside the edible ones for this event!

🐚Ephemera🐚 Since this event was all about nostalgia, I whipped up some ice cream flavors inspired by a survey I had posted on social media. From fresh cut grass to blooming roses, wild huckleberries to peaches and cream, each ice cream was an intentional blend of flavors.

🐚Ephemera🐚 I love creating vessels that have no clear "bottom" - ones that can be used as a cup, then set upside-down as a maritime sculpture, an ode to barnacles.

🐚Ephemera🐚 It brings me so much joy to be able to plan the entire experience of an event... from the hand-enameled spoons to the giant ceramic barnacle clusters holding surprise treats of both the edible and inedible variety. I was delighted when my guests spent a long time exploring them!

🐚Ephemera🐚 Often when I explore a subject in one medium, it finds its way into another... what started as doodle-decorated rocks (swipe to see) turned into these tasty black sesame marzipan treats filled with crunchy nuts and seeds. It was so fun to doodle on them with royal icing

🐚Ephemera🐚 What does the late summer nostalgia of youth taste like to you? How does it smell? What colors is it? Those were the questions I asked myself while planning this event. There was a giant treasure hunt. There was homemade ice cream. There were shells to gather, and tidepools to forage.

💜Fireweed💜 A lovely group of humans who joined me in the backwoods of an Idaho fire to forage fireweed and send blessings to survivors of the devastating Came Fire in Paradise, CA. I had made hand-crafted chalices glazed with ashes from each of their lost homes. Read more on my patreon!

💜Fireweed💜 Hungry foragers get huckleberry muffins for breakfast, it's just the rule! I decorated the top with a little marzipan fireweed blossom and used my mom's recipe (my favorite ever!) to bake these treats absolutely packed with wild huckleberries. #wildfoodlove #wildfood #huckleberry

💜Fireweed💜 I wanted to send off these handcrafted chalices with lots of love, so a group of thoughtful foragers helped me harvest enough fireweed to use in care packages. I also had a Polaroid camera that we used to take pictures of the fireweed sprouting from the recent fire to send hope.

💜Fireweed💜 I wanted these chalices to feel precious, so I gave them a band of real gold luster. I love the way the ash glaze (made from ash from a home lost to wildfire) pools in the carved texture of this one. Each glaze was unique, telling a story of place and time and serving as an artifact.

💜Fireweed💜 In the fire-scarred backwoods of Idaho, we gathered not to grieve the past, but to honor what survived it. This gathering was a chance for us to (literally and metaphorically) fill the cups I had made wildfire survivors with blessings and comfort ...