The project evolved—from formless notion to polished piece—while Whittier was on a yearlong sabbatical from teaching ceramics at the Kansas City Art Institute. In the beginning, all she knew for sure was that she’d be traveling widely and wanted to create something “in between moments, between the things I’d committed to.”

Using terra-cotta clay harvested behind her Missouri home, Whittier began making beads, first fired there and then on the road in other artists’ kilns. She incorporated other types of earthenware clay gathered along the way. “I mix clays because of the way we all carry the landscapes we’re familiar with—and the things we expect—with us,” explains Whittier, who also is president of Artaxis, an independent network of contemporary artists.

While visiting Florida in August 2023, Whittier was grounded in her hotel room with COVID for five days, so she began stringing the beads together with fishing line. “I come upon my creative ideas, including titles, first through contemplation,” she says, “and then by finding actions that allow me to work through whatever emotions present themselves in the moment.”

Over the next six months, Whittier kept adding to Looking for... as she trekked to and from Florida, Colorado, Texas, Maine, and Minnesota. But, growing in size and weight, it eventually became too heavy to carry. “It was time to put a border on it,” she says. “For me, the work proved really meditative. I knew I was taking a journey into the unknown, and I allowed myself to just go with that—to create something without an exact plan.” —David Schimke

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