Anastasia Babenko is a ceramic artist working in high-fire stoneware in the San Francisco Bay Area. Every vessel is built entirely by hand, coil by coil, without moulds. The work sits between sculpture and vessel, drawn from the natural world and from the human form. The Woman series, at the centre of the practice, grew out of an exploration of womanhood, and those forms have continued to evolve. Clay is approached as a partner rather than a material to control. Natural clay bodies and bare, tactile surfaces let each form speak for itself, and because every piece is hand-built, no two are ever quite alike.