In the Spotlight: Aly Kangleon, Ceramic Artist

In the spotlight is Alyssa Kangleon, a Filipina ceramic artist whose work operates at the intersection of material and meaning. Her practice is grounded in what she calls "fermented plasticity"—a philosophy that understands clay's malleability not merely as a technical property, but as a lens through which to examine human connection, intimacy, and presence. We spoke with Aly about devotion as a creative practice, empowerment as infrastructure, and what it means to build a life around attention.

On your journey

What moment or experience made you realize you wanted to pursue this path?

I didn't begin ceramics with the ambition of turning it into a career. I pursued it because it was absorbing and satisfying in a way that felt almost embarrassingly simple: the more time I gave it, the more it gave back. Effort in, growth out. During a period of my life that felt turbulent and unknowable, that equation felt stabilizing.

But what made me stay wasn't improvement or a growth mindset—it was intimacy.

The first time I saw someone hold one of my cups and settle into it: the way their thumb found the handle, the way their fingers curled around the warmth, something shifted for me. It felt like a small miracle—that I could be present in the dailiness of someone's life. That something I shaped in quiet concentration could accompany their morning.

There is so much tenderness in making functional objects. You are always imagining the absent other. And when that imagined person becomes real, when you see the object used, worn in, loved, it feels like witnessing the completion of a circle.

That's when it stopped being a pastime and started feeling like devotion.

What attracted you to your craft?

In the beginning, I was drawn to the control, which is funny because that's not really the takeaway from ceramics, haha.

Ceramics rewarded attention. If I practiced, I improved. If I centered the clay well, it responded. That clarity was comforting during a time when very little else felt steady.

But what keeps me here now is the opposite.

Ceramics is a collaboration with forces I cannot and do not desire to dominate: earth, water, air, fire. I can repeat the same process and still be surprised. The way heat moves inside a kiln can shift the colours. The humidity in the room can change drying time. Even what I'm carrying emotionally can alter the pressure of my hands.

There's a kind of aliveness in that transience. The work records not only my intention, but the conditions of its making. I sometimes think of art as an archive of a life—not in a grand historical sense, but in small embodied traces. Each piece carries the mood, the season, the uncertainty, the hope of the moment it was formed.

Even if a bowl ends up holding fruit on someone's table, it is still part of a larger conversation about care. About attention. About how we move through our days.

When did you realize you had a business and wanted to do this for a living?

I don't think there was a singular dramatic point—it was more of an accumulation. People kept coming back not only to purchase something, but to linger. To ask questions. To bring friends. To stay curious. At some point it felt less like "I make objects" and more like "we are building a place to notice things together."

Someone would tell me they felt calmer after a workshop. Someone else would say they didn't know they were allowed to make things with their hands. Watching that permission arrive and unfold feels so tender. 

I don't always think of it as a business. I think of it as a practice. And a practice deserves commitment. It asks for care. It asks for sustainability.

Tell us more about your brand and what you guys do.

My practice is less about branding and more about attention.

Yes, I make ceramics. But more than that, I try to create spaces where people can slow down enough to feel texture, weight, temperature—to return to their own bodies.

Clay is honest. It records every hesitation, every press of the thumb. It holds memory. I'm drawn to that integrity.

The workshops—whether botanical sun printing, hand-building ceramics, or eco printing—are all invitations to collaborate with material. To let your hands think. To resist the urge to optimize or rush. To practice sustained attention in a culture that fragments it.

If there is a through line, it is care. Care as a method. Care as a discipline. Care as a way of life.

How do you define success?

"For me, success is sustainability."

Can I continue this work without burning out? Can the people I collaborate with feel valued and supported? Can the work remain sincere? I'm less interested in scale than in depth. If something I've made becomes part of someone's everyday—holding their coffee, catching afternoon light, carrying food meant to be shared—that feels like success.

I think of ceramics as collaborative twice over: first between me and the elements, and finally between the object and the person who will live with it. The full narrative of a piece unfolds long after it leaves my hands.

If the work has a life beyond me, then I've done something right.

On the workshop

What excites you most about this workshop series and Women's Month?

A platter is rarely solitary. It sits at the centre of a table. It holds abundance. It anticipates gathering.

During Women's Month, that symbolism feels resonant. So much of women's labour has been about holding: families, communities, emotional space. And so often this happens invisibly. In this workshop, we get to shape something that holds joy, celebration, nourishment—and there's something beautiful about making something that will be where gatherings happen.

What do you hope participants will take away from your session?

I hope participants leave less intimidated by making. I hope they trust their hands more. I hope they find the joy in imperfection. A platter does not need to be symmetrical to be generous. It does not need to be flawless to deserve a table.

I want them to feel that what they make is enough and beautiful!

On female empowerment

What does female empowerment mean to you personally?

"For me, empowerment is infrastructure.

It's not branding. It's not resilience as performance. It's having real, material room to heal, to experiment, to fail without being punished for it. I don't want empowerment to mean endurance. I want it to mean capacity."

Capacity to rest. Capacity to imagine differently. Capacity to make. We are often taught to outsource our power to institutions, to approval systems, to algorithms that decide what is visible and valuable. In that outsourcing, many of us become estranged from the most immediate form of agency we have: our bodies. Our hands. The fact that we can shape something and feel it respond. There is grief in that estrangement. And there is a return in making.

When clay yields under your palms, you're reminded that power is not abstract. It is tactile. It is relational. It lives in the closing of the gap between intention and touch. When something soft becomes something that can hold.

Empowerment, to me, is that return to embodiment—and the conditions that make it possible.

It is not one woman surviving a broken system through exceptionalism. It is women having enough support that survival is not the only available narrative.

Empowerment is the ability to shape and to be supported while shaping.

Who are the women who have inspired or supported you along the way?

It feels impossible to name only a few. The way we live shapes the art we make. If that's true, then my work is already a collaboration with the women around me.

Women who taught me to use my hands without apology. Women who modelled rest as necessary, not indulgent. Friends who show up without competition, who believe there is room for all of us. We are often told ambition is scarce, that recognition is narrow and must be fought over. But the women in my life practice something different. They share kilns. They share firing schedules. Someone asks, "Does anyone have a slot?" and someone responds, "I would do the same."

That reciprocity is infrastructure.

And my students inspire me constantly. Watching someone soften into confidence over a few hours reminds me that empowerment is not abstract. It has weight. It's warm. You feel it in your palms before you name it in your mind.

If my work holds any value at all, it's because I was held first.