This was my Freshman woodshop orientation project at Kansas City Art Institute. We had 7 weeks to make a container of something important to us, and I had this ceramic toad with seashells embedded in its back to stick out like horns. I thought it was weird and tacky and I loved it and decided to make this sculptural container to house the artifact. My project was definitely overly ambitious for the assignment, but it did endear me to the Woodshop staff so they later hired me as a work study student tech and safety monitor and I worked that job three years as a student and then for an additional year after I graduated. The myriad of skills I learned, both technical and interpersonal, have been invaluable to my creative careers ever since.

I also believe this piece to be significant because it was one of my first forays into making work that dealt with insides and outsides. It was a discrete object, but from the front of the wooden toad, instead of a belly, there was an opening that had a floating wooden platform for the ceramic toad to rest upon as an icon of worship within this altar space. The interior was rather architectural and the sense of scale was flipped that I now recognize as an approach I take today with my installation work for interior spaces.

— Andy T