Sam Martin makes ceramics the way a filmmaker builds worlds: through obsessive detail, layered meaning, and the belief that beauty comes from tension. Born in New York and now working in California, she moves fluidly between cinema, design, and material craft, weaving them into a single practice.

Her vessels feel unearthed rather than made — relics from a culture that never existed but somehow feels familiar. Surfaces aren’t applied; they’re coaxed from the clay, shaped by the volatile physics of the kiln. Cratered, burnished, or veined with improbable color, each piece resists passivity. It asks to be noticed, handled, and remembered.

Fragrance emerged as a natural extension of this sculptural language. Rather than treating scent as an accessory, Sam uses it much like cinematic atmosphere: to shape environment and emotion. The result is a tactile, atmospheric continuum — objects and scents working together to define mood, place, and world.

Drawing from design history, astronomy, and post-industrial decay, Martin creates forms that could belong equally to the deep past or a distant future. The work is modern, textured, and just a little brutal: artifacts that hum with contradiction. Raw yet sensual, familiar yet alien, always pressing at the edge of what clay can do.