Sierra graduated from The National Art School in 2002 majoring in painting. On returning to the Bega Valley in recent years and drawing on the local wealth of knowledge around clay she put down her paintbrush only to pick it up again to dip in underglaze and oxides. Trading her pencil for a sgrafitto tool Sierra committed herself to decorating her handbuilt pottery. Sierra’s pieces were exhibited as part of Art Month Sapphire Coast 2021, in an exhibition of fabric inspired ceramics. Most recently her work featured in Cup Runneth Over, an exhibition celebrating the humble cup at Michael Reid Clay.

“Building this collection of vases, I never knew the form the piece would take until it appeared in my hands. Sometimes I would find myself replicating the vase’s posture with my body, experiencing the shape’s balance, the way it held itself. I would then refine the form until it felt completely comfortable – a new vase. Upon these new forms, I began referencing familiar motifs from existing decorated materials – I remembered tiles from somewhere far away, pulling a shirt of the coathanger, a favourite tablecloth, what was the story of this skirt again? I would take a piece of the design and repeat it in a new pattern on an original surface, reconfiguring fragments of memory into a new syntax”.