Tangerine Kimmel spent the past year and a half creating a collection of pottery inspired by Palauan storyboards, and within hours the pieces had sold out. 

“The reception from buyers was amazing! I was very hopeful and knew it was going to be at least a partial success, ... I didn’t realize that meant almost everything within the first three hours of me launching,” Tangerine told The Husk.

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Tangerine, @bittyklayfish on Instagram, said she’s filled with immense gratitude for all of the support.

“The money wasn’t the main goal with this drop; putting myself out there again was,” she said. “I want to be seen again, and I am so grateful for the support that was shown to me from my community. The only way I feel like I can say thank you is to keep creating and making our ancestors proud.”

Tangerine’s sold-out collection uses motifs and figures that are unmistakably Palauan. Her use of color and spacing gives the collection sophistication, finesse and make for a wonderful blend of primordial and contemporary. In these pieces, Tangerine successfully echoes the shapes and lines of ancient Indigenous art without tipping into caricature. Her designs feel true to Palau but they also feel true to Tangerine. 

She made her first ceramic pieces when she was 6 years old at summer camp, and over the years, she’s returned to the medium time and again. A ceramic artist led a lesson at school one day, and, after she came home with the instructor’s business card, Tangerine’s mom was intrigued. She signed them up for lessons. 

As a teen, she tried her hand at a throwing wheel. 

“I was 15 and fell in love with it,” Tangerine said. 

In college, ceramics found its way back into her life through a wheel-throwing course she took for fun, and it’s been an ongoing affair of the heart — and hands — ever since.

“Ceramics is probably my favorite medium because it invents itself. I get more inspiration from a block of clay, rather than a blank canvas, even though I do love painting,” Tangerine said. “I used to do watercolor and acrylic painting during the pandemic when I wasn’t able to do ceramics, but it never really satisfied my thirst to throw on the wheel.” 

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Each piece is hours of physical work; molding and shaping clay. Just as crucial to the process is ushering pieces through the drying process. 

She carves and paints her designs, or attaches handles or other specifics the work calls for. Some of the pottery-making process happens outside, and the rain or stifling heat can affect how the clay dries. Tangerine is careful about cracks and warping. To mold a piece from a lump of clay to a vase or a mug, these details stretch the time from hours to days.

“It’s an intense balancing act that can only be learned through experience; something I am grateful to have had a college professor give me guidance about,” she said. 

Through years of creating with ceramics, she’s learned not to accept defeat; to persist even if a piece “fails.” 

“(It’s) something I really like about clay too, because it keeps you humble,” Tangerine said. 

She said one major reason why she loves creating with clay is its ties to the past and its ability to endure.

Clay outlasts us, Tangerine said.

“That was a big thing that fascinated me about ceramics, was its ability to preserve something like a handprint, but more so a moment in time. I always think of how someone, hundreds of years from now, may find one of my pots and wonder what it depicts, who it depicts, when it was made, why it was made,” she said. “The fact that these stories are usually carved into wood that will eventually decompose, but I get to preserve them in this way is an honor — to preserve the existence of Palau within a piece of earth and its ability to outlast us. … My medium of choice is ceramics, and when I storyboard I feel most grounded and connected to myself and my family. It feels like I was meant to be here now doing exactly this.” 

As she worked on her storyboard collection, she worked through some big emotions at a pivotal time in her life. Her pottery was her vessel.

“I needed to let go of this work to make space for me to create new work and to also let go of the time in my life where I was at my lowest,” she said. “This collection was made when I was struggling to find myself but when Palau was finding me. I didn’t want to hoard my work. The whole reason I create is to share, so I knew I had to do this drop if I was going to try and move on.”

‘Healing for the both of us’ 

Tangerine was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California. It’s where her family has been for more than 50 years, when her grandmother, Maria “Yuki” Kimmel, first came to the states, Tangerine said. 

“I am mixed Palauan Mexican American,” she said. 

Her grandmother, from Palau, was her second mom. Her grandmother shared aspects of Palauan life with Tangerine growing up, but for most of her life, Tangerine didn’t identify with being a proud Palauan, she said. Like most of the Micronesian diaspora, she struggled to connect her identity with a land that was unfamiliar to her. 

“I knew I was a part of it, I knew I had a place in it, but I was never educated on it by my family,” Tangerine said. “I was kind of always in the background observing these people that would come into the house and that I grew up with but never realizing that they were my family related by blood?

“So growing up, I would always have so many questions, but I was also very shy and didn’t want to be disrespectful for asking the wrong questions, if that makes sense,” she said.

Tangerine thinks her grandmother may have had certain feelings from earlier parts of her life that she wasn't able to fully heal.

“My continuation and celebration of this Palauan art form is an act of healing for the both of us. She was my second mom, my best friend, and storyboarding is the space that I get to spend time with her again,” she said. 

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‘Proud of where we come from’

In addition to ceramics, Tangerine said she loves painting, dancing and music. She used to write songs and play guitar and enjoys what she describes as “creating in nature.”

“Drawing in the sand or dirt, making daisy chains, playing with mud and worms; maybe that's why I love clay because it’s close to Earth,” she said.

Tangerine’s mom, Isaura Rochin, is also an artist who has created with many different mediums. She introduced Tangerine to the easel early on, and she still has three of Tangerine’s earliest paintings framed and hanging in her house. 

“Some of my best work if you ask me,” Tangerine quipped. 

Of all the ceramic pieces she makes, she said mugs are her favorite. 

“Because, to me, mugs are a safe place. If you start your day with coffee, you need a mug. If you end your day with a nightly tea, you need a mug,” she said.

In dreaming up the storyboard collection, Tangerine said she liked the thought of putting the story on an item that would be used daily versus an item that would just be displayed. She wanted “something to hold and connect with and share with others.”

Connection is one of the things she hopes her customers gain from her latest work. She hopes they connect with the items, with the stories that have been perpetuated over generations, and connect with the ancestors who also told those stories. She hopes customers take away “that we are just like our ancestors and should be proud of where we come from,” she said.

“It can be exhausting to fight for our own advocacy and rights as a people who are marginalized. I can only say so much for myself though since I am an American and have my own privileges with that. But I do understand what it is like to be ‘othered’ in a predominantly white society and tokenized as a representation for people of color (in) general when I am a representation of Palauans, Oceania, and Chicanos, specifically,” she said. 

She added that she hopes her work helps people understand “that to know where we come from is important and is a fight when outsiders want to group all brown people in the same box.”

The importance of sharing

To other artists and aspiring artists, Tangerine offers this advice:

“Always do what is calling to you and only you; not for the sake of making money, even though it can be tough when you may not know if you can afford rent that month; not for the sake of anyone else wanting you to make something, especially when it is to emulate something/someone else; but to always have faith and honor in yourself and express your truth. There is only one of you, by a chance of a billion and one. You exist right now, and your calling happens to be an artist. And once you accept that, you accept yourself. So why waste a beautiful life trying to be something you're not? I believe in the cliche: The truth will set you free,” Tangerine said.

She also recommends aspiring artists post about works in progress because that resonates with people.

“I think sharing work is always important, in whatever stage it is. It doesn’t matter how nonaesthetic your workspace may be,” she said. 

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Tangerine is living proof. She said some pieces from her storyboard collection were on her website a year ago, but they didn’t get much attention because not many people knew about them and part of her felt too shy to share her art. After attending an artist panel last December and following a major life change, she felt inspired to take her creativity seriously. She pondered going back to school and making more art. And the more she navigated social media and websites, she learned she needed to put herself out there. She took the plunge and pushed herself to show her work online, relaunch her website, and post more about what she was doing.

She teased her storyboard collection on social media ahead of relaunching her website, which intrigued her following and helped amplify her profile so other social media users started to take notice. 

The result was last month’s overwhelming support and a sold-out collection.

“Share it! People want to see it! If it never sees the light of day, then it never will. Not that that’s a bad thing either. Making things for yourself and for only you to see is just as powerful,” she said.

Looking ahead, Tangerine said she intends to take all that she’s learned from her storyboard collection and make more pieces with more stories and illustrate stories that have not been illustrated before. 

She wants to make more wall hangings, jars, and traditional ceramic pieces.

“I want to familiarize myself with the stories from different sources and retell them in my own voice. I want to be a teacher and a student. I am excited to open myself up to commissions and exploration. I don’t really know what is to come, the clay is usually the one to tell me that,” she said. ✶

Support Tangerine

Follow her on Instagram @bittyklayfish and check out her website,

https://bittyklayfish.myshopify.com/,  to see more of her work.