Meet the Team!
Titled after Becca’s Thai middle name, Prakun Pottery is a co-labor of small-batch ceramics, locally produced in Indianapolis and made in the spirit of welcome. Though Becca is the main potter, the voices and skills of the women below continually shape and refine the vision of Prakun.
Together, we seek to gather people around a common table and celebrate hospitality in its culturally diverse incarnations. May the pots and words you find here invite you to set a place for others at your table as well.
Cheers!
Becca, for the Prakun Pottery Team
September 2026
Becca Ito: Potter
Becca is an Indy-based potter with roots in Thailand. Ceramics are her way of telling about the world. Being 4th generation Japanese-American, with lineage upended by xenophobic legislation during WWII, she strives for an art practice that mends that rip and defies present-day manifestations of the same fear and hatred that forced her family into camps in 1942.
Now in her 15th year as a potter, she savors the way that wild riverbank clay and the inferno of a wood-fired kiln converge on something as domestic and dependable as a coffee mug. The craft is both formal and intimate: the shape of a piece reflecting millennia of tradition, its inner curve ridged by her fingerprints. She enjoys throwing functional forms that invite folks to slow down, savor the ordinary, and extend their tables to friend and stranger.
Becca also works as an Episcopal minister to children, youth, and family in Indianapolis. Inviting young people into worship through art is her chief delight.
Katie Ito-Carrera:
Potter, Head Chef
Katie runs an independent ceramics practice named Sobremesa Pottery, but always seems up for a collaboration with Becca at Prakun Pottery. See their latest project, “Heirloom,” honoring their grandmother who was incarcerated for being Japanese-American during WWII.
She officially joined the Prakun Pottery team in Summer 2021 as a potter experienced in surface design and studio tech. For her, art-making is a small way of doing justice, of loving a world in peril without being overwhelmed by despair.
Also known to cook at the slightest provocation, she’ll go on ingredient kicks, where everything she makes for a season will have tahini or miso or zucchini. Her galettes and browned-butter frostings are legendary, and she enjoys making art that illustrates the mysterious and beautiful intersection of peacemaking and storytelling at the table. To see her work, visit her Instagram @_sobremesapottery.
Jody Oetzel:
Operations Manager
Jody is a PhD student studying political science at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and long-time friend of Becca. In the lead-up to art shows, Jody faithfully shoulders the indispensable responsibility of checking in on Becca, organizing and managing her extensive to-do lists, and generally keeping Becca fed and watered because she has a habit of forgetting. (Having traveling around the world with her, Jody always has a good sense of what she wants to eat and frequently must leverage that knowledge for the sake of Becca’s own well-being.)
In the little free time she has apart from her offices as grad student and Potter-Watcher, Jody cross-stitches and day-dreams of life with a pet Corgi named Cardamom.
Team Members Emerita
Leah McMichael: Marketing Manager, Story-teller
Leah is a writer, chicken maestro, and tender of the earth. She and Becca brought five art shows to life over five years — an incredible feat for a couple friends whose main jobs weren’t their art forms! They also 100% crowd-funded a research trip to Turkey in 2022 and published “Cappadocian Chronicles,” a live journal of their travels. Her ink and Becca’s clay were a collaboration as intertwined as grapevines on a trellis. Read more about the shows here:
Dialects of Welcome (2019): a show that celebrated Midwestern-American and Thai food cultures that have shaped Becca’s hospitality practices.
Scattered and Drawn (2020): a show that reflected on the art of attending to words, people, places, and service. Profoundly influenced by living through the pandemic.
Janus (2021): a show that honored life transitions, spaces in-between, and the courage it takes to say “yes!” to Love. Included interviews with our community of Prakun Pottery users.
In This Sign (2021): a show that revisited hospitality as a way to resist the rise of Christian nationalism in the U.S.
For the Love Of (2023): a show that cherished our Indiana native habitats and offered visions for community sustained by gratitude and reciprocity.
Katie Pourcho:
Artist, Art Educator
Katie is an artist whose practice is rooted in excellence and generosity. For the ways she amplifies, empowers, and nurtures the creativity of her “kid artists,” she was recognized as Indiana’s 2020 Teacher of the Year.
Becca and Katie became friends through work and collaborated on a ceramics project highlighting precious Indiana habitats and the endangered species who live in our forested caves, grassy prairies, and dune-wetlands. “For The Love Of” was on display August 4-27, 2023 in the Speck Gallery at the Harrison Center for the Arts (1505 N Delaware St, Indianapolis, IN). Becca then made it available in an online format here. Enjoy!
Deirdre Noor:
Chief of Heraldry
Deirdre is a writer and a poet, as well as an artist in graphite, textiles and clay. She seeks to tell truth as she sees it, whether it leads through fields of wildflowers or medieval symbolism or battle maps of a bygone era.
Among her many accomplishments, Deirdre designed and carved nine serving bowls in the style of medieval heraldry in 2021 for “In This Sign,” Becca’s first show at the Harrison Center for the Arts.