3rd Wheel is the collaborative pottery group of Preston Tolbert, Rob Wallace, and Eli Akins—three artists whose individual voices intersect where function meets sculpture. United by a shared pursuit of form, texture, and restraint, their work explores the space between utility and expression.
This collection was created here at Mirai as part of their Artist in Residency, where time, place, and collaboration shaped both process and outcome. Rooted in the landscape and rhythm of the Pacific Northwest, each piece carries a sense of its environment—mist, forest, and stone translated through clay. Every vessel stands as a record of shared dialogue: between makers, between material and fire, between tradition and evolution.
