I never considered specifically becoming a potter until later in life, but I was always an artist. I was exposed to pottery and art through my parents who took my sister and I to pottery shops and fairs and we used pottery in our house.

The chosen mediums for my BFA, printmaking and painting, were more interesting to me than ceramics. I loved the details of line and washes of paint in illustrations the most. I had an interest in pottery, but the professors emphasized modern sculptural pottery and I didn’t want to spend time on that style. I continued to draw after my BFA and renewed an interest in photography. (Click drawings or photography to see my older work.)

While in graduate school (MA in History - in short, paintings and political drawings from approximately 1400-1650 A.D.), I obtained a job under an archeologist producing technical drawings of ancient pottery from an excavation in Israel. The pottery was from the Early Bronze period to the Iron II period (approximately 3300–500 BCE). To translate the pottery to paper I had to measure the inside and outside curves and thicknesses of each piece with calipers and my eyes. Broken pieces were easy, but whole pieces had to be felt with my fingers alone. Little did I know that it was a great exercise for learning to feel my own pottery as I threw it on the wheel.

I decided to focus on pottery at this point in my life because I wanted to make art that can be touched and used. My background in printmaking (drawing and carving) and egg tempera painting (the old school process of layering paint glazes and washes) are now applied to my pottery. I learned how to throw from a combination of lessons from my step-father, Steve Landry (the owner and a potter at Studio 4 Potters where I also work), The Worcester Center for Crafts and a lot of self-study.

Our studio is equipped with an electric kiln. All my pottery is hand-thrown and is microwave and dishwasher safe, but it is always safer to hand wash pottery (unless you drop it in your cast iron sink). :)