Rarely did I consider using clay as an art medium throughout my earlier years, but I was always interested in making art with other mediums. My parents exposed me to pottery and I asked for a battery powered wheel, which didn’t do the job of exciting me to pursue pottery. I was more fascinated with birds, plants and childrens book illustrations and have collected numerous books on those subjects throughout my life. I thought book or botanical illustration was my future. In college I found my way to the art & art history departments to pursue some form of illustration.

Working on my BFA in printmaking and painting (mostly egg tempera painting) was pefect for me during those years. I was able to draw for hours and loved creating a three-dimentional object on a two-dimentional surface. I continued to draw and paint, mainly plants, after my BFA and renewed an interest in photography. (Click drawings or photography to see my older work.). During college modern sculptural pottery was emphasized and I had little interest even though I loved creating three-dimentional objects.

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 the Middle East (approximately 3300–500 BCE). To translate the pottery to paper I had to measure the inside, outside and thickness of each piece with calipers, fingers and 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 later on.

I decided to focus on pottery at this point in my life because I wanted to make art that can be touched and used. Ceramics is a now a permanant canvas for drawing and sculpting.

Our studio is equipped with two electric kilns. All my pottery is wheel-thrown with some lid features and/or decoration formed by hand. Most of it is microwave and dishwasher safe. Any pieces with gold or mother of pearl need to be hand-washed.