My pots are hand built, pinching up each layer of rolled coil to build form. Pinching is a slow, rhythmic process that allows time to envision a piece while building. The direct touch creates a visual tempo inherent to the building process.  Surfaces are brushed with colored slips and glazes, and work is fired in an electric kiln to cone 04. Throughout my forty-some years of working with clay, I have tended to work intuitively, encouraging a great deal of collaboration with the clay. Why earthenware? The physicality of earthenware clay in nature: eroding and tumbling, washing and settling with organic matter appeals to me. Earthenware is the common clay- its ubiquitous nature means that it is nearly always nearby or underfoot.

I aim for my work to live within my personal belief in and vision of beauty. My idea of beauty includes work that I hope can raise the spirit of the user or observer. The intrinsic texture of the hands’ work, the structure that maps the surface of a pot, and the emotive color saturation are all vital ingredients in my vision of beauty. I find building functional pottery is stimulating because of its’ boundaries. For me, it is richer ground to work up to and against than the amorphous idea that anything is possible. But rather than being guided solely by form follows function, beauty and presence weigh in as more significant. Such diverse works as the lush paintings of recent contemporary painter Thomas Nozkowski, and the current and historical quilts of Gee’s Bend are great inspirations for me.

In playing classical music on the piano, I find many parallels between music and my time in the studio. In both disciplines, a structure is presented, expanded, broken, enhanced. There is a layering of pitch, texture, and rhythm. The pulse may be quickened or curbed. Observances such as these weave through my day in the studio, and sift out in both mysterious and concrete ways. I like to think that an unforeseen disruption, even a walk out and back in the studio door, can lead to a novel outcome.