I first saw the magic of clay when I was seventeen and watched someone throw a pot on a wheel. How a lump of clay, turned around on a wheel becomes a form was mystifying. Although it was a few years before I had the chance to work with clay myself, a love affair began that has continued and deepened.
Clay has a life of its own and as a potter, I love to interact with the clay’s vitality. The process of throwing, forming a pot on the wheel, completely engages me. I love the challenges of continually trying to refine forms. What I strive for in my work, is to create pots that maintain a sense of the process in the finished pieces. To achieve that organic quality, I have layered glazes on some pieces, painted with liquid, colored clay on others and experimented with altering forms. My pots are meant to be used and to enhance daily life – hopefully tableware makes a meal more of a celebration and vases hold and display flowers in a unique way.
A fellow potter presented me with a challenge recently, to describe my work in five adjectives. The first and most basic isfunctional.All of my work is meant to serve a function and to be used. The next isinstinctive.My work comes from within me in an instinctive, non-cerebral way. It is not that I don’t think about them but the process is very basic and essential to who I am. My pots are alsoorganic-they relate to natural patterns and biologic rhythms. My surfaces are not graphic but rather I derive my inspirations from patterns and forms in nature – the designs the tide makes in the sand, the bark of a tree, the colors of a sunset, the shape of a gourd – these rhythms can be found in my pots. They are alsoexuberant,full of joyous enthusiasm to reflect the joy and unreserved energy I feel in making them. And finally, they areaudacious-I fearlessly take chances in making my pottery and I hope they reflect that verve and originality.