My History in Art-Making

I received a B.A. in Studio Art from Macalester College and an M.F.A. in painting from the University of Minnesota. While at Macalester I took an intensive course in bronze casting where I learned the "lost wax" method of creating a piece of sculpture. In this method, a wax sculpture is finished and concealed in plaster and then fired in a kiln which leaves a void of the piece — hence the term "lost wax" — to be filled with molten bronze.

The bronze must cool before the plaster is cracked open, revealing the sculpture now transformed into bronze.

I immediately fell in love with the "cocoon" experience of temporarily losing a piece in one form and then uncovering it later in a different state. The "reveal" was the part of the process that most fascinated me. But producing art in bronze was not an easy nor inexpensive proposition so I was not able to continue working in this medium. Nevertheless I retained a yearning to re-experience the same magic revelation of the bronze casting method of creating art. 

Years later, a friend who had just taken a workshop in primitive pit-fired pottery urged me to take the workshop. I did and immediately was overjoyed at being introduced to this completely low-tech way to have the same rush of artistic experience I had longed for since my college days.

As a painter and sculptor, my work had been pictorial and subjective. My pieces were meant —perhaps to be decorative — but also "meaningful."

Now I make vessels out of clay which are functional objects meant to be beautiful but not necessarily "meaningful." It seems almost like plagiarism to reap the benefits of the painting the fire creates on the pottery. My job is to prepare the "canvas" of each pot so that the natural force of the fire can paint it. 

The fire is not always kind to the potter, though. What you see in the photographs of my pieces — WORK — are the examples of the best results I have obtained. In COLLECTIONS, there are some of the pieces that others have already bought. What is not depicted are pots from the days when the fire gods were attending to someone else's muse...