About Me

I’ve been drawn to detail throughout my life. One of my high-school art teachers had me work on a large-scale drawing of a pitcher plant out of tiny colored ink dots – it took me a year after I graduated to finish it. When my niece was very young and wasn’t even talking yet, we went to a playground, she stopped, and pointed out where a nail was sticking up out of the wood on a platform leading up to the slide. I thought: she sees like I do!

I am passionate about exploring beauty through clay and continue to be sensitive to subtle detail. Clay humbles me. I respect it. The material itself goes through so many stages to make it through to the end of the artistic process. It is transformational and vast, creating room for endless artistic and technical exploration.

In that vein, a contemporary Japanese porcelain exhibit entitled “Quiet Clarity” caught my attention many years ago. The concept communicates what I strive to reveal through my own artwork - harmony between physical materials, critical thinking and inner contemplation. While I work, I’m constantly thinking of intimacy, mastery, complexity, materiality, the images that pop into my head when I fall asleep and many times, hidden emotions. When I drink out of a cup I made or stand back and look at a sculptural piece in progress, I feel these ideas in the work I’ve made.

Bio

After working part time in ceramics while I pursued a professional career in international relations, I became a full-time artist many years ago. It was a significant career change, with the accompanying joys and challenges of launching into a completely different way of life. In addition to my own studio practice and active membership in a ceramics co-op, until recently I taught wheel throwing and was the ceramics studio manager at a local continuing education arts institution. I am now involved in a new project as partner and co-director of a studio called Continuum Art Studios, which provides studio space to 2D, ceramics, fiber, jewelry and other artists and helps emerging ceramic artists transition from a school environment to working on their own. I’m a Denver native. I have lived in Chile and New York and participated in an artist’s residency in Japan, among other travels.

Process

I straddle the fence between functional and sculptural. My decorative/”functional” pieces are wheel-thrown or wheel-thrown and altered with hand-built components. I work exclusively in porcelain and fire to Cone 10 (2380 degrees F) in a gas reduction kiln. My intent in making wheel-thrown work is the joy of the process and to make show pieces rather than having the end result be strictly utilitarian. So yes, the wheel-thrown work is “functional”, but it is meant to be art that stems from the wheel. The details on my wheel-thrown pieces are created with black slip at the leather-hard stage and underglaze is added after bisque.

My sculptural work is slab or coil built from white or red stoneware and is fired to Cone 6 (2232 degrees F) in an electric kiln. The finish on my sculptural work is entirely dependent on what the piece needs - it may be finished with ceramic stains or glaze may complement the form.