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• About
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• I began working with clay 8 years ago at the age of 28. Like many, I became fascinated with the instant gratification and limitless possibilities inherent to the potters wheel. After graduating with my undergraduate degree, I set out to be the anachronistic, humble potter I had come to idealize. Inspired in large part by the writing and work of Bernard Leach, I created a “standard” for utilitarian ceramics based on his groundbreaking book, A Potters Book.
  

• Working for three years, (2003-2006) as a full time studio potter taught me a great deal about the difficulties of autonomous making and financial success in the arts. Showing at six craft fairs a year and selling out of three different galleries did not generate enough income for me to live comfortably. I never made more than half my living expenses. What that time taught me was how to be completely self-motivated. Working in January on objects I knew would not sell until July meant I needed to push myself for the love of the process and the opportunity to learn from each piece. Those were difficult years, but what I learned is that I do love the material and I want to work with it for the rest of my life.


• Escaping the world of the studio potter to confront graduate school in Fine Art at SUNY New Paltz was a leap of faith which meant I needed to rethink a great deal of the axioms I held with regard to ceramics. The importance of craftsmanship and tradition melted away as I opened myself up to new ideas and approaches to the medium. The “rules” I had learned to work within slowly faded as I pushed myself to new intellectual heights and the medium to new tangible realities. By questioning the vessel and looking for new strategies in making, I found a unique vernacular which I feel I can truly call my own.
  
  I never questioned the power of the vessel to make profound social and aesthetic statements, but at New Paltz, I found a format for making which increased my audience, while making a deeper more pointed, social statement. The fine arts are a realm in which a great deal of people can be impacted by one object. Within utilitarian ceramics a mug can only affect the one person or small group of people who interact with it. The fine arts broaden the net to include a diverse group of intellectually acute, analytical thinkers.

"That the criterion of beauty is a living thing and constantly in flux, is true, but here at least there is a
continuous if ever changing consensus of opinion
as to what may be called great achievement."

Bernard Leach in Towards a Standard, 1941.