Artist's Statement
I am one of many potters who feel rewarded by orchestrating a dance between the tentative certainties and the inevitable mysteries of working with clay.
It wasn't always so. For twenty years I struggled to gain a ruthless control over ceramic processes, seeking to produce what I imagined my work "should" look like when it came from the kiln. Though well-intentioned, this approach was naive and better suited to industry, where consistency is the primary mantra. When I came under the spell of wood firing, I soon realized that discovering unimaginable results every time we unloaded the kilns kept me alert to the countless ways in which "success" must be constantly up for grabs; never codified or made too predictable. Now I consistently make and appreciate work that would have horrified me when I began potting in 1962.
I laugh to think how my capacity to see things as they are must have stretched and become less rigid with time. Many of the best pieces I've made required varying periods of time to understand them by seeing them for what they are; patience pays off. That's one of the things I've learned from what I make.