The work for which I am best known is sculptural, yet the wheel has always been my center. The teapots, cups, and paint jars in my sculptures have a special meaning for me, and they are meant to honor my first love in ceramics, wheel-throwing.
I am part of a generation of sculptors in clay who were raised on the potters wheel. The techniques, traditions, and esthetics of pottery were still dominant when I was in high school. My first instruction was entirely wheel-based; this was where you went if you wanted to learn about clay in the early 1970s. Everything I first discovered on the wheel remains essential to me as a clay sculptor. Working hollow is a crucial element in my practice, and the techniques I learned for attaching handles and spouts work perfectly for assembling sculpture too. Deeper than the practical aspects, however, is my lifelong passion for the practice of making pots on the wheel.
It all began one snowy winter in New York state. I was fifteen years old when my mothers introduced me to the potters wheel. My stepmother baked bread for the family, and she needed "some really big bowls," so she took a class at the college where she also taught. Because she had faculty access to the facilities, she took me into the empty studio with her during the spring break. We spent every one of those ten days together in that sunlit room, with its fascinating tools and the magical smell of clay. When spring break was over, I wanted more. My mother enrolled us both in a class at the local community college where my stepfather taught and as his child, I was permitted to attend an adult class. I can clearly remember how the trials and distractions of adolescence just fell away from me at the wheel.
