Artist Statement

I am a clay and glass artist living and working in the Sacramento area for the past 15 years.  Prior to that, I was a frustrated artist with very little time to devote to my passion.  As I am still exploring my artistic identity, you will find that my work is very eclectic, deriving ideas and style from a broad and diverse range of sources.  Most days, I spend 5-6 hours making art, sometimes more.  During this time, I am usually in “the zone,” fully emersed in a feeling of energized focus and full involvement, and enjoyment in the process, so that I lose all sense of time.  

Much of my ceramic work focuses on the human face and form, exploring how we see and relate to each other and our environment, sometimes with a bit of whimsy.  I love creating human faces in clay because I never know where my hands will take me.  Starting with a lump of clay and no plan, a person literally emerges.  One of my favorite subjects is the storyteller surrounded by children, some listening intently, some being lulled to sleep, some distracting one another.  I also enjoy pairing the human animal and other species with whom we share the planet.

I am constantly studying new ways to capture and interpret the unique and versatile beauty of glass, exploiting our instinctive attraction to symmetry and asymmetry, positive and negative space, curve and line, and, or course, contrast. My work incorporates murrine (that I make myself), pattern bars, silk-screening, sandblasting, lost wax casting, pate de verre, “painting” with frit, and basic slumping.  Sometimes, my inspiration must wait until I learn a technique that allows me to make it a reality.   Sometimes I have a skill and seek inspiration to make good use of it.