My earliest art experience was in Kindergarten.
In 3rd through 6th grade, my art teacher, Mrs. Beaver taught art history through famous paintings. We used flash cards to learn the painting,
My earliest memories of home revolve around two smells. Both make me think instantly of home. Fresh baked homemade cinnamon rolls, 5 Inches tall and the smell of turpentine from mother’s studio.
I was intimidated by mother’s painting and I was drawn to three dimensions. In 10th grade I built my first potter’s wheel. I still remember the day my father brought home the ball bearings needed to make the wheel function. It felt like Christmas Day!
I was a Humanities Major but found myself gravitating to the Fine Arts Department's Ceramics Lab. My second year I added a Fine Art minor.
A quick trip to Austin to see if I could find a job and place to live changed my life. Within three hours of arriving I had a job and a cool little place to live near campus. Austin immediately became my new home. Whenever I traveled anywhere, when I returned to Austin, I always felt like I was home. It was a perfect fit for me.
Desiring to focus on clay, a production stoneware potter took me on as a paid apprentice.
When the time was right, I set out on my own to be a gallery artist. I opened my own studio and developed my own work. My focus was exclusively Raku. Modern Raku is a pottery firing technique inspired by the Japanese tradition that dates back to the 1500's.
Coming from the functional stoneware tradition, the potter's wheel was my comfort zone. From an early age I had spent countless hours working on one.
The wheel was familiar but Raku was new and exciting to me. Clay is a slow process. It takes days to make and dry work. It can be weeks from start until it is dry and can be bisque fired, glazed and fired again. The glaze-firing itself can take days for work to be loaded, fired, cooled and unloaded. With Raku this final firing time can be cut to an hour or so. It seems so fast, so immediate by comparison. For an impatient type like myself, this translates to spontaneity.
