In 1973, when I was in my first year in high school, I enrolled in a class taught by the art teacher at the Urban School of San Francisco. The class was intended to teach us how to build stained glass windows but I quickly noticed that the teacher was actually a potter. I had been curious about clay and fire for a few years so I asked her to teach me to throw on a wheel once the required glass window had been completed. She agreed.

 

That started what has become a lifetime fascination with mud, fire, and glass and how my hands can utilize those components in endlessly intriguing ways. During the next semester in the art center I wore out my welcome because I simply used too much time and too many resources.

 

The next step was becoming the grunt apprentice to a formally trained production ceramicist in the Richmond District of San Francisco. I spent almost four years doing the tasks necessary to keep that studio functioning. In exchange for this I received studio time and constant instruction, mainly through observation and mimicry. Tom, the master, wasn't much of a conversationalist but he knew his art as though it were a part of his genetic structure. He had a tremendous influence on my technical knowledge and abilities.

 

After graduating from high school and moving to Santa Cruz to attend U.C.S.C., I found myself in need of studio space. Once again, a production potter, making her living creating and selling ceramics, especially large stoneware sinks, hired me to do the grunt work in exchange for studio time and gallery space. Sylvia Clark was another rather non-verbal artist who clearly preferred her privacy but I was able to watch and learn, and watch and learn I did.

 

When my college years ended and I started working in the corporate world, wearing a suit every day to afford to live in Marin County, I joined a couple of coop studios and have been part of the current one since 2003.

 

Back then my life had two distinct identities. By day I was walking around an office in delicate clothing carrying an HP-12C and in the evenings and on weekends, the world of mud and fire and parenthood took over.

 

Puff the kiln and I,  while currently creating at the coop studio in Marin County, are thinking that perhaps another change may be lurking around the corner. In the beginning, back at that studio in the Richmond district in San Francisco, I was fortunate enough to assist Tom in the construction of a large arched brick kiln, custom built for his needs. I've always wanted to do that again. Though my energy does not allow for seriously heavy work like kiln building anymore, I'll get by with a little help from my friends.