a r t i s t   s t a t e m e n t

March 2024

I love working with clay and have been for 33 years. What I have discovered over time in my  joy filled relationship with clay and making handbuilt artworks? For one thing, there is much more going on than just creating clay objects and a career as an artist.   I’m creating expressions of my relationship with this sacred world and the Earth that supports me and the be-ings here; animals, birds, owls, horses, trees, flowers, plants and two legged humans, all manifestations of the sacred dream of love and power; all medicine for my soul. That energy is imprinted into these artworks. Viewers may sense that energy in the artwork and recognize that same energy in themselves and want to know more.

Consciously and with a cultivated awareness, I work and live within this energetic ocean of Creation. My artworks are one way that I honor this relationship with the energy of Creation in this world.

The natural world is filled with wonders, curiosities, teachers, and such amazing beauty. What is that all about? I’ve wondered from early on in this lifetime. What is is that i have been drawn to in the natural world, the more pristine, the more beautiful and powerful Nature appears to me. The Natural world is revealing and communicating  something.

My working relationship with clay is a way of exploring, honoring and expressing my relationship with Sacredness of this world and the Mystery of Creation. Working with clay, fire and dreams, my artwork is a practice of perceiving the sacred in the moment, in myself, in the clay, Mother Earth, and honoring and building that relationship by bringing sacred dreams from the Mystery into the literal world.

With clay, the dreams in my heart become form. I work with clay, co-creating with this sacred One, watching the piece come into being. This process feels magical; I leave the marks and “imperfections” of this exciting process visible in the texture and the surface of the artwork. I layer into the surface colorful under glazes and/or slip. The piece is fired twice, sometimes more. Under glazes while permanent have a soft matte surface which allows the texture of the clay and the forming process to remain visible.

I’m grateful to be working with clay in this way.