My pottery is functional and intended to be used. I have tried to resolve the requirements of usage, while creating a personal form vocabulary that expresses my interest in organic form, ancient weaponry, aquatic life, animals, Eros, invention, and ceramic history. Although the inspiration for my pottery comes from a variety of sources, they are abstracted and rarely literal.
My pots are often inventive and mysterious, and require the user to investigate, discover, and recognize their potential for use in the home. This "adventure" is intended to help broaden the users mind regarding the possibilities of pottery form, while questioning the perceptions of utilitarian objects and the traditions they are built upon. By exaggerating, minimizing and reorganizing specific pottery elements such as body, handle, and spout, the pots become visually and aesthetically powerful within a personal scale and context.
Much of my pottery is high temperature salt-fired and/or low-fire salt fired, however, I enjoy experimenting with many different firing techniques and temperatures. I often use red or beige colored clays that are fired in an oxidation atmosphere. More recently, I have preferred to search out and dig my own local New Jersey clays -- longing to sense a deeper connection to my pottery and my environment.
The most constant thought that affects my work is a never-ending amazement at nature's adaptability and interdependence. Although not usually recognizable and admittedly lofty, through my work, it is my hope to remind people that pots, like humans, are created in a variety of individual shapes, sizes, colors, and cultures. Like so many other living creatures that inhabit this world, perhaps as humans, we can learn to adapt, survive and FUNCTION in this world in harmony as well.
