Artists’ Gallery Sunriver

I started working with clay in the mid 1960s. I was taught in a very traditional manner making utilitarian pottery and glazing was done with traditional stoneware glazes. I attended San Francisco State University majoring in fine arts. After college I went to Mendocino, California and set up a ceramic and art program for Clearwater Ranch which had approximately 200 children from ages 4 to 15 who were autistic and wards of the State of California. What came out of this experience is difficult to put in words. The children’s’ creative and expressive use of clay as a medium was from realistic to out of this world. It was at this time I started to experiment with alternative firing techniques to finish my ceramic work and have pursued it ever since. To say I was affected by creative children is a gross understatement.

I now use exclusive Alternative Firing Techniques to finish all my work. Each piece becomes a blank canvas, so to speak, and each surface treatment becomes unique unto itself. Just like in nature I also produce pieces that truly display a range of light to dark rich blues using copper sulfate in the firing process. I do not use traditional glazes in my work but stay with raku, pit, sagger, smoke firing along with ferric chloride and copper sulfate which are wrapped in aluminum foil and fired to different temperatures to bring out different colors. Sometimes they are fired several times. When each piece has cooled and the foil is removed the true serendipity of playing with nature is revealed.