Learning…

This series is “pre-everything”, as I was finding my way with clay and learning how to be a potter / artist. This study involved creating door knobs, paper weights, door stops, finger boxes, and more. The piece on the right was the first thing I made in college out of clay. This is where it all started!

Geometric Series

This series started out as fairly crude etchings on stoneware clay (see historic bowl on the Personal Collection page). As the years went by the carving became more complicated and refined, often teaching me the wisdom of the adage “less is more.” The medallion bowl in this group is similar in design to the piece in the Smithsonian collection. These pieces were made circa 1980-90. These are thrown earthenware, etched and carved, stone burnished, and smoked in exotic hardwood sawdust. 

Early Geologic Series

The early geologic pieces started while doing a residency at ArtPark in upstate New York in the summer of 1981. The studio (shack) that I was working in was way too hot and I had no control over my working environment. There were many interruptions, pieces dried far too quickly, and my frustration led to a 'breakthrough' from the way I had been working and carving. Suddenly I could not carve another straight parallel line.

The carvings are soft edged because I used a sponge or steel wool to even out the carved surface.  There are up to 30-plus hours of carving in each of these pieces in addition to all the preliminary processes of wedging, throwing and trimming. 

Salt Glazed Series

These pieces are significant markers as they show how my carving was becoming more skilled. I built my salt glaze kiln because galleries and collectors told me that they loved my work but were frustrated by the fact that they could not put food or water in the vessels. So I spent thousands of dollars to build the special salt kiln, and returned to doing some high-fired work. Then they told me that they liked the pit-fired work better. The high-fired period did not last long.

Late Geologic Series

The precision of my carving continued to evolve. I learned many lessons about carving leather-hard pieces over the years, the most important of which was to carve the bottom ledge first instead of last. You can see that the edges of these ledge pieces are well defined, clear and sharp. I would go through several tools with each piece and have to sharpen them constantly. There are up to 60-plus hours of carving in each of these pieces. The larger they were the more chance there was of them cracking in the firing. The loss rate was usually 20%-30%. 

Fossilized Snake Skin and New Flow Series

These pieces were carved with sharp looped tools usually used for trimming. It is somewhat similar to doing a woodcut, but it is a pull instead of a push with the tool. In the two early pieces (pre-1990 sabbatical in Ireland) you see one type of pattern. The later piece is called New Flow because it has a different movement but uses the same technique.

Dry Etched Series

In 1984 I was commissioned by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to make a piece for their permanent collection. Even though I was known for my carving and burnishing, the curator wanted a piece that was burnished all over and larger than anything I had ever made before. Of course I said yes. So I embarked on a journey throwing bigger forms and stone-burnishing the whole thing. In order to burnish the surface of the whole pot without scratching, nicking or “dinging” the surface, everything needed to be working perfectly. I had to wear white cotton gloves with towels in my lap to support the piece. I would paint 5 to 8 coats of the watery slip on the bone-dry piece, rub the whole surface with a tiny amount of lemon oil and then burnish with the stone. As the particles in the slip align under the pressure and movement of the stone, they start to reflect light and shine. 

The dry-etched part of this series started when I accidentally nicked the surface of a bowl with a fingernail and there was this big white ding on a totally red backdrop. Once again, certain conditions  led to a new series of work. These pieces needed a spectacular firing in order to maintain the contrast of the clay body, the terra sigillata and the smoke. I made these pieces for myself because they were so labor intensive and expensive, that I thought I would never sell a single one. It’s amazing how our beliefs limit us. It was a very tough period of my life; I was depressed, but these pieces gave expression to something deeper. 

This is when I took my sabbatical to Ireland. I sold two of these pieces just before I left.

The Alien Series

I spent fourteen months living in Ireland on sabbatical in an attempt to recover from burnout and depression. I did photography, drawing and painting, and I wandered a lot. Upon returning to my studio in the States I found I could not work, which I was not expecting. At that time I considered going back to school in order to learn to do something totally different, but I wasn’t quite ready to make that big of a change. I spent a few months as a guest artist at SUNY New Paltz. I made myself so miserable with trying to make something completely different with clay that I was finally ready to return to my own studio and to “dig in.” The first series of work was called the Alien Series. I named it this because I had been a registered alien living in Ireland, but also because of the movie "Aliens" and the memory of the new life forms pushing from the inside out. These pieces were made by pushing from the inside out, and then burnishing the whole surface. Nobody liked them or bought them.

The New Leaf Series

So………I decided to start carving again, and the New Leaf and New Flow series developed. I couldn’t go back to what I had been doing previously, but I still wanted the dimensionality of the Geologic carved pieces, so all of the New Leaf pieces have a carved ledge at the bottom. The precision of my earlier line carving let these pieces have a crisp flow with patterns that we see everyday that come from nature. 

The Sagger-Fired Series

As my work developed further into the Sagger-Fired series, the whole surface of each piece was once again carved. They were fired inside a sagger within an old high-fire kiln. I had grown weary of the random smoke patterns and wanted the pieces to be as dark as possible. And here my work ended, this was the last series I made, but it was also coming full circle back to my early inspiration from Native American work from Santa Clara and San Ildelfonso, New Mexico. 

Shadowboxes

Humans lose things……and then nature and the ocean serve them up on the beach for me and other collectors to get excited about! Shells, sea glass and driftwood are always there. But if one looks or sees in a slightly different way, then other amazing treasures (or garbage) present themselves for viewing or picking up.