Artist Statement

When I was growing up in South Alabama, my grampa used to love to take my sister and I swimming at the creek not far from his house. When we got tired of cannonballs and breath-holding contests, he would dig up a pile of wet earth from the bottom of the creek and we would play in the mud. What lay underneath that swimming hole was far more exciting to me than the creek itself.

But as much as I love playing with mud, that's not my favorite part of being an artist. It comes third to two other moments, the two I live for in my work: opening the kiln and seeing a finished piece in the hands of its new owner. Maybe that sounds as if I'm driven by the sale, but that's not it.

I like opening the kiln because the firing process is the mysterious part of my work. You create a pot, glaze it and put it in the kiln with an artistic idea in mind. Sometimes the firing honors your thoughts, but most of the time it has its own agenda. In other words, you never really know what you're going to get, and I love that aspect of pottery. I tell people I have Christmas at my studio every couple of weeks, when I open the kiln. As for seeing the pot in its new owner's hands, it is about witnessing functionality. Part of a pot's beauty, to me, is how it works, how it feels when you hold it, how it looks when someone picks it up. To know that it fits in another's hands and that they will pick it up every day when they pour their tea, strain their spaghetti or mix up pancakes for their family gives purpose to my vision. That is the point of my work: that even the everyday can carry with it mystery, vision and purpose.