Here’s my requisite artist statement:

As a Geographer and an Artist, I use ceramic, wood, acrylic, watercolor, and metal to tell stories of life on this gloriously crazy planet. From elaborate sgraffito designs across multiple platters to towering totems that stack the story of a place—sea and sky, forests and mountains, rockets and planets—I use color, line, and form to tell a story as folk artists have done for millennia. I don’t always know the full story of what I’ve witnessed, but I shape it as I see it, forging meaning from what I’ve gathered. The world is beautiful, complicated, bright, and dark—all layered together. I tend to let the light lead, but the shadows are always there.

This is me:

My favorite media for the past 5 or 6 years have been watercolor and ceramic. Why do I love these? I say it is because they do half the work for me. Watercolor can be used thick and controlled, but that isn’t what it does best. It flows, it blooms, it pools. It does what it is meant to do. Clay, too, expresses itself. It slumps and warps and pulls. I love that it starts off as mud, or even dirt, and then, in the way we humans have been doing for millennia, we push it around and suggest a form, then heat it until it is fixed. We put minerals on it that suggest a color and the heat does the rest. We are merly suggesters, not controllers. And that is what you will see in my class. I try to put out there that we might consider seeing what the clay will do, what we can suggest with it, but give up on the notion that we force it into compliance. Accept that collaboration. Sometimes it seems that the best potters out there are forcing the clay into submission, but I would wonder if they have just masterfully learned to cooperate. They what clay can and will do.

I live in the beautiful Willamette Valley of Oregon, USA. This valley is a wide swath of land between the Coast Mountains and The Cacades near the Pacific Coast. It is a lush green valley that can grow a wonderous variety of fruits and vegetables. It is a wine and hops region, too. The winters are notoriously rainy and the summers are warm and dry. I love being in view of towering 14,000’ peaks that are white with snow almost all year round. I have mighty oak trees full of crows and squirrels and giant Douglas Firs in my back yard. The roaring Pacific Ocean is only 45 minutes from my house. It really is a beautiful place to live.

Other than my kids, who still live here, the rest of my nuclear family lives in Hawaii and I spend a lot of time there. The beauty of Oregon and the beauty of Hawaii are both spectacular. You’ll see a reflection of both in my work. It amazes me every time I see the Pacific and I realize that the same Ocean touches such a wide variety of places.