Every time someone asks me to write an artist’s statement. I balk.

The thing that remains most consistent in my work, if I can identify anything, is a philosophy to use every part. And trust your instincts.

Working in slab vs. throwing clay, is for me much more satisfying. I like the building aspect. I also like to “draw” in the clay when it is wet and working with the slab allows me to do that. So far, I’ve only worked with high-fire clays and glasses.

I’ve learned that throwers are in awe of hand builders and vice versa.

I base my decision based on symmetry.. It doesn’t exist, even though Nature implies it. Throwers need to find it, that perfect balance. Builders can go off kilter.

Nature, like the clay that comes from it, is unpredictable, yet there is always the possibility of something sublime coming out of it. Which is also why I like to use natural materials in some of my work. I find beauty in a piece of cane, bark, driftwood, a rock, and like mixing them up with the clay pieces.

A very early childhood memory of mine starts with looking out from the back seat of my parent’s car as we traveled from some big valley to the ocean through California’s coastal mountains. The landscape, rolling hills of grass and oaks, with moss hanging from their limbs, submerging into box canyons, totally captivates me as we whizzed by. Almost everything I do in clay, functional or not is evocative of those early impressions of California landscapes.

I like to make things that people like to look at and maybe get lost in because they evoke a sense of ancient and perhaps archetypal landscapes that lives deep within us all. I also like to have fun and am always experimenting with different ideas, so my personnel vision is still evolving.