Ceramic art is a relatively new love of mine, after dabbling in various mediums from childhood onward and diving deeply into metalsmithing and jewelry design more than five decades ago. I have been delighted to discover how that history of working with metal strongly informs my relationship with clay, as many of the principles of creating form are the same for both materials Yet unlike metal, which requires tools between the hand and the medium, clay responds to direct touch and therefore offers its own primal satisfactions. I am most intrigued by the endless possibilities of hand building. Coil pots invite a "conversation" with the clay about what form wants to emerge, and I enjoy slab work for its extra receptivity to stamping for a richness of texture. In all of my work I am conscious not just of form and surface but of the edge and how it interacts with the empty space around it, continually seeking to experiment with and refine that relationship.

Artmaking is always a response to something — for me, mostly to the designs found in nature and how those want to be felt, appreciated, and interpreted. I experience this less as a conscious choice than as a friendly compulsion. I like to describe my pieces as sculptural vessels: not necessarily "pottery," as that denotes a commitment primarily to practical use, but work that references — and sometimes even functions as — practical objects, rooting it in pottery's ancient origins as utensils for daily life. Though I always ask myself what substance or object any given piece might hold, sometimes the answer is intangible and mysterious.