I have been working in clay for fifty years. I was a self-taught functional potter until I attended graduate school at Boston University’s Program in Artisanry and graduated in 1985. I moved to Maine and for twelve years pursued creating moderate to large scale sculpture with architectural references. During this period I completed and installed five large murals across Maine as part of the state’s Percent for Art program. After many years of embracing form as the focus of my work, I became attracted to the graceful curves and the surface possibilities of the open book whose pages can depict thoughts on relationships, personal quandaries, and travel reveries. I then moved on to spend several years focused on an ongoing interest, the contrasts within one piece. In this series, lively, free-spirited, twisting coils are compressed within the confines of a static, rigid form. In most cases the form is a vessel – a container that cannot contain.
Currently, my interest has settled on working with a very simple form and exploring how many modifications can be made while basing all-new shapes on this form. I have found it continuously interesting what can be expressed by bending, severing, and bloating this one form. With the simplicity of the final forms, I have been able to experiment with the subtle complexity of surface coloring. The range of size has stayed within the longest dimensions of 10” to 22”.
