REFLECTING ONES INNER SPARK IN THE SHARED ARENA OF ART IS A KIND OF ARCHEOLOGY OF THE SOUL. I DIG FOR BEAUTY AND BRING IT BACK WITH JOY. TO SHARE WHAT I UNCOVER IS AN ACT OF LOVE.
I began making pots in the Arizona Mountains, digging the beautiful red clay near my grandparents' spring. I'm both humbled and at home with its touch- the power of Earth.
precious earth: -Collecting shards of Native American pottery by a creek with my grandmother, until she one day chose to stop, recognizing they were sacred. -Walking with my feet immersed deep in silken warm mud of the same creekbed on their land... a memory of joyful embodiment. -Climbing at age five up a white clay bank on Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound, alone in nature, as I often was. Quickly rainfall shifted ease to terror. I struggled to climb down, clinging to roots of brush, small feet sliding over the slippery-slick white clay. -Walking into a studio at UC Santa Cruz for the first time... the sight of my husband (unknown) forming a porcelain bird bath bowl, a so-familiar beauty, as though it were something I'd been waiting long to see. -Early times of working with children and clay, witnessing small fingers and faces quickening with joy. Pure alchemy, ceramics. My relationship with clay has always been there... intense, thrilling, and frustrating. It's a demanding medium, with its overlay of technical-chemical balancing, thrown together with fire and self. It's my ancient love.
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