Walking through the Open door
My creative journey began as a potter straight out of college.
No other profession called to me. Maybe I was tired of being in school after college. Times were different and I didn’t have the wonderful world of the web to help me figure things out. It didn’t occur to me to ask anyone what to do. I was young and I was in love.
In love with throwing pots and the creative life. I had spent most of my extracurricular time in the pottery shed learning from Julie Reisner, a wonderful teacher. Through her example I saw pottery as a way of life.
In the ‘70s and ‘80s there was a huge craft movement. My mother had loved collecting so I was raised with an appreciation for craft. I saw craftspeople leading what looked to me wonderful, creative lives. It felt right to become a potter.
Making pots was the easy part. I loved thinking about function and form. Selling was a struggle and the business of art wasn’t easy for me. At time there were many potters making functional work so competition was stiff, but it was the community that suited me.
I didn’t know it, but I was about to find a new door opening.
When my son was born, I thought I would soon be back at it. As months passed, I was short on sleep and loving the life. I realized I needed to focus on parenting for a while, which stretched into many years. Pottery had fed my soul but not my bank account and because after all I had my entire life ahead of me.
It was a passage into a different life of family and neighborhood community. I met wonderful people and learned many things I never anticipated like writing grants and leading a neighborhood organization. All along, I considered myself a potter.
My youngest was in high school when I began thinking through a return to the pottery studio. The pieces began falling into place in an unanticipated way when I attended the NCECA conference in Seattle where I was excited to see Patti Warashina and Tip Toland as presenters. I learned that Tip was teaching at Gage Academy and I jumped right on it. It was a life changing experience that lead to joining the first cohort of the Magrath Atelier with Mike Magrath. My intention to return to pottery pivoted to a deep dive into sculpture.
There’s no saying what I my life would have been like making pots if I hadn’t made the choice to be full time child caregiver, or where I’d be my career. Maybe I would have found myself shifting toward sculpture as I did sculptural works and vessels “on the side” more for scratching an itch than anything. One piece from those years is Tree of Seasons pictured here. One day I will pull out my wheel again to satisfy the potter in me and make dinnerware for my kids as I’d always planned.
My choices lead me to find an unexpected passage to a profoundly interesting life.
Sculpture is leading me to explore a deeper expression of our humanness and the whys of our social, cultural and political nature; and growing awareness that being an artist is about more than what I produce, but about what I learn. Art making is about training the hand, opening the eyes and expanding the mind.
The door opened and I walked through.
Tree of Seasons - c. 1990 Press mold, reduction fired, private collection