When I began my career as a literature professor in Chicago, Illinois, I decided I needed to find an expressive outlet that had nothing to do words. The first thing I tried was pottery—and I never left, maybe because I was so bad at it that I stubbornly refused to cut my losses and move on. Also, though, I was immediately drawn to the tactile nature of working with clay. Every touch I made on wet clay affected how I would touch it next. I could control the process, but only to a certain point.

For over twenty years I took classes, off and on, at the LillStreet Art Center, where many wonderful teachers and students taught and inspired me. At first I aspired, as do many new potters, to “throw” on the wheel, but after a hiatus of several years I started back with the basics—the humble pinch pot—and never went back to the wheel.

When I moved to Tucson, I continued making the same forms that I was making in Chicago, but I soon came to see in their shapes and colors the landscapes and colors of the Sonoran desert and mountains. 

I have discovered that I am a lazy potter.  I like making surfaces and finishes that do most of the decorative “work” of a pot.  This is useful when making pottery in a desert, where clay begins drying—fast!—as soon as you start working with it.  I’ve had to learn to work quickly and to follow a shape once I’ve started it in a general direction.