What’s Happening
See new work at an art show!
November 11 and 12, 2017 Winter Art Fair Off the Square in Madison, WI.
April 19-22, 2018 American Crafts Council, St. Paul, MN.
Visit the Upcoming Events page for a more complete list.
The Work
My current body of work is functional earthenware pottery decorated with marbling. This sort of marbling is a monoprint, which means that each image is unique. It is a transfer of an image, but there are no duplicates. Marbling is an ancient book arts printing technique with a rich history of traditional patterns and an active body of interpretations in the contemporary book arts field.
For me, it is a small piece of nature; always calming, complex, and intriguing.
Its translation into ceramics makes permanent this uniquely fluid mark because it is not made with paint, but all ceramic materials. The result is immediately recognizable as marbling to a book binder. From the ceramics perspective, the materials used are typical of functional earthenware pottery; a red clay with a white slip topped by an underglaze decoration and a final layer of a clear gloss glaze.
I developed this adaptation into the ceramics media as part of my research for an MFA in ceramics. In the years following, I have refined both the pottery shapes and the technique of printing from a flat fluid surface onto a 3-D form.
The Studio
After the March 2017 relocation of the studio, the pace and volume of pots coming from the studio grew exponentially. The great workhorse of my pottery life, a now-aging Skutt KM-1027, received a much needed overhaul of electrical components. Near daily firings have tested the new parts and the now-repaired electrical system that supplies it. New to the studio, I recently purchased a used electric slab roller. Work towards retrofitting of a fiber gas car kiln ended at hard frost with the completion of frost footers for the chimney and installation of gas lines.
The Location
As yet, I am not selling work directly from the studio. Bi-annual studio open houses will begin in 2018. Also, because of greater than anticipated demand for work, my online Etsy shop is currently empty. The best place to find my work is at an art show, or one of the galleries listed on the galleries page. Having completed major upgrades to the foundations, landscaping, outbuildings, and heating, electrical, and plumbing systems, I look forward to opening my workshop once again in the Spring of 2018.
