Material

I work with porcelain, because of its unique characteristics, and what it is capable of as a material. All of my work starts out on the wheel, and is then cut, stretched, added to, and subtracted from, off of the wheel. The following quotes are two descriptions of porcelain that parallel my allure to the material…

“As white as jade, as bright as a mirror, as thin as paper, and sounds like a chime.”

“Delicate, yet harder than steel, heat-resistant, easy to clean, impervious to liquids, and at one point more valuable than gold.”

Surface

In recent years I’ve become immersed in drawing on the surface of my work. Initially, the repetitive patterns that I used came from textiles and costume. More recently, I have enjoyed drawing more loosely, allowing the mark making to respond to, and echo the form.

I use an exacto knife to draw on leather hard pots. Then I fill the lines with black slip, allow it become leather hard, and scrape it off with a metal rib, revealing a very fine black line. After the pots are bisque fired, I then go back and laboriously add color with glazes and slips, using a lot of wax and latex.

Firing

I fire in a soda kiln to cone 10/11. After 18 years of working in clay, I’m still fascinated with the alchemy of ceramics. I like to continually discover what these materials can do. I find the process of soda firing challenging and exciting. I want to keep the element fire alive in my work. My surfaces rely heavily on repetitive pattern. The directional nature of soda firing turns a predictable pot into a piece that changes from one side to the next, requesting further interest and investigation.

I fire in heavy reduction until cone 9 is down. I then close the damper of the kiln, and turn up the gas, producing unused fuel in the atmosphere of the kiln, trapping carbon on the surface of the pots. I use a large amount of soda and water, and spray it in all at once. After the soda is sprayed, I let the kiln gain temperature until cone 10 is down. The finishing step is creating an oxidizing atmosphere to brighten the color of the glazes.