artist statement

I am a potter in East Aurora NY, the town where I grew up. This town raised me on old houses and gnarled trees. Wandering along its sidewalks, buckled from tree roots, I absorbed an ethos of craftsmanship, preservation, and beauty. I work in a basement studio. My son thinks this is common, that everyone’s parents retreat downstairs to make things. I don’t correct him.

I love the word homemaking. I do it in ordinary ways every day: feeding my family, tending children, noticing what needs care. Studio time folds into the same rhythm. I glaze while the baby naps. I sneak into the studio, barefoot, to tuck my pots under neat sheets of plastic before bed. My pots are small offerings to others building their own homes one object, habit, or gesture at a time.

The pots I make are thrown on the wheel and painted with shellac in deliberate patterns inspired by domestic interiors and our feral garden. Once dry, I sponge the pots clean, their edges softened like soap. The background clay erodes, and a shellacked line is left standing. I think of embossed wallpaper, peeling to reveal floral patterns laid down years ago. Textiles layered on unmade beds. My son asleep, a storybook of brave little animals open on his chest. Fawns napping on our patio, confident deer striding down Main St, geese flying in tight formation then sprawling across the shore to nap like loaves in the reeds. My children are part of the same landscape, sticky and wild, learning to wash their hands and eat with a spoon.

At the end of the process, each pot is dipped in a mineral glaze. Soft colors, muted like the walls of our home when the curtains are drawn, or our backyard at twilight. They are packed snugly into the kiln, shoulder to shoulder. The heat of the kiln makes them glow. They emerge transformed, waiting to be held. I will let them go, released into the wild to find their own way.

companion poems

Wild Geese — Mary Oliver

Instructions on Not Giving Up — Ada Limón

The Lanyard — Billy Collins

Good Bones — Maggie Smith

To Be of Use — Marge Piercy

The Patience of Ordinary Things — Pat Schneider

So Much Happiness — Naomi Shihab Nye