Reverie Fair Magazine | Page 16

Tell us about your education, in art and otherwise. Did you begin with painting? How did you come from painting to ceramics?

While my pieces are made of handthrown ceramic vessels, most are not intended for use with food or

drink. I see them more as sculptural pieces using shapes (like bowls, plates, teapots) that can be identified with as having specific, pre-concieved purposes. I try to challenge or change those notions of an object being or doing what we immediately expect it to be or do by altering the object's structure, often changing its purpose or use.

I see most of my work as more sculptural than functional. I'm not necessarily interested in making pots for household use. Any good potter can do that. I can't compete with professional potters who have been making pots for years, in a field that has a rich and ancient history in many countries and cultures. I

may not be capable of making the Best Pot Ever Made, but I can try to make a good pot no one has ever made before. With a history as long as pottery's, I think that is a solid and viable challenge. Most of my larger works have a specific meaning and story, and don't perform much of a typical household function at all. So yes, I suppose I expect them to have more of a gallery/display type setting than something you'd have in the dishwasher.

t

What types of display do you have in mind as you create your pieces? Do you intend them primarily as exhibit-type works?

I never took a real art class in high school. Most

of my focus in high school was academic, and art just did not fit in. In addition, my high school art class was notorious for doing absolutely nothing. It was an

incredibly easy credit with no available art supplies except, and I'm not making this up, really old markers and matte board scraps donated from a local frame shop. Smoking had just been banned in the teacher's lounge and the man allegedly in charge of the class, our "teacher", a well-known chain-smoker, spent the majority of our classtime "re-parking his car" as an excuse to smoke lots of cigarettes in the parking lot. The class was relatively well-behaved and spent most of the time playing a strange rendition of chess I've since referred to as "redneck chess", for lack of a better description. (It was Kentucky, after all, and who the hell plays chess with 5 queens?!)