S E P T E M B E R - O C T O B E R

[ S T A T E M E N T ]

At times, I tell people I’m retired. And it’s true that I no longer teach. However, I spend hours every day pushing my aging hands to the limit, transforming clay into sinuous, abstract shapes. It’s a passion. Not work. I savor the slow process of building my pieces, a coil at a time, in a reverse-motion reel of rock eroding over millennia. While I start with a shape and a feeling, little design and textural surprises that enhance the form make their presence known. You can easily see my fascination with the curves of the human form—and less easily, influences of rock formations in my native state of Utah. For this show, I added familiar pets to the menagerie of forms: cats, dogs, and a giraffe. It’s only a matter of time until a pet giraffe craze hits. Today more than ever, I find working with clay is something I can turn to that allows me to stretch into new ideas, built on a deep foundation. The continual process of coming up with new ideas allows my creativity to flow and keep me whole.