I grew up in Georgia and North Carolina, where my first encounters with clay were native clays, which my sisters and I dug from creek banks to make tea sets and small animal sculptures.

My formal ceramics studies began at Georgia State University in Atlanta, where I studied hand building, potter’s wheel, and glaze chemistry, continuing to work with Georgia red clay. In 1977, I completed a BFA degree in Ceramics at Augusta College in Augusta, Georgia, where I worked with porcelain and stoneware clays and fired in gas reduction and salt kilns. In 1980, I completed an MFA degree in Ceramics at the University of North Texas, Denton, working with sculpture, smoke firing, and wood firing kilns.

While teaching ceramics full-time for many years, I continued my own artistic work in clay, cycling back and forth between functional pottery and sculpture. In 2009, I retired from 27 years of teaching ceramics at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire.

My studio at home, built in 2009, accommodates my expanded pursuit of the functional forms of pottery in stoneware and porcelain. I make my own glazes and fire the glazed work in a gas-fired kiln. What continues to attract me to functional pottery is that it is made by hands, and it is made to be touched and used by human hands. I enjoy that the forms are “purposeful” and I want them to be inviting to handle and successful and satisfying to use. While the forms need to be strong to be functional, I want them to have an original spirit, with glaze and textural elements adding color and visual interest.