I have been making porcelain and stoneware vessels since 1987. The main inspiration for my art is the textures, shapes and colors found in rocks. I was born in Pasadena, California, close to many rock collecting areas. I spent many family weekends and summer vacations in the Mojave Desert and Southern California mountains collecting rocks and minerals, and looking for gold. When I finally weighed my rock collection years later, it amounted to over 1500 pounds. Although gold and silver specimens were the main attraction for me and my friends, I was always fascinated by the many swirling and crackle patterns in the various rocks, especially the marbles, shales and slates.

Growing up in Southern California gave me a chance to visit many of the area museums including The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County with its Gem & Mineral Hall. I also spent many happy hours at the San Bernardino County Museum. The museum allowed groups of grade school children to make weekly visits to learn more about the county's natural history and the Museum's exhibits, especially the rock and mineral collections, which I loved. We would also go on field trips to collect rocks, minerals and fossils. I think that the memory of some of these trips (for fish fossils, mud cracks and hollow geodes) may have been the inspiration for some of my recent stoneware and porcelain plates.

Spending so much of my time exploring old mines and looking for minerals (especially gold) I guess that it is no surprise that I decided early (6th grade) to become a geologist. I spent two years at the Colorado School of Mines (majoring in Mining Engineering), and I spent two years at the University of California, Riverside, earning a Bachelor of Science Degree in Geology. You guessed it, more fun weekends and summers collecting minerals, fossils and geodes. Although I eventually left the geology field, I never lost my interest in those fascinating patterns in the rocks.

I started taking ceramics classes in 1987 at the Walnut Creek Civic Arts Clay Studio in California. I took most of the classes and workshops offered there, and I was most interested in glazing and slip decoration. It was at this time that I started to concentrate on marbling and slip on-lay techniques using wax resist. The rock collection was mostly gone, but now I could make those marbled and crackled patterns that had fascinated me years before.

Always looking for new ways of working with clay, I took classes at Walnut Creek Civic Arts Clay Studio from many of the instructors, including Andree Thompson, Skip Esquierdo and Pete Coussoulis, Ceramics Studio Manager and Kiln Master. More recent classes and workshops include: Working with Paperclay with Graham Hay; Clay Monoprinting with Diana Crain; and Clay Sculpture with Tony Natsoulas.

Last year I visited Greece for a week and saw many of the archaeological sites in Athens and on the Island of Rhodes. On the trip back, I visited the British Museum and saw hundreds of the fine ceramics that they have on view. I got many new ideas for ceramic experimentation in the future, but I also reaffirmed the direction that my work is going.

Slip Decorating and Marbling

Marbled designs have always fascinated me. Growing up, we had several old atlases that had paper marbling in the book lining. I think I spent more time looking at the book jackets than the maps inside. Years later, I took a paper marbling class in Walnut Creek, CA, and I enjoyed sending out marbled designed greeting cards to friends and relatives until I ran out of that beautiful paper. I had already started ceramics classes then, so this is when I began my experiments with slip marbling.

Then, as today, very few artists used marbling techniques, and very few classes or workshops were offered. I did extensive research to find the available literature and found it lacking in useful explanations, even though various slip decorating techniques have been used by artists for over 9000 years. There are many variations of marbling with clay, and either solid clay or liquid clay (slip) can be used to create the designs. Neriage, a Japanese term, refers to using duplicate or repeating patterns with solid clay instead of slips. Nerikomi, another Japanese term, refers to free-form flowing (or marbled) type patterns, again with solid clay, but I saw a lot of mixed usages in the literature. Mishima is the art of inlaid colored slip decoration. The Mishima technique involves inscribing or carving into the surface of the clay, in-laying the grooves with slip, letting it dry and then scraping the surface flat. I found that I was especially interested in feathering or feather-combing, which is one of the techniques included in marbling with liquid clay. I did many experiments with slips, oxides, colorants and resists in those early days, and haven't stopped trying new things.

Whereas the Mishima technique involves carving into the clay and inlaying the slip, I use wax resist and on-lay the slip on top of the clay in a technique more related to Moriage, another Japanese term. I am now working on a series of large porcelain and stoneware plates that combine a background of marbled or feathered slip designs with a foreground of on-laid porcelain slips depicting various wildlife, fish and foliage.

I receive an immense amount of enjoyment and satisfaction from making my marbled and slip decorated plates, vases and other vessels. The fun I had finding and looking at all those rocks and minerals years ago has clearly been transferred to making similar looking ceramic art, and I hope others will also find enjoyment in looking at my work.