I have always drawn pictures.
Some of my earliest memories are of drawing. My mother, who was an
artist, taught me about perspective, light and shadow and color before I
was 10 years old. But she also taught me
that very few artists are successful
enough to earn a living, so when I graduated from high school, I put
away my pencils and paints. In college I studied nursing and psychology
and eventually earned a masters degree in Human Development and Family
Studies. I worked as a psychiatric nurse for 12 years. I was miserable.
I decided to leave nursing and
gradually taught myself to be a computer programmer. I worked as a
programmer for about 15 years. I was less miserable, but unfulfilled
creatively. About mid-way through my second career, I started taking
pottery classes.
My first class was at the
Boulder Potters Guild. I was surprised that centering and throwing pots
was so difficult for me. Art had always been so easy. I gave up for a
while, then I started taking classes at the Boulder Pottery Lab. I
struggled. My work was uninspired. My cups and bowls weren’t as
functional as something you could by at K-Mart nor were they especially
more artistic. But the act of throwing had become meditative, so I
continued.
About
a year after I quit full time employment in 1999, I had a breakthrough.
I started to comprehend what local potters Nancy Utterback and Bernie
Marek, were saying about my craft. I
relinquished some control. I became more playful. I splashed, poked,
bent and dropped the soft clay. I etched and carved the surface and
applied slips, glazes and washes with abandoned. Childish
enthusiasm, inhibited by the years of precision and attention to detail
required by my professions, began to emerge. I laughed about my pieces.
But part of me was still unsure that the path I was taking led toward
artistic growth. Then in February of 2003 I
attended a workshop taught by Don Reitz, one of the most famous living,
American potters. His approach to clay validated my own. Now, I am
beginning to feel the barriers I invented to my own self expression are
vanishing.