My relationship with clay spans decades, beginning long before wood firing became central to my practice. In total, I have been working in clay for over thirty years, with twenty-seven years of wood-fire experience. I touched clay for the first time in ninth grade. I remember that day well because it changed my life. I registered for ceramics classes for the next three years in high school. I had excellent art teachers at Wissahickon High School in Ambler, Pennsylvania. Barbara Breitinger, Mrs. B, was an incredible ceramics teacher. Early art classes are so important for young people to be exposed to and learn skills and trades by using their hands.
I reconnected with ceramics when I was living in Boulder, Colorado, in the late nineties. I had taken a ceramics class from Jim Lorio at Front Range Community College in Westminster, Colorado. Lorio taught me how to use the potter's wheel, and our class built a coffin-sized wood kiln. We fired that little wood kiln thirteen times in the semester, and I was hooked on wood firing and the surfaces that the kiln produced.
