I make everyday art.

I make functional mid-fire pottery. I want people to use my work, and for it to become part of their everyday lives and their regular routines. It’s only ceramics, but I’d like to hope that my work makes your day just a little better…makes your coffee or your food taste just a little better.

My history with clay: I am a full-time chemistry professor at Johnson County Community College and I live in Lawrence, KS. When I was in my last year of graduate school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, I discovered clay in a non-credit community ceramics class on campus. Years later, I eventually made my own studio in my home and began making ceramics for my family and friends. At one point, I decided to start making the work that I personally liked. I started finding my own voice in clay. I transitioned to selling my work in 2015. I now participate in 10-12 shows/art fairs a year and my work can be found in 3 different shops/galleries in Kansas. I love the process of creating things that have a physical purpose and utility to them followed by sending those pieces out into the world to new homes.

The materials and methods I use: I work with mid-fire clay and fire in an electric kiln. Most of my work is wheel-thrown. I grew up in Oklahoma where the dirt is orange-red. So, when I started working with clay in my home studio, I started with a flint hills red stoneware. Over the years, I found glazes that look really nice with this clay body. I also use porcelain when I want vibrant colors or speckled stoneware with a good coat of white glaze on it to brighten the colors. The speckles create a special visual connection between the clay body and the images I use in my work. I use a combination of glazes and underglazes along with a standard image transfer process to add drawn images to each piece. They are fired an additional time in the kiln to leave a permanent, food-safe image. I do all my drawings on paper, photograph them, make adjustments in photoshop, and print them to transfer as the appropriate size for each piece.

My designs: All my work is tied together by hand-painted elements and images of drawings. Most of my imagery is not meant to be completely literal or too serious, but has some element of fantasy or whimsy to the circumstances depicted. I use blue and green glazes that make beautiful skylines with variations and breaks when hand-painted. I’ve also started painting sunsets to match the color combinations I’ve seen while driving home in the evenings.

I have drawn a number of characters and images since I first started. My favorite part of selling pottery in art fairs is watching and hearing people that come by my booth show them to their friends or family with them and laugh at something from one of my designs.

My theme of rainbows began from first using selected colors to make rays around images. Then it transformed to a rainbow of colors of rays, which grew to literal rainbows. Next thing you know I was painting a rainbow path for a cat riding a bicycle. Rainbows are symbolic of several beautiful things. They remind us of diversity and inclusiveness, peace and love, promise and hope. This is partly why a rainbow flag is used to represent LGBTQ pride (although it started with 8 colors and has more complex and deeper symbolism associated with it). During the darkest early parts of the Coronavirus-19 pandemic, children across Europe were painting rainbows on banners and hanging them out their windows and balconies as a symbol of “thank you, solidarity, and hope,” as messages to their neighbors and communities. (https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200409-rainbows-as-signs-of-thank-you-hope-and-solidarity)

Whatever these rainbows mean to you personally, my intent is that you would have a positive connection to them and that using my pottery would help make the routines of life more fun.