FINE ART

As an artist I am particularly drawn to the deserts of the Southwest and California as subjects for painting. In the deserts I see the ongoing struggle by organisms and objects to survive under harsh and unforgiving circumstances.

Humans and other forms of life have always occupied desert regions and I am endlessly fascinated by their ability to find resources for survival where there appear to be none.

Manmade objects whether buildings, machines or tools face similar challenges. Although they do not need to find food and water, they are relentlessly attacked by the seesaw of extreme heat, low humidity, occasional floods, freezing temperatures and even snow.

As a result of these attacks by Nature, living and non-living things undergo a process of destruction which often produces wonderful colors and abstract patterns as these objects slowly break down and return to their constituent parts.

Weathered buildings, rusting machinery, abandoned tools, ancient trees, broken paving— all have a hidden story upon which a viewer can speculate when viewing a particular artistic interpretation of their current state.

My wish for viewers of my paintings is that they will be invited to create their own stories about what they are seeing.

CERAMICS

My love of ceramics started very early when my grade school sisters and I dug up adobe clay on our property, fashioned it into objects and “fired” those objects when we burned the trash. That was allowed back in the day. In fourth grade our teacher taught us the coil method for making a bowl and I have this same wobbly, brightly painted piece to this day to remind me how far I have come.

When my husband and I built a new home, there came a pressing need to put something at the base of the straw bale walls to ensure the earth plaster would not be damaged by brooms, mops and vacuum cleaners. A local junior college was offering ceramics classes, so I registered thinking I would make hundreds of custom tiles to serve as “baseboards. I did this for a couple of years but inevitably branched out into other creations and today have my own studio with about 15 regular students who come to play in the clay with me.

The studio is low fire allowing the use of food- safe, bright, many-colored glazes for both functional and decorative ware. We also use raku techniques for the fascinating colors produced for decorative ware.