Let’s Start at the very Beginning

I remember watching Reading Rainbow when I was about four years old.

How I loved that show! On this particular episode, Levar Burton went to Hawaii and met an amazing person. Even my preschool-ages self knew that this was no ordinary human. He was a potter. In what was probably less than ten minutes of film, they showed him climbing a volcano to harvest wild clay, carrying down the mountain, kneading it, throwing it on the wheel and pit firing it into a delicate vase. I can still see him digging that vase out of the ashes when it had cooled the next morning.

For most of my life, I’ve envied people who had a singular purpose from the time they were little humans. You know — those five-year-olds who just know they’re going to be cardiac surgeons? My attention rambled and wandered and explored, rather than focused in on one thing. Choosing a major in college felt confining and restrictive. Why do I have to choose? I want to try them all! I did try many and would still like to try more. Additionally, art majors were not thought of as profitable or useful or necessary, making the one place that held my attention better than any other seem like an enormous waste of money and time.

I remember the first time I walked into the pottery studio at college. It felt like such a Goldilocks moment — not too hot, not too cold, but just right. I wasn’t a natural wheel thrower, but I had been determined to learn since I was four. I guess I had been focused after all. I spent every spare minute in that studio, taking every class and independent study, until my professor was giving me credits without ever having signed up for class because there were no more offered!

And then I graduated. And then I married. And then came little ones — five of them. My life in clay seemed a lovely, distant memory other than the couple of keepsakes that I had from college days. Fifteen years later, a friend at church asked me if I would like a kick wheel, and I’ve been spending hours on or around it almost every day since!

I’ve learned far more in the five years that I’ve been making pots on my own than in the three years of “education” that I had in college! And as my work continues to change and grow, I am excited every single day to seen what will be next. Thank you to all of you for coming along as I wander through my imagination.