January 29th, 2015

My first exposure ever to making ceramics was in the early 90s when I went back to school intending to get a degree in art to augment my sign painting career.  On a lark, I enrolled in a pottery class - OMG, as they say.  There are a lot of things I've loved over the years: drawing and painting, organic gardening, the Montessori method, to name a few; but this...!  My heart would pound on the way to class and every possible spare minute was spent at the school.  (Security pushed me out at 10pm.)  Although I started with stoneware, I knew from the beginning that I wanted to learn how to do majolica, having seen, and never forgotten, imports from Portugal at the Peppercorn in Boulder.  No one was really doing it at the time, so we had to figure it out, eventually finding workshops with Walter Ostrom and Linda Arbuckle.  Majolica is a touchy process and there were quite a few very discouraging moments, but I finally had an aha! moment here and another one there as I read and experimented, resolving the problems.  Over the years, I've progressed, of course, and like many artists, I find the early work embarrassing; but it has been a joy and a real lesson in persevering through difficulty to pursue a dream.