Once upon a time, there was a girl who set out on the journey to become a woman. Along the way she gathered stories like sea shells; stories of love and loss, of hope and faith, of change and longing. They were stories about trust and protection and motherhood. They were full of colors and sounds and smells and beauty. All the stories were placed in a beautiful box on whose lid was painted a picture of the sea. Then one day the lid of that box burst open and she began to sculpt.....

My work tells stories. I have tried to capture a kind of innocence or essence, the enchantment of believing in something bigger than ourselves....or the simple joy of just being human. In a way, these pieces are like fairy tales. I draw from the well of my own experiences, of all of our experiences. Sometimes a shape comes to mind and brings with it its own story, but often times a story comes and calls out its own shape.

I approach my work with the skills of my years as a potter. My original pieces are handbuilt out of coils of pottery clay, a technique reminiscent of earlier cultures. I do not draw my pieces first. I build coil by coil. I cut and pound and shape and smooth with a sense of the movement and form I am trying to capture, but allowing intuition to be my guide and I am often surprised by where each piece is taken. I am drawn to simple, uncomplicated forms and I close the eyes. There is a sense of vulnerability with closed eyes and and I feel that the simplicity of form allows the viewer to be drawn into the story.

Joseph Campbell once said that the meaning of life is to experiece life and he believed that myths and legends help us to understand the journey. We are all story makers. We have a connectedness that shared experiences give us....connected to each other but also connected to something greater than the sum total of those shared experiences.