Bio:
Teaching:
Professor, Art and Art History, South Puget Sound Community College, 1995-2014
Adjunct Professor, 2014-present
Prior teaching:
University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
Cornell College, Mount Vernon, IA
Kirkwood Community College, Cedar Rapids, IA
Black Hawk College, Moline, IL
Education:
Reed College, B.A., Art/Art History
University of Iowa, M.A., Art Education
University of Iowa, M.A., Art History (ABD)
Community Activities:
Olympia World Affairs Council, Board and Vice President
City of Olympia Arts Commission, Member and Chair
City of Olympia, ceramics instructor
Senior Services for South Sound, Life Long Learning, art history instructor
Sound Learning, ESL tutor
City of Olympia Arts Walk
Thurston County Food Bank, sponsor of Empty Bowls annual fundraiser
Ceramic donations: Nisqually Land Trust, Planned Parenthood, Black Hills Audubon Society, Washington Center for the Performing Arts, Arbutus Folk School, Pizza Klatch, South of the Sound Community Land Trust, GRUB, Olympia Peace Choir, Densho Foundation, Shoreline Historical Society
Artist Statement:
My work in this exhibition is a response to a specific place, a quiet backwater on the Nisqually Delta one spring morning in February. In this piece I’ve attempted to capture the changing light, textures and colors of that fleeting moment, brushing ceramic colorants on soft porcelain slabs, made permanent through the alchemy of firing. This is one of a series exploring local sites: a wintery seascape at Rotary Park, a summer afternoon at Woodard Bay, and a recent morning walk through my wooded neighborhood. I’m having fun transforming my ephemeral experiences with our landscape into permanent, enduring images, translating and reducing the wide scope of nature into this relatively small format.
My training in ceramics began under Marguerite Wildenhain, a Bauhaus-trained potter who stressed the importance of craftmanship as well as personal expression. Years of working with ceramic materials and teaching art and art history to so many, many students have given me a sense of the countless possibilities within any art medium and the infinite ways in which an artist can express an idea or a fleeting feeling. My travels and studies introduced me to a vast library of ceramic traditions, from prehistoric to contemporary masters. Nearly every culture throughout the history of mankind has created rich ceramic art, and I’ve learned from, and drawn upon, many of these, as well as from fellow artists, teachers and my students. I now work in my home studio along with my partner and husband, David Stone, also a potter.