My earliest memories include an interest in the arts. While in the first grade, I was awarded a blue ribbon for a painting. Thus began a childlike belief that I would have a lifetime of working as an artist. I studied art in college, graduating from Auburn University with honors and a Bachelor of Fine Arts. But during this time, I never put my hands in clay. Several years after college, I took my first pottery class at a local art center and this changed my life. Prior to this time, I had been working in graphic design. At this point I began spending every waking minute practicing and studying to perfect my skills with the difficult and challenging medium of clay. For many years I made only functional wheel-thrown pots. I loved this work and thrived on it but after making the same round pots, over and over, I began to feel discontent with my work.

During that time I continued to learn and grow as an artist and craftsman, taking many workshops at Arrowmont, John C. Campbell Folk School, NC State Craft Center, Duke Craft Center, and also summer school at Alfred University. My time at Alfred and my studio move to Artspace, during the same period, were the real impetus for change in my work. Artspace is a community of 35 Artists working in studios in a public space. It was through becoming part of this community and with the support of the other artists working there, that I was able to finally let go of my previous work and let the artist within take over. My work metamorphosed as I started to handbuild and to paint on it with underglazes. These were both huge departures from my previous way of working. Since then, my expression in clay has continued to grow and change. A lifetime ago, before starting in clay, I was a painter. My new found work, since it includes a painterly approach to clay, has caused me want to start painting again. So in 2004 I took a painting workshop, and I did so again this year. This enhances my painting in acrylics as well as the painterly decorations on my ceramic pieces. I am as excited and energized by my clay work as when I first discovered clay.

Since my work changed, it has been included in many shows around the United States. It has also been published in Ceramics Monthly, ClayTimes, Pottery Making Illustrated, The Craft Report and American Craft as well as several books including 500 Teapots, 500 Bowls and three books coming out in 2008. A number of corporate and private collections such as Glaxo and SAS Institute, include my work.