About the Artist

I’ve been a potter for over 20 years, but I’ve kind of always been an artist. I draw, paint in acrylics, make comics, and pursue various creative endeavours from sewing to designing and building deck storage. I think it’s that variety of interest that’s behind my love of pottery.

Pottery can involve design, drawing, painting, construction, and engineering, and is always creative. I love the science of pottery; the chemistry, the physics, the geometry, and the alchemy-like transformation the clay endures in the kiln. I love the universality of pottery; one of the oldest technologies, practiced on every continent, producing durable and fundamentally useful day-to-day ware. I love (and occasionally curse) the unpredictability and “kiln magic” that can surprise you by sometimes elevating a piece beyond your imaginings and sometimes dashing your best intentions. As potters often say, there are many ways to fail at pottery. Perhaps that is why the rewards of a fine finished peice are so exciting for me.

Background and Training

I grew up in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and moved to Calgary with my family in the early 1980’s. I was always interested in art in school and took it as an elective wherever possible, though I ended up but majoring in Communications studies at the University of Calgary. Though I took as many art classes as were allowed with a minor, looking back, I should have done a fine art degree. C’est la vie.

After university, I travelled  through and worked in the UK on a Working Holiday Maker’s Visa, and I was grateful for my art history classes as I soaked in the collections of the London museums. When I returned to Calgary, unsure of what should be next,  I embarked on a career in … data analysis.

I enjoy data analysis. I really do! And I see the oddness of this juxtaposition. But consider; it’s a living, it enabled me to live on the West Coast following a job opportunity in Vancouver, enabled me to return to Calgary when I wanted to be closer to family, and landed me a 9-year stint at a major airline where I got to travel at will and jog my art history memory, and inspire me.

My first real foray into pottery education was a local community centre adult throwing class in Vancouver, which I took to try and meet some new people in my new city. I didn’t gain any friends, but I did fall in love with pottery.

Since then, my training has been at North Mount Pleasant Art Centre, a City of Calgary-run community art space that offers classes for various levels, as well as a member-only drop-in studio. Over the years there, I took every class offered at least once, and I learned wheel throwing, Raku, glazing and surface decoration, participated in salt kiln firings, and I still use the facility today to augment my home practice.

Current Practice

Today, I operate what I call a “micro-studio” at home; I have a Shimpo VL Lite wheel and storage in one half of one room. I usually glaze on my kitchen table and I use a bucket system for disposing of clay waste water (and I reclaim every bit I can). I have a solid process, and it works. I regretfully lack the appropriate place for a kiln, so I make use of the custom firing services at North Mount Pleasant Art Centre. I currently work in cone 6/mid-fire clay, preferring stoneware clays, especially Plainsman Clays from Medicine Hat, Alberta; everything I make literally has as little bit of Alberta in it.

These days, I produce a lot of mugs, as they sell very well (everyone enjoys a beverage, and they have to put them in something!), and this allows me to experiment on other things. In addition, I like producing items I can either use as a canvas for glazing animals or landscapes on, or augment with tentacles or legs or other unusual appendages.