Color has been part of my life from my first memories. San Antonio, Texas in the '50's was full of every color in every pattern
imagined. The length and breadth of everyday existence was painted with flowers, birds, plants, lizards, butterflies - all was
lush, alive and glowing with color. I know that place and time created and influenced my perceptions of the world forever. My
eyes were trained by the bounty of local color to take in every full and glorious hue, tone, blush and splash. My art and my life
have been made more vivid and alive by those beginnings.

My artistic style has developed to reflect a use of color I refer to with a wink as "exaggerated realism' - just like turning up the
color control on your television set! My work has a practical whimsy sometimes and sometimes it's not practical at all - I create
everything with a nod to the young-at-heart.

All of my pieces are constructed by hand. No molds or templates are used, resulting in a body of work having no two pieces alike.
This keeps the artist happy and the imagination rolling, allowing all sorts of serendipitous happenings in the studio.

I 'draw" my pieces with a clay knife from hand-rolled slabs of Earthenware White clay and add gills, fins, scales, lips, eyelids, etc.
when the clay turns "leather-hard". After firing to cone 06, I paint them with multiple layers of acrylic, enamel, metallic, tube paint,
glitter (anything I can get my hands on) and brush on a final layer of polyurethane. If cleaning is required, wipe with a damp cloth.

The first eighteen years of my life I spent in the Army being a dentists daughter. My folks were great travellers and campers and by
the time my Dad retired and I went off to college we had travelled all over the United States and Europe. I did my undergraduate study
at the University of Kansas and graduated in 1974 with a BFA in Drawing and Painting. The Art History books I used in classes there
were chock full of all the art I had seen in my travels here and abroad - a wonderful advantage to my Art History classes!
In all four years I was there I had been able to take only one tantalizingly exciting class in the
Ceramics Department before they closed their classes to all but non majors.
But I remembered that class......

I did my graduate study at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and recieved my MAE in Art Education in 1977. My time there
included student teaching and taught me I am more of a studio artist than a teacher! That conclusion might have had something
to do with the fact I did my student teaching in the coal-mining region of Pennsylvania where my second graders came to school
with wads of snuff tucked expertly into their bottom lips and "free time" drawing would produce pictures of huge coal trucks
driving up and down steep hills. I was able to take some more classes in ceramics though.....

I came back to Kansas as fast as I could in 1977 and held odd "art jobs" for several years. When I turned 40 I had one of those
life-changing revelations and decided to quit my day job and become "AN ARTIST" After drawing and painting for several
years, I took a chance and bought a kiln and all the bells and whistles to go with it - it was "do or die"!
I have been making a living selling ceramics ever since. Art has been very, very good to me

Thanks for being a patron of the Arts
ENJOY LIFE