Biography

In 1947 when I was ten years old, my father began a small business using the then "modern" material, clear plastic, to create freeform containers that bore a resemblance to crystal. He eventually sold his work in two very prestigious San Francisco stores—Gump's on Post Street, and V.C. Morris on Maiden Lane. In making deliveries for him, I discovered San Francisco's Chinatown area, and I developed a lifelong interest in calligraphy and brushwork. I also helped him in his basement shop for several years, and I think that hearing discussions between my father and his artist/designer friends about their work gave me a good practical grounding in design and aesthetics, although I didn't realize it at the time. In the mid 1960s, I found my way to Berkeley, studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts, helped found the Berkeley Potter's Guild at it's original location, and in 1975 acquired the property that is now my home and studio. I received a commission to make tile wall hangings for Harrah's Hotel in Lake Tahoe, learned to make my own brushes, and then expanded my use of brushwork and glaze over glaze decoration, using it to good effect on large porcelain platters.

In the early 1980s I met Reid Ozaki, a well-known potter from Washington state, who showed me how he used thick slip as a decorative element on freshly-thrown pieces. Eunice Prieto also instilled in me the habit of testing new glazes in every firing. I began my investigations into water-soluble metal colorants in the latter half of the decade, but they were curtailed somewhat when in 1986, I was introduced to Mr. Kenichi Saito, a potter from Kesennuma, Japan. The following year I helped arrange a series of exhibits and shows here in the Bay Area for him, and that began a seven-year exchange, with Saito-san coming here one year and me going to Japan the next. The exchange was culturally, economically, and professionally of great benefit, introducing me to tea ceremony, shino glazes, and wood firing.

Although my visits to Japan stopped after 1993 when the economy there took such a severe downturn, I became more and more interested in shino glazes, and my experiments with spraying other glazes under a white, viscous shino yielded a variety of unusual results that I still use today.

I had continued to do sporadic research with the soluble metal colorants over the years whenever I had spare time, but never in depth. In 2003, I decided to spend a significant amount of time trying to develop some new work with solubles, particularly since "Southern Ice," a new, very white translucent porcelain, had come on the market. In a presentation on solubles at the 2004 NCECA conference, I emphasized the unusual color reactions that solubles can exhibit. Since then, I've begun to explore combining solubles, translucence, and glazes. I intend to make further explorations a major part of my work from now on.