BRICKS & BONES A sustainable ceramic practice
Exploring the Yellow Brick Road
It’s the spring of 2017 in Montana, and my studio is filled with collected vintage porcelain, historic brick and clay pipe fragments, partially finished and completed studio work, columns, arches and chandeliers from indoor installations, along with electric kilns, extruders and diamond saws for firing, forming and cutting porcelain, brick or clay pipe. I built and started working in my Granitewood studio in 1992. It’s a 1000+ square foot space with floor to ceiling windows providing passive solar gain, a clerestory and a 20-foot high ceiling. Living in the country a few miles west of Helena, Montana on 20 acres of forested property with granite rock outcroppings has given me the ability to collect and store materials for my art practice. It’s taken years to fill the studio with collected porcelain and discarded clay pipe fragments; these are the raw materials that feed my creative engine. I’ve built my career on large-scale site-specific outdoor and indoor installations, along with a body of smaller scale studio pieces. Working in both large and smaller scales for years, I gear up each spring for large-scale outdoor commissions and installations and in the fall I return to
