About the Art
Starting my life as an artist late, I am probably more perplexed about what motivates me than I would be if I had been doing this for decades. 
Looking back to my childhood, my mother reported that I always drew pictures of people doing things. When I first chose costume design as a career, I was motivated by the necessity and the joy of exploring character. I loved thinking about what made people tick, how they moved, how they related to others and how to express and enhance that through costume. I was an actor's designer. When I changed careers, the better to support myself, I was engaged by how people interact ergonomically and emotionally with products, and eventually, with packaging. In the world of commercial packaging, brands are built as characters: 'comforting friends', 'strong supporters',or 'daily companions' for example. So visual expressions of our humanity run through my whole life.
When I came to ceramics, first as a hobbyist in the last years before 2000, and now as a retiree able to embrace the life of an artist full-time, I have been drawn to the human body. I find that my costume design experiences thinking about human movement and human motivation enrich the time I spend working with clay. Modeling a hand, or building the creases on the bottom of a foot fill me with a kind of tenderness for the soft tissues, creases, and folds, as corny as that sounds. I also have discovered I have a kind of sense-memory for positions or movements which I call upon as I work, mostly without a model. Apparently I have been a keen observer of human activity as well, because I am always thinking about balance and the animation of the body in gesture.
So in the last six years, my full tenure as an artist, first and foremost I have been drawn to the human form, starting in particular but not exclusively with limbs. I discovered early on that sculpted feet could suggest an entire being, depending on how they were positioned (pacing or standing contraposto for example). So I have created some pieces that intentionally ask the viewer to visualize the position, setting, mood, and/or attitude based on the limited information provided by a single or a pair of hands or feet.
From here it was a relatively small step to sculpt hands or feet in combination with pottery. The sculpted vessel brings centuries of meaning to ceramics, either by tradition, functionality or ceremony. By bringing hands in or around vessels, I can combine human emotions or activity with those rich traditions. I also achieve a surreal aesthetic that I enjoy. This aesthitic includes gentle interactions, political commentary or downright silly juxtapositions.
I spent the better part of a year looking for the beauty in aging, motivated by my own time of life and the slow decline and eventual death of my mother. For this work, my most successful pieces used combinations of pottery as body with changing limbs, positions, or signs of breakdown.
On the lighter side, I have explored hands and feet as decorative
elements: all over designs, handles, and "jewelry" for pottery.
My current project is a full size nearly complete nude of a young woman in a seated position, eyes closed. In the picture she is hard-leather-hard on the way to bone dry. I described her as 'nearly complete', because the crown of her head is missing. When the sculpture is finished, I intend to have small figures actively climbing out of her head, as escaping dreams. The tiny figures bring me back to my childhood drawings – of people doing things.