The studio workshop at Brace Point Pottery includes pottery wheels, clay extruders, glaze spray booth, slab roller, slip mixer, pug mill, casting table, electric and gas fired kilns in 3000 sf of indoor and outdoor space.  My pottery is made from porcelain and high-fired in a reducing atmosphere.  The pieces are thrown on a potters’ wheel, hand built, or slip cast with the help of an occasional assistant.  Multiple glazes are sprayed, brushed, dipped and squirted over the bisque pieces before the final firing at 2380 degrees F.

I began slip casting to cure the warping problems of press molding and opened new doors of design possibilities.  Some forms begin as a thrown piece; others are sculpted from a block of plaster or wood.  Thrown and hand built attachments make individuation possible.  The mold making process, a steep self-taught learning curve, has suggested new directions for shapes, which could only be slip cast.  It can take weeks to bring a piece from model to working mold- spontaneity is reserved for glazing.

Seven airbrushes and sprayers are used in a well-ventilated booth, masking, spraying and overlapping glazes.  On top of the glaze, I apply gestural lines and swirls, art marks and squeeze art ,of various colored glazes using steel tipped syringes.  Nuanced combinations of matte, gloss, and reactive glazes are tied together by these linear elements over a three dimensional canvas.

The glaze has a landscape feel—a horizon line, dark color on the bottom, lighter colors on top—although I try not to make it representational. I vary the textures and the opacity of the glazes to provoke a depth of field. The eye is brought into the piece with clear glazes and brought up short with the more opaque glazes.  I struggle with the notion of applying a skin to a form- I want decoration and form to be integrated.