Artist Statement

Like many young girls, I grew up crazy about horses. I started riding horses when I was 5 years old and eventually owned my own horse, Coco. Growing up as a stable brat, I paid for my passion by working as a groom and professional braider for horse shows. As an adult, I still hold a tremendous love for horses and have poured that passion into sculpting them.

I received my Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from the University of California - Davis, some years ago, but never learned the art of sculpting while in college. It wasn’t until the pandemic in 2020 while my teenage son was studying from home, that I discovered ceramics. He worked on his high school ceramics classwork at our kitchen table and one day he asked me to help him with glazing a mushroom he created. I immediately fell in love with the process. Later that year my loving husband purchased a ceramics class for me. My instructor, Rita Walker, gave me the freedom to explore the media. I immediately took to hand building and rejected the wheel. Then it happened, one night Rita hosted a special Raku firing. The first horse I ever sculpted went into the kiln. I could see it through the hole in the top of the kiln as it burned. It glowed red and looked like a horse in Hellfire. The drama of the night was all I needed to develop a passion for Raku. Since that time, I have continued to explore the medium and fine tune the structural method of my horses and other sculptures. Now, I am learning to let go (of all the hours of work and the fruit my labors) as soon as put my pieces into the kiln! It is the nature of Raku to never be able to predict the outcome. Forged by the fire and smoke, the sculptures take on a life of their own.