I came to clay after years of thinking I had no artistic talent (thanks to a high school art teacher's advice to stick with math). While hiking one day, I fell into step with an acquaintance who asked me what I would do if I didn't have to work for a living. I told him I had always wanted to throw clay. I swear I didn't know that he manufactured potters wheels for a living. Long story short, I have been working with clay since that day in 1992, learning mostly from community college classes and workshops in San Diego and around the US. I've been on Etsy since April of 2009 but didn't really get started till I joined the Etsy Mud Team in 2014.

I work by myself in a studio just steps from my house. I mostly build pieces from slabs but do use a potters wheel sometimes. I love texture and most of my pieces will be very tactile. I have a couple of styles of work - more artistic sgraffito is carved by hand and for the more fun & funky work, I use lace, plastic place mats, some commercial texture mats and some I have designed myself as well as individual stamps, both commercial and of my own design. I've recently started designing my own silkscreens and combining an overall silkscreen print as background with a small bit of sgraffito on top

I mostly brush on commercial glazes and underglazes but do have a couple of glazes that I mix myself. I fire my pieces twice, once to bisque (to 1920 degrees F.), to drive out any remaining moisture and organic materials and make the piece less fragile to handle while glazing and more absorbent for the glaze. The second firing, with the glaze goes to approx. 2185 degrees F.

I offer my work for sale here on etsy, from my website, www.jackpots-pottery.com and at 1 to 4 day arts & crafts shows, mostly in San Diego but also in the Western US.