Noticing a small landscape framed within one of my larger porcelain pieces, a customer recently asked me what kind of influences I had in my pottery. I answered that there is quite a long list overall, but that the particular vase he referred to was actually an environmental statement veiled behind the play and dance of the reaction of metallic oxides in glazes with each other within the fire. These results are somewhat controlled but total success depends on chance.
         I am heavily influenced by much of early Asian pottery, particularly Sung dynasty work; but I  certainly appreciate the American arts and craft movement and the European studio art potters of the past century as well. My father was a cabinet maker and I grew up living next to his shop filled with custom made furniture which my brothers and I often helped him with in some manner. I usually found time to draw and paint as a teen, having the desire to be an illustrator. These were, of course, very formative years in my creative education. During the last three decades, I have traveled a twisting road, with several different careers- as          

an engineering draftsman and technician, woodworker, electronics technician, but always along the way, an artist.
          As I was growing up and longing to be a successful artist, I had never thought much of pottery. I simply wasn’t exposed to much handmade work except a few dark colored crocks our family had.  Many years later, upon receiving a beautiful stoneware vase as a birthday present, I looked at it with new appreciation and said, “I can do this”. A few months later I was doing it, having quit my engineering position, and started in the fine arts and ceramics program at West Virginia University.
          Since becoming an artist-in-residence at Tamarack: The Best of West Virginia, Beckley, WV, I have found new influences, such as the incredible mountains and streams in the area. Music is a constant part of my creative process, showing up as incised lines.  A news junkie, political statements find their way into my work, as well, mixed with elements of building structures of the past, present and future.