The main focus of my work is architecture.  I look at buildings in the wild and in books. They get jumbled in my head and sorted out by my hands. The buildings started as boxes. Lids became roofs.  Feet and chimneys appeared and things go on from there, changing from season to season.

There are no special techniques or attempts to disguise how pieces are put together. Surface treatments and forms change over time as different things capture my interest and travels give my eyes new things to see. I took a workshop to learn techniques for printing on clay. Working with printmakers has helped in printing photographs on clay. 

The making of houses is largely intuitive, but to get the “right” proportions, I make paper models. It is easier and quicker to make a piece out of paper and then use the model as a pattern to cut pieces out of clay. I never attempt to recreate actual buildings. At times I extrude pieces of clay using dies of various sizes. Then it is like playing with legos or tinker toys. The more pieces you have to work with, the more you can move things around until the right combination appears. Working with clay is challenging and fun.  When is ceases to be fun I will quit. .

Born and raised in New Braunfels, by German Texans. After graduating from North Texas State University with a degree in history, I joined the Air Force as a way of getting out of the state and seeing something of the world.  Surely, I thought, not every place would be as hot and drought ridden as Texas.

After tours in Tennessee, Denver, Thailand and Okinawa, I came back to Texas knowing that every place has its hot and dry spells.  Next I took up map making and spent years working for various environmental consulting companies in Austin, Texas. For our fortieth birthdays, a friend and I gave ourselves clay lessons at a city funded facility a few blocks from my house.  After becoming addicted, I took classes at the Southwest Craft Center, now the Southwest School of Art, in San Antonio, which offered a wider range of courses and experience. Also because the facility in Austin burned. I make what I do in clay because I want to.  Talking about the why and wherefore usually means taking liberties with the truth. What is true one day may not be the next.  What you swear by one day, you curse the next.  As with all things in nature, a state of flux is the rule and means all is well.