Traveling along highway 20 in the Manchester Iowa area, I would see stones stacked up by fence posts or on the edge of farm fields. The stones were brought here by the glaciers over millions of years ago. As I encounter the tumbled stones they require me to pass my hands over their surfaces to feel the forms and textures inside the masses and look at their contour lines.

This is the information I try to incorporate into my clay rock vessels. The stones become sources of information for ceramic vessel designs very much like seed, pod and shell forms offering similar information for solving the visual problem.

My process of pressing shapes and forms into the wet clay produce minor irregularities both deliberate and unintentional. They are left intact - symbols of life's imperfections.

 I am a member of Twenty Dirty Hands, an annual collaborative pottery tour. Currently I am an art teacher at Hempstead High School in Dubuque, Iowa, and will retire this year after 41 years.