The Past
I was born and raised in rural Georgia, the youngest of three children.

I graduated from St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1987. A small liberal arts college, St. John’s is known as the ‘Great Books School’ because students read and discuss the most influential books of the western world in chronological order, beginning with Plato, with no electives and no tests. At St. John’s I was deeply influenced by the writings of Dostoevsky, and went on to study the Russian language for three years following my graduation. After a summer at the University of Leningrad in 1989, I moved to New York City on a whim, where I got a job at a Japanese bank to pay the rent and try something new. I was trained as a money market trader and worked for Gunma Bank for five years.

My experience in clay is unusual. My co-workers at the bank introduced me to the world of Japanese ceramics, and a show of 17th century Korean celadon ceramics at the Metropolitan Museum of Art marked a defining moment in my life. Noticing my obsession, a co-worker then introduced me to a small Japanese pottery studio in Manhattan, where I began attending evening classes in 1992 while continuing to work full-time at the bank. I wanted to learn more - about digging clay and firing with wood - so I left New York and sought out an apprenticeship in Japan in 1994. Concentrating on the Karatsu area in northwest Kyushu, I visited studios until I found an artist whose work I especially admired, and after being accepted as his apprentice, worked for him for 4½ years. My training was intensive.

In 1999 I completed my apprenticeship and returned to New Mexico to buy a remote plot of land in the mountains north of Santa Fe, and built a house with a studio, and brick-by-brick, my own wood-fired kiln.

The Present, The Future
I work in the Karatsu tradition, which for centuries has emphasized wheel-throwing techniques through repetition to create a paradoxically spontaneous and relaxed style. With tradition as my foundation, there is another strong force in my work – the desire to take risks. I am an experimenter. I develop and make all of my own glazes from my own formulas, with the exception of the glazes I inherited from my teacher. Most of them include natural materials from my own environment. I am currently working on Mishima style pieces, stamped designs inlaid with white slip, and I hope to build a bigger wood kiln within the next two years.

During my apprenticeship, my teacher, Mr. Yutaka Ohashi, would say, "Please surpass me." What can I bring to the centuries of traditional skills that precede me - something relevant, current, and meaningful? This is the question I always ask myself.

I have been a full-time artist since 2001.