About Ann

I am a potter, a gardener, and a tender of animals.  I live in the country near the small town of Lanesboro in southeastern Minnesota.  I work and sell my wares from my home studio.  

I feel very fortunate to call this place home and equally fortunate for my lovely, quiet, little life with my husband, four cats, three goats, and one big dog. 

MY STORY

I have always loved making or creating things, from coloring, drawing and crafting as a kid, to painting and printmaking in high school, to cooking, gardening, and working with clay as an adult.   Over the years, I have discovered that it is the making of a useful object that brings me the most joy.

I have been working in clay since 1999.  I hold a college degree in math education.  However, I have taken more ceramics classes than I can count.  I have taken classes at community colleges, art centers and craft schools, attended workshops and clay conferences, watched videos and DVD, and read countless books and clay publications.  It is an on-going love affair, and I have been extremely fortunate to have had some excellent teachers along the way.

I am inspired by a revolving list of things, but I am most consistently interested in old or vintage items including buildings, dishes, containers, tinware, bottles and especially aged and worn surfaces….a surface that has and holds a story.  

I have recently fallen in love with making vase forms.  This new love is two-fold.  Vases provide me a means to display my garden bounty and secondly, there is an enormous freedom in making the vase form.  There are very few technical requirements of a vase, unlike a pouring vessel such as a teapot.  A vase is anything that can hold water and a stem!  

MY PROCESS

My process has changed over the years, from throwing on the wheel, to using a combination of throwing, altering and hand-building techniques, to now using only a hand-built slab construction method.  

I first worked with stoneware clay, then porcelain, and fired in gas and soda kilns.  I am now working with red earthenware clay and firing in an electric kiln.

What hasn’t changed is my love of textures, surface treatments that make a piece look aged, and the process!

My current process involves creating a three-dimensional object from a flat slab of clay, so I first developing a paper pattern.  I then roll out and texture the slabs, cut and assemble the pieces, and add any nail or wire detail.  

When the pieces are completely dry, I brush on three layers of colored terra sigillata that is then burnished to a soft, waxy finish, followed by the first firing in an electric kiln to 1828 degrees.  

After the first firing, I glaze any interior surfaces and apply the black washes which highlight the texture and result in the aged, patinaed finish. Lastly is a second firing to approximately 2020 degrees.