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Welcome to "Journey Clay."  This is a blog about finding place: physical place and place within.  In my case the medium of place it clay.  My journey in clay began a long time ago and has been a constant through many changes.  At times, my hands were less in contact with  clay in its plastic state, but it still surrounded me in my home and career in the form of handmade pots used daily.  And through potters themselves.

Now I have made the journey to a new locality, a new studio and renewed perspectives on clay and clay work.  So, I have decided to call my studio "Journey Clay."

Last spring my husband and I moved to a semi-rural area in Western Pennsylvania.  After a long career in arts management it was time to step back "downstairs" to where the real and vital work is!  So, in the fall of 2012 I realized a dream of once more having my own clay studio to do my own work for myself.  It's a small space, but enough to both contain and to free me.  Freedom is a challenge, believe me!  It means being free of "should" and allowing the process to go where it will, but still, hopefully, in a disciplined way. 

We had found a lot of ceramic blocks and pipes (terra cotta extrusions) in the woods and around our property.  Not to be deterred from trying some artistic endeavor of his own, my husband created a temporary sculpture using some of the finds.  Regrettably, the sculpture was only temporary, but that is fine.  
Lately I have been re-reading M.C.Richards' book Centering in Pottery, Poetry and the Person.  She writes, "The creative spirit creates with whatever materials are present.. . .We are not craftsmen only during studio hours anymore that a man is wise only in his library.  Or devout only in church."  The sign of a creative feeling for life, she writes, "dwells within the act."