My obsession with pottery began in 1978, shortly before the birth of my second child. For months I had watched my next -door neighbor throw pottery in her garage, and envied her the ability to make something beautiful out of a ball of mud. When she taught a pottery class at a local art center, I took it. Within a few weeks I was "hooked", to the point that I went to class while in labor and was back at the wheel a few days after my son was born.

Recognizing a serious interest, my husband built me a kickwheel so that I could throw at home when the children were sleeping. I gradually accumulated the other equipment and supplies for a self- sufficient basement studio. With a husband who traveled a great deal and two young children, this seemed a perfect occupation for me.

My carving technique developed very early from a need for some kind of surface decoration that I could control. The experienced potters I knew all used combinations of glazes and oxides, the effects of which were predictable only through formal training or trial-and-error. The thought of ruining my current masterpieces while I experimented with chemicals was not attractive to me, and I made my own alternative.

I have always loved animals (particularly rabbits) and they seemed natural subjects for decorating my pottery. I started drawing my designs on index cards, cutting them out to make patterns, and tracing around them with a needle-tool on my leather-hard pots. An inventive friend made me a knife with a tiny blade for chipping out the clay around the designs to make them more three-dimensional.

I still make my designs this way, carving each one individually and doing all the details freehand. After a piece dries and is fired, I paint glaze over the design and wipe it off with a wet sponge, leaving color only in the carving. I then "wax out" the entire carved area with wax resist, and glaze the rest of the piece. Before the final firing, I go over the carved area again with a wet sponge to remove any beads of glaze. The result is a glazed relief carving on a background of natural clay.

Making pottery the way I do is a very long process. An average piece, such as a large pitcher, involves about four hours of actual working time. However, I find all the hand work much more satisfying than just throwing and glazing pots. My objective is to produce something that is as pleasing to look at as it is to use, and to thoroughly enjoy doing it.