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My passion for clay began before I was ten years old. Sometime back then, my parents took me to a pottery workshop in the mountains behind Los Angeles, where we lived. I still remember how fascinated I was upon first seeing the potter's tools, the newly formed ware, and his kiln. From that early time I almost never doubted that I would become a potter.
In 1969, at the age of 24, I traveled to Japan from my home in California to study with the potter Hiroshi Seto. At the time of my arrival, I knew very little about Japanese culture in general, and
admittedly, even less about the world of Japanese ceramics.
My teacher, his gracious wife Takai, and others who befriended me spared no effort in helping me to adapt to life in a rural pottery town. Observing for the first time how potters lived so close to their work, and how they were sustained from it, was a profound experience. Almost from the beginning, I felt a great affinity for Mashiko's pottery life, and despite my initial culture shock, it was very clear to me how fortunate I was to have come to Japan to study.
In 1974 I established a pottery workshop in a small community north of San Francisco, California.
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For ten years I specialized in the production of kitchen and table ware. During that period I often dreamed of going back to Mashiko to test myself as a potter in Japan.
In 1983 I sold the California studio, and returned to Japan with my former wife, who is a native of this country. I have lived and worked in Mashiko continuously since 1984.
Local availability of materials for ceramic production made it possible for the pottery industry to begin here, so many years ago. Today still, almost all of the ceramic materials I work with are obtained without my having to leave this town.
During the last century this area became increasingly known throughout the world as a ceramic mecca, due to the efforts of the many artistic luminaries who chose to do their life's work... to live "a pottery life", so to speak, in this rural town. The impact of their accomplishments upon the world of ceramics, and the high standard they set through their contributions, is one which I strongly wish to emulate.
After having lived in Mashiko for so many years, this place has become part of me... and likewise, I have become part of it.
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