About Kathy

I used to write songs. Now I make things out of dirt and fire.

Hi, I'm Kathy. I have a dusty old degree in ceramics from 1988, but I spent my whole adult life writing songs and making music in Nashville. All that time, I kept telling people, "I want to be a potter when I grow up."

I'm not sure about the grown-up part, but I'm definitely a potter now.

The materials may have changed, but the driving force behind it all is constant: my desire to create something I haven't heard or seen before. I loathe cliché and I love a surprise. As a songwriter, I was always looking for the unexpected turn of phrase or melody that felt completely fresh, but also somehow comfortably familiar. I never cared much about genre or whether my songs sounded like anybody else's. I just wanted to make music that came from an authentic place and was compelling to me. In the same way, I'm not particularly motivated to make a hundred pots that all look like they belong together. I'd rather make a hundred pots that each have something interesting to say.

My favorite pots, especially those made by other artists, are the ones that I pick up and immediately think, "How in the world did they DO that?" That's what I'm after in my own work. I spend a ridiculous amount of time figuring out ways to do things that might make somebody else wonder the same thing.

Most of my work is functional stoneware. Working with wet clay is a purely primal pleasure. Think mud pies, Play-Doh, sandcastles. That urge to squish something in your hands and make it into something never really goes away. And, oh, then you put it all into fire and turn dust and mud into glass and stone. I like to leave evidence of that transformation in my pots. A piece of pottery is obviously hard, permanent and durable, but I hope that my work succeeds in suggesting the softness of the clay before it was fired.

Above all, I want my pots to be used. Pick them up. Turn them over. Imagine what it felt like to form them. Fill them with flowers or fruit, sip something steamy. And hopefully enjoy the way they decorate your world.