Sunshine

I have always loved God, I have always been serious-minded, and I have always been creative. When I was a kid, I remember getting up before anyone else in my family, taking my father's pocket knife and carving things out of tree branches, on the porch, all by myself in the peaceful morning. Since I got up so early and with lots of happy energy, my dad called me Sunshine.

I liked watching my dad make things. I hung around when he worked at the work bench and he showed me how to use the tools. Finally he gave me my own wood scraps with which I could do whatever I wanted. Later he said he was afraid to come home and see what I had made. He was teasing and I loved it.

I also liked drawing people, sewing, making my own patterns, crocheting, and following my own ideas. Later I was honored to be asked into the Art Club of Junior High. I loved everything we did. It was a good program with drawing and block printing, silk screen, water color, and ink... Making a pot on a kick wheel was one unit. That was really cool. I wished I could do more but we moved on to other projects. I entered Scholastic Art Shows and got many gold keys by the time I graduated High School.

In 11th grade I applied for and won a 4-year full-tuition scholarship to Cleveland Institute of Art. That summer my dad took me to see the campus. Later that week, when I was cutting his hair, he said. "Look I have two sons that will go to college and I have only so much money. If you want to go to college you are going to have to pay for it yourself." (He was referring to room and board because tuition was covered.) "Why don't you be like your mother" he went on, "and just get married and have children?" Well I didn't even have a boyfriend and my teachers wanted me to go to college. (He didn't say, but he might also have been afraid to let his daughter be the first of his children to go away from home...off by herself to a far away city.)

So I went to a nearby Penn State branch campus and worked at Burger King (for long hours, late nights, and with burning sore feet by cleanup). The problem was that this branch campus was only for 2 years and it did not have any art courses. So I had to figure out what else to major in until I got to main campus and would then be able to double major, adding art courses. I cared about the environment, I was good at all the sciences and I was good at math so I decided to major in physics to focus on solar energy research. I did very well and because of this, I earned scholarships along the way. By the time I got to main campus, I was enjoying the major I had chosen so much that I only took a couple drawing courses (but I continued to make art on my own especially silk screen t-shirts whenever I could). I even got to work for pay with a solar energy researcher, and I took upper level solid state engineering classes.

I graduated and was hired by Westinghouse Research and Development as an associate engineer in a department that made MIS solar cells. I met my husband and we married. After 3 years I had my first baby. That is when I found out what work and being tired really are. I could not move or feel one of my legs from the knee down after this difficult birth. My foot just hung down like a heavy dead wet noodle. It took a while to exercise it back to normal. It was hard. I chose to stay home and raise our kids.

As time went on, and they went to school, I was free to do volunteer artwork at my church. I sewed and sometimes painted/drew many banners using my own designs. Most had double images. It was great fun. I loved hearing how long it took for people to see the double image. Expressing my Faith in art is something I love to do.

I also was a member of the picnic committee. Around 1991 our theme was Old Testament. I thought of the potters mentioned in the Bible and made a portable lightweight wood kick wheel, which used bags of stones for weights. The weights could easily be taken out or put in and it fit in the back of our station wagon. The kids got a chance to try their hands at pottery. The wheel was designed so that teacher and student faced each other with the wheel head between. Both sat on it like on a horse. The teacher could kick too and put her hands on the pot to show how. My friend Patti and I were the teachers. A cut styrofoam plate bottom was stapled to the head for each new child. I found someone with a kiln, and got the pieces fired. The kids loved it.

After that, I practiced and made several pots. See OLD POTS. I also redid the first wheel a couple of times and later I also designed and made two more wheels. I volunteered at a my son's late elementary school to show kids how to throw pots in exchange for use of their kiln. I also did the same when he was in junior high. Then I fired at a clay studio then called "Pine Ridge Pottery" in Annandale that charged by the piece. When I made a very large piece, it would be $50 just to glaze fire. I just quit pottery then for a while.

I never took lessons, I just learned on my own, and did things my own way, and I taught the kids my way. This had its advantages. For example, I never seen or heard of an S-crack until 2019 when a potter showed me his. Click HERE for my thoughts on this problem. I do not compress sides or bottoms because I had never heard of it until 2020. I usually don't cover pots after throwing. I simply let them dry in open air on a sheer fabric screen. (But I will cover a pot if I want to slow the drying down so I can work on the bottom at a certain time, or make the drying more uniform, so that the pot is not hard on top and mushy on the bottom, in order to carve or stamp all over the sides, top to bottom.) When the Reston Community Center opened a pottery studio at Lake Anne--a short walk away from my home--I told them that I had my own home-made wheels and I just needed my things fired. I got a lab pass and I began glazing my pots there and got them fired there...but only for a short while. They changed their rules and I could not take any pieces home or bring any pieces from home. I tried their electric wheel, but I liked my homemade ones better. Patti in the meantime went to some ceramics classes and she later taught me to put the bevel at the bottom so the pots look like they rise from the table and she showed me a rubber kidney and how to use it to smooth out a bowl.

We asked a potter in our church if he would let us use his kiln. He graciously did for two years, and even let Patti and me use his studio. We learned to run his kiln. Then he moved away and cleared out his studio in 2020. During those two years, I started to draw my designs on my pots in 7 repeated patterns for the 7 days of creation (a topic I have studied intensely--my web page is at https://creation.familyce.org) When he closed his studio, I was not done. I was not ready to quit pottery. I even changed some things on my wheels, hoping to continue somehow. I work only in warm weather because my wheels are on our porch--way too cold in winter---and with no kiln, I was almost ready to give up. Then by way of wonderful coincidence I met Maureen Costantino. She said she was getting a kiln and would want people to help fill it up for a small electric fee. How lucky I felt. I could continue my pottery and even join her Potters group and even maybe sell my pots! How exciting! I recently decided to make my maker's mark stamp a sun with 7 rays in honor of the name my dad called me and in honor of the 7 days of creation. ---July 2021