First Post - 12/24/06

This is my first foray into the world of blogging. I hope to post information primarily about handmade pottery and be available to use my experience to help others enjoy the world of clay.

A bit about me - I'm currently in my 30th year of teaching at Northern Virginia Community College, Alexandria Campus. I'm Assistant Dean of Fine Arts and Director of our campus art space, the Tyler Teaching Gallery. I teach all of the ceramics courses at my campus. I have also taught design, drawing & painting classes in the past.

I began at the Manassas Campus of NVCC as an adjunct back in 1976 and was brought on full-time in 1977. I was the only full-time faculty teaching pottery at the college. Budget issues in the early 1980's eliminated my position at the campus and I was moved to the Alexandria Campus in 1983. It wasn't until 1987 that I was able to start the ceramics program at this campus. I came in one weekend and moved everything out of a conference room, had stored pottery equipment from my old campus brought to the new location and Monday morning showed my Division Chair that we now had pottery program. We started with 6 pottery wheels and 2 small electric kilns. The room was so small, we had to set up tables in the hallway to provide space for all of the students.

Our program now boasts 12 electric pottery wheels and one wheelchair accessible wheel. We have table space to accommodate 12 students for hand building processes and enough space to allow all students to have their own shelf for storage of clay & projects. We have a slab roller, a Peter Pugger clay mixer/pug mill, 2 extruders and a spray booth. Fall semester 2005 was a big thrill for us. Our new kiln building was finally completed. We spent six years raising funds to pay for the building. We now have a 24 cubic foot Geil gas fired kiln, two 10 cu. ft. manual controlled electric kilns and two 4 cu. ft. programmable electric kilns. In front of the building we now have a permanent area for raku firing.

I invite you to visit my web site: http://www.creativecreekartisans.com

On my site you will find more about me, examples of my work, work that I've collected, lists of glaze recipes for various firing processes and detailed information about my current passion - crystalline glazes fired at cone 6.