Blogging: 101

Hello fellow potters, students, and art enthusiasts alike! 

I'd like to start a blog component to my website documenting my journey through my last semester of graduate school at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.  As a student and a potter, I'll try to keep the topics relevant to those concerning pottery techniques, firing, the many challenges that Alaska offers for those us who like to fire atmospherically, and I'll try to record both the successes, and sure to be a few failures, along the academic yellow brick road leading to an M.F.A.  

A few tidbits about myself:

View from a Murphy Dome excursion, on the prowl for those yummy berries!

I'm from Pennsylvania originally and found myself in Alaska after acceptance into the Masters of Anthropology program to study cultural anthropology, specifically art from the Cape Dorset community.  (My interest in northern art, I'm sure, will become a topic for a future post). While I thoroughly enjoy anthropology, the call of clay could not be ignored!  I first got muddy during my senior year at Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA (with the ever so amazing Bethany Benson at the wheel).  And upon arrival in Alaska, I sought the comfort of clay between the fingers and crackle of the wood fire kiln.  With the encouragement of Jim Brashear, head of the ceramics department here, I applied to, and was accepted to start my MFA in the spring of 2012.  

Being in Alaska, so close to my northern muses, provides me with so many wonderful opportunities to continue to study culture and the art that comes from these remote communities.  I also have the pleasure of working at the University of Alaska Museum of the North, in the Ethnology and History Collections, to be able to interact one on one with the objects that have been by impetus, first as a cultural anthropologist, and now in my ceramic art.  I look forward to sharing more with you as the weeks come!