I live the seasonal life in Northeastern Pennsylvania... By summer, I tend garden frantically for numerous flower lovers. When winter rolls around, my fingers are still raw and numb from bulb planting. Thus I am eager for the comfort of a warm studio and a quiet, stationary task.

I work out of Burti Ceramic Studio near Fleetville, where I am delighted to keep company with a number of talented clay artists. All of my functional and decorative work is made from stoneware clay, and most of it is high-temperature-fired in a gas kiln (with an occasional piece of work fired in a wood kiln).

Being a restless sort who appreciates a routine that doesn't ever settle in too deeply, I love the fact that warm weather flips to cold weather flips to warm... Pocketfuls of sweetfern and witch hazel and opium poppy heads come indoors with me in fall - they end up dry and pulverized in my sweatshirt, or else pressed into slabs of clay or tiny bud vases. A winter-long series of three-dimensional fox sketches in shadowboxes comes alive the next season, when I spy a little fox so red it reverberates against the green meadow.

Really, I guess I love clay like I love dirt. The grit and crumble and mud... the deep earth history smell.