I grew up in a small working class town in New Jersey where art in school or the community was mostly nonexistent.  People worked hard in factories to put food on the table and there was little time for much else.

Fortunately, I was able to go to college and picked Alfred University, a major force in American ceramics.  I didn’t know anything about pottery at the time but was always intrigued by the students who wore “mud” on their jeans.

After a year, I transferred from Alfred to Rutgers in Newark, NJ, studied history and spent my free time hanging around the one-person theater department.  I thought I wanted to be an actor.

I graduated from college, spent two years in the army and landed in New York City.  In addition to working various social service jobs, I took a pottery course in Greenwich Village with a woman who charged me $2 a week for individual lessons on the wheel.  I was hooked.  I loved clay and gradually drifted to hand-building with slabs of clay.  I took lessons in other studios in Manhattan but did not believe that I could make a living in clay.