About the Artist

I live in the middle of the Pittsfield Preserve of Ann Arbor and my balconied workroom looks over the edge of its 500+ acres of forest and reclaimed meadows. Our family consists of several dogs that I train, show and sometimes breed and 4 cats. I have also been a horse owner twice (Morgan, Norwegian Fjord) and we also have a small herd of assorted chickens.

My art background includes a BFA/Drawing and Graphic Design Eastern MI University School of Art, graphic design, operating a faux finish painting business, mural painting at the Humane Society of Huron Valley and teaching a children's ceramic class at the prestigious College for Creative Studies in Detroit MI. I am also an award-winning amateur photographer and my work has been published in national magazines such as the AKC Gazette and Dog World.

In late December 1992 I started Abby's Jewels, with cat head pins made of Friendly Plastic. These were sold at the Humane Society of Huron Valley's holiday gift shop at Arborland Mall (I worked there at Holiday time and at the shelter from 1992-1994).
In mid-1993 I gave my business a hip early 90's type name, Critter Factory and sold my work at the world famous Ann Arbor Art Fair at HSHV's booth both years. I sold my jewelry also at the Ann Arbor Farmer's and Artisan's Market from summer 1993 to spring 1995 (even when it became very cold in the fall and winter, outside for 9 hour days).
It was there that I got my first request for a specific breed- a Border Collie. Not long after I was asked to make a Wirehaired Fox Terrier.
In 1995 I renamed my business Blue Dog Studio (for the Australian Cattle Dogs that played a big part in my life, from having been involved in establishing The ACD Rescue of MI in 1990). I added some funky dog designs, horses and wild animals.

Pictured above are some of my Blue Dog Studio designs through the years.
In March 1995 I started to set up shop as a vendor at bigger AKC dog shows, horse expos and even did a CFA cat show (great place to be bored out of your skull AND lose money!). However, in 1998 I made the decision that I better hang up my scissors as I was by then suffering badly from tendonitis from the repetitive cutting of the thick plastic.

In March 1999 my (by then, nationally famous) plastic jewelry had its last show at the AKC Detroit Kennel Club dog show and as luck would have it, I was set up next to ceramic artist Karen Finncannon (see Links page).

I had always thought I would go into making my designs in ceramic eventually but had no idea what to do first. I was inspired after picking Karen's brain all weekend and then, not long after, I simply bought a bag of low fire clay from a supply house and started experimenting. The VERY first tile and plaster model I ever made back then was a small Chinese Crested tile (approximately 2 inches square), shown below. It didn't get fired until 2004 (I had stuck it in a box in my studio and forgotten all about it!).

I went on to enlist the help of such artists as famous tile crafter and author Frank Giorgini and took a class taught by Karim Motawi of Motawi Tileworks in winter 2000, where I made my first 'real' tile model and mold, the Puppies Playing tile (left). In the year that followed, I got my first kiln, set it up in the basement and started to design a line of low fire stoneware dog breed jewelry (below). I debuted them on my website in September 2001 and officially presented them to the AKC dog world at the DKC show in March 2002. Although cute, the outline painting style wasn't really something I wanted to do.

In mid-2002 I started to experiment with the king of all clays, porcelain. It was a very long, difficult process of learning and figuring it out that I had to do all by myself, there was no advice on the internet or in books for what I wanted to do. I knew that with porcelain, I could achieve the highest level of break-resistance available for the kind of crazy designs I wanted to do. Porcelain is high fired and therefore the ceramic molecules are vitrified tighter, thus making them less likely to break.
It was a long journey with an incredible amount of trial and error with colors, glazes, firing temps, timing differentials, types of porcelain from many different suppliers, techniques, methods, design problems, tools (what to use, what not to), what you can do with porcelain, how far will it go, its quirks (for example, the way it warps like crazy unless you know exactly how to hand roll it properly and weigh down the pieces as they dry), rolling methods, types of rollers, just a never-ending sea of possible ways to mess up what I was doing.
But I just kept on trying. I was pretty sure I could come up with a method for the result I wanted without compromising quality. Finally I developed the exact process for making the jewelry I make and I guarantee you, this method is nowhere to be found on the internet and often surprises other ceramic artisans.

I have continued my development projects with my new designs, which are sculpted by hand, cast in plaster (like the tiles) and hand-pounded (from the same porcelain clay) and carefully cleaned, detailed and glazed. There are NO sharp edges on MY jewelry and it NEVER looks mass-produced (because it's not!). My designs are accurate and never, ever looked rushed or otherwise cheated. It doesn't save any time in the studio to make them with this method but what it does do is provide me a way to create a level of dimensionality I have never had before with the slab-rolled jewelry.
My methods were hard won, through many years of testing and failing and finally, succeeding. It is truly amazing when you think of the thousand things that can still go wrong from start to finish on my pieces but somehow, most of them turn out all right!