84 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {home & design} to horse hair raku, a decorative technique to create designs from burning strands of horse hairs on the surface of a still-hot ceramic piece. “She also instructed me in throwing vase forms,” Ann says. She cites the Palo Alto Art Center as an invaluable resource and says she looks forward to the ACGA Clay and Glass Festival it hosts every July. Visitors to the center will find a totem pole in the courtyard, the result of collaborative efforts by Ann and several other artists. Eventually, as her kids grew up and left home, Ann decided to immerse herself deeply in her craft. “I realized I don’t have infinite time and now was the time to create,” declares Ann. “For me, I am most in the moment when I am throwing pots. The music is playing, windows are open and the wind is blowing.” Ann describes her process as taking advantage of the symmetry of a thrown form by adding negative space to introduce a sense of movement, while altering the lip and rim to communicate undulation. “What I am trying to convey is a sense of motion,” she adds. She finds inspiration in nature—hiking Windy Hill in Portola Valley or walking the beaches in Pescadero. While many ceramicists primarily use an electric or gas kiln to fire their work, Ann prefers an ancient, traditional method called pit firing, where all of the finished piece’s colors and patterns are derived in the fire. She belongs to a group that gathers on a fellow artist’s land in the hills above Milpitas to fire their work in a wood-fueled metal pit. “We place the pots in the pit, flames rise high and then we cover the pit overnight. We return in the morning and form a line of people to empty the kiln, and everyone touches every pot.” She describes the immediacy of the results as a highlight of this process, along with the community spirit and camaraderie it creates. Recently, Ann’s lifelong passion for ceramic art came to fruition when her vases were featured at an international exhibit in Paris. The 1000 Vases show featured a curated group of 57 artists from 25 countries who designed a wide range of ceramic pieces running the gamut from tribal
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