Biography & Artist Statement

Born in Detroit, Michigan, my interests have taken me to Maui, Hawaii; Pasadena, California; and most recently to Silver Star, Montana. My first teaching certificate was from the State of Michigan for the areas of Art, English, and Social Science in grades K-12. Since then I have taught in Michigan and for longer periods in Hawaii and California and now in Montana. Along the way I married and raised two children. My intense interest in my children's education led me to engage in the Waldorf School approach. I took the equivalent of a masters degree from the Waldorf Teacher College in Detroit. Detroit was a very cold place to be at the end of the 1960s so we moved the family to Hawaii. I initiated and developed a Waldorf School on the island of Maui in the 1970s. When my own children were high school age I left that institution and did much the same thing in Pasadena, California in the 1980s. Both Waldorf elementary schools are today still operating at a healthy student body count of approximately 250 students. I spent the last ten years teaching ceramics in a public high school district in El Monte, California.

Over the years I narrowed my focus and found most fulfillment in teaching ceramics exclusively. That afforded me the time and energy to develop my personal ceramic artwork to the point of exhibiting and selling it.

Currently I am developing my own artwork and teaching ceramic students in my studio on the Jefferson River in Silver Star, Montana. My studio Christopher Clayworks on the Jefferson provides inspiration from the river, the wildlife the river attracts, and the backdrop of the Tobacco Root Mountains. My main theme is the emerging strength of female individuality. I sculpt the female form in the walls of my vessels to celebrate the different aspects of female energy and consciousness. I exhibit my work at Dana Gallery in Missoula and The Weavers Studio in Twin Bridges in Montana.