Carol McFarlan

On a youthful journey around the world looking at people and cultures, I became interested in ancient pottery. People and clay, I saw, had been engaged in a very long and intimate relationship. The history of whole civiliations was recorded on clay. On the Greek island of Crete, in a museum, the pots of the Minoan civilization (1500 BC or so) caught my breath and touched my heart. I saw celebration; a flowering of the human spirit. Here, to me, was love communicated through clay.

In Japan, I saw that pots no only resided in museums of the past but were still made and used every day. What I saw in Japan was a way of life that looked good to me. On returning home, I because a pottery student of Marguerite Wildenhain, whose training was at the Bauhaus, and who had settled in the coastal hills of Northern California. At this point, I have been a
potter for 34 years.

It is important to me that the handmade pot be an integral part of people's lives, bringing beauty and joy to daily living.