I have discovered that ceramics is an amazing field. It’s just incredible the variety, the endless possibilities, the history,

[Voiceover] That’s my friend Pete, in the 20 years that I’ve known him, he’s always had great affection for classical music,

The violin concerto from Samuel Barber who–

[Voiceover] And making pottery.

As a high school student I was always in band, I envied my friends who were in wood shop. And turning on the wheel, to me, was finally something I could get to do that I saw them doing to wood and I was doing it to clay.

[Voiceover] Now late in his radio production career, the two seem to be converging.

I just sort of automatically kind of landed on things that I was good at doing, like in radio I wound up in productions which is my strongest feature. About two years ago some friends of mine, I had given them a little honey pot that I made for Christmas and I saw them a few weeks later and they said, you know what we really what is a growler. I just started making them and it was a process trying to get them the right size, get them the right shape, get the handle to feel the way it should and not to heavy, not too light. I’ve made, maybe 40 of them now, 50, I’m not sure how many I’ve made but I’m starting to get after a couple of years, get a handle on how to make them correctly. Yeah that feels about right. I can’t really define my personal aesthetic yet. I have some design elements that I’ve tried to keep at the top of my mind. Number one, the golden ratio, which comes from the Ancient Greeks. I like to incorporate botany. When I was in high school I took a botany class that had a huge influence on my life. I love the patterns. Many people like animals, I like plants. So I actually did not touch clay for 24 years and in 2009, I decided you know, I really miss that. And I really miss the creative part. I really miss, it’s fun. Okay, I got the water out of the bottom. One of the things that I had always wanted to get into was Raku firing. So I built a little Raku kiln out of a 55 gallon drum and I lined it with ceramic insolation and I started making pots by hand and firing them with a weed burner. And a year or two later, I started coming into The Clay Connection here in Spokane and started throwing things on the wheel and rekindled my love of pottery. For me, classical music and pottery both do kind of the same thing, and that is connect me with the past. Because some of the things we hear that are just, oh yeah it’s Mozart whatever, in its day was radical and just astounded the people who heard it. And the same thing with pottery. You know, the people who have been making pottery for literally thousands of years were fantastic artisans and artists and creators of beautiful things thousands of years ago and so it just makes me feel really connected to all that.