Diane E. Botham

Artist's Statement:

I can't remember a time when I wasn't fascinated by clay.  I moved from Connecticut to Georgia at the age of 5 and the reddish brown clay that collected in the puddles and cracked and peeled up was an outdoor favorite.  The doughy flour-and-water clay was my favorite toy at kindergarten.  I always had Play Dough in my toy chest and all my dolls had custom made dishes.  Even Barbie had tiny mugs with handles that fit her hand.  Some of them were "thrown" on my mother's Lazy Susan.   

My formal training in clay began during my second year in college.  When I first sat on that old Brent wooden kick-wheel in my first ceramics class, I knew I was home.  That was 31 years ago and I still work on an old wooden Brent kick-wheel.  During college I married and had my first 2 children and after graduation I made my income running a small production studio, first in Gallup, N.M. and then in Augusta, Ga., and teaching clay classes on the side.  After a divorce and a third child, I found myself getting a degree in Nursing in order to support my family.  Now clay is my great escape from everyday life and I find that I enjoy it much more without the complications of needing to make a living from it.  I love the clay, potter's wheel and all parts of the throwing process and my work is almost exclusively wheel-thrown.  I find that I am inspired less by things in the outer world than by an inner need to transform the residual, and sometimes negative, energy from my work life into something beautiful.  There have been many times when I've come in from a 12 hour shift in the ER, dropped my keys on the counter, gone out back to my studio and sat on my old Brent for hours, in my dirty scrubs, until the clay and the throwing process have restored my sense of harmony.  My hope is that my work shows a pure love of the process.

Many thanks to my son, Cable Hoover, for the photographs on this page.