Visit David’s Studio

Q&A with David

1. What is your chosen medium?

Clay/pottery

2. How did you start your career in art?

I grew up in a family of artists with both parents being painters. I started out painting but took a beginning pottery class while in college and got hooked. I built my own wheel, rebuilt a donated electric kiln and quit grad school to pursue pottery full time in NC

3. What informs your art?

I am greatly inspired  by the natural world, but have found guidance through some of the great pottery and potters of the world, Asian and English primarily.

4. What jobs you have worked other than as a professional artist?

I have worked many years as a carpenter during the winter months while making pots the other months.  I have also owned a fine craft gallery with my wife Molly Sharp.

5. What questions do you ask yourself when starting to work?

What’s for lunch?  Shall I work in porcelain or stoneware today?

6. Do you have a quote that’s important to you displayed in your studio?  If so, what is it?  

Anne Frank:  “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

7. Which artist (living or not) would you most like to invite for dinner? What would you serve?

Ai Weiwei (living), Hamada (deceased).  Pizzas from our wood fired oven.

8.  What has been your most unusual request for your art?

A large platter decorated with an elephant and elephant footprints around the rim. This was a gift to a pachyderm scientist.   And, “Do you make donkeys that sit out in the front yard?” (did not take that on).

9. What music are you listening to these days?

John Prine and Aaron Burdett (local)

10. What is on your nightstand?

A porcelain lamp that I decorate on location in an amazing garden in Maine and “Island Beneath the Sea” by Isabel Allende.