About Butterfly Bend Pottery

As a passionate technologist for the past 35 years, writing an artist statement seems like a betrayal.  I have resisted the title of artist.  My thoughts are binary (1s and 0s).  I communicate best with computers.  My career has revolved around logic and rules. My favorite saying is, “there is nothing magic about software; it works like you tell it to work.”  Now that I'm working with clay I'm encouraged to ‘color’ outside the lines, be creative, and let the clay have a say. 

I prefer to create objects that are used in everyday life.  I like to spend time with the objects I build to see that their use will be comfortable and provide the user some pleasure.  In software we call it “eating your own dog food.”  In other words, using what you build.

I love the wood fire experience.  I want pots heavy enough to endure the long firing yet light enough to use. I want the rugged look from the fire and ash, but refined enough for people to use with comfort. 

Wood fired functional pottery, wheel thrown and altered by Scott and Debbie Williamson, in Lovettsville, Virginia.

We made our first pots in January 2007 at a class we took together in Frederick, Maryland. We participated in our first wood firing in May of the same year and by November 2008, we were breaking ground for a kiln shed. One brick at a time, with the help of friends, we built our 27 foot, three chamber anagama/noborigama wood kiln, designed by Stan Burgess (with assistance from Kevin Crowe). Our first firing is scheduled for January 2011.

We train in classes and workshops and value our time in the studio.

Scott is CTO at Yakabod, Inc., a software firm that specializes in secure knowledge sharing systems; Debbie is (first and foremost) Scott's wife (not an occupation exactly, but it sure dictates priorities) Combined, we have 4 grown children (a son-in-law, and a daughter-in-law) and 5 grandchildren. 'Home' is 14 beautiful acres in Lovettsville, Virginia.

With practice, patience, perseverance, and great big smiles, we hope to ride this mutual passion to full-time potter status.

“Once something becomes meaningful, how important is it then to ask or understand why?”  (Sequoia Miller 8/2010)  

I have been asking ‘why’ and ‘how’ from the time I could form a question and a memory.  I’m just now discovering and accepting that ‘meaningful’ and 'important’ are separate and apart and there’s no crime in a lack of understanding.  

Simply and honestly stated, making pottery is the most selfish thing I have ever done.  I’m so grateful to have been introduced to clay.

 
Change intrigues me.  I’m not big on math but the abstract values and expectations explained in math theories and laws seem to permeate life in general.  No doubt, once you measure something or attempt to qualify it, it changes.  Position and momentum are abstract -- except at any given fraction of a second.  And that’s gone before it’s realized.  

Working on the wheel, for me, is an opportunity to deliberately experience that.  And the form that I cut off the wheel is just the start of a series of changes that both the pot and I will undertake.  From dust and water to a lump of clay, to a wet form and then a dry form, a decorated form -- and then wood-fired and cooled.  If it survives (when we survive) the process, the pot will meet my expectation to serve.  I serve to provide functional pots and to have fun doing it!