For more than forty years, I have worked in clay: teaching it, learning from it, and being humbled by it.

 

My current series is inspired by the aspen trees of the Colorado High Country. They have spoken to me since the first time I walked through a grove. As they mature, they stretch from the inside out, carrying the marks of each season while staying connected to one another through their roots beneath the surface.

 

Each piece begins as a vessel, either hand built or thrown on the wheel, and is then stretched from within.  As the clay responds to that pressure, cracks emerge on their own. A deep black glaze settles into them, making each line visible, permanent, and beautiful, much like the dark marks on an aspen's pale bark.

 

Every piece is made by hand in my Grand Junction studio, and no two are ever exactly alike, because no two aspens are either. My work is represented in several Colorado galleries and held in private collections around the world. I create because I believe handmade objects quietly change the quality of a life, the way an aspen grove changes the quality of a hillside.

 

True growth happens from the inside out.

~ Lori Raper