Jennifer Goff
I simply must create. As almost as long as I can remember I was playing with mud and sticks to form little creations in the yard. It wasn't until I was in high school with a good art teacher that I realized that this interest wasn't something everyone had and that I should nurture it. I spontaneously signed up for a class at Haywood Community College in the ceramics department with Gary Clontz. The independent study course planted a seed inside my fiber that secretly grew as I took all of my bs courses in college to become an archeologist. I dreamt of the wheel every night finally changing my major to a bfa with certification to teach, I felt much better. I taught for a number of years and played with different mediums until the director of visual arts at the school where I taught bought me a wheel. He, also a potter, insisted that I had a gift and needed to work. I now wonder where I'd be without him and his generous offer. When I don't work at the wheel for a period of time (as I am the mother of small children and life gets crazy during the summer and such), I feel it in my emotional state. As I said earlier, I simply must create to exist.
My salt and pepper shakers are what I'm most known for and they moved into my work some years ago. These little characters come from all sorts of walks of life that are influenced by my time spent in New Orleans with my Aunt Daisy and Uncle Henry during the summers as a child to my son's books on Egypt. I never know how each one is going to turn out. As the expression forms, I meet who they are and what adornments such a person needs to complete their "look". I have to say that each of these creations is like giving birth to a person with different personalities and as crazy as this may sound, when they sell, it's different from a purely functional pot (I've sold both) in that I'm saying goodbye to someONE in a sense rather than just someTHING.
