If you didn't know what you were trying to do, [Robert von Neumann] wouldn't say a word. He would just turn and walk away. So you very quickly learned to think that you'd better be attempting to do something in that painting class.

It was a wonderful opportunity. And so for two and a half years we lived with [Bernard] Leach.

I thought I was going to be able to use my painting ideas as decoration on pottery, but my painting did not translate into decoration on pottery. I thought it was going to, and in fact I made, while still in school, a plate with one of my paintings on it, and that's exactly what it was, it was a plate with a painting on it. It was not a decorated plate; it was just a painting superimposed over a three-dimensional ceramic form.

We both [with Alixandra Kolesky MacKenzie] got into ceramics, you might say, by the back door. Looking back on it, I think this was a very good thing.

Other thing about [Field Museum of Natural History] which inspired was that in a group of pots you wouldn't see a single example of this kind of pot. You would perhaps see a case with 20 different examples. So you realize that these pots could be repeated again and again, and each time there would be minor variations in them.

[Sculpturing] didn't stick with me. I never felt I wanted to go on with that.

Alix [ MacKenzie] had stopped teaching because we had a child and she stayed home to take care of the baby, and I taught.