After wandering through engineering, sociology, anthropology, motherhood and technical writing, Barbara finally found her true calling in the mid-1990s, when experiences with found natural clay led her to take classes at the Northern Clay Center. She then did an informal apprenticeship with Richard Bresnahan, at the St. John’s University Pottery from 1999 through 2002. She and her husband moved to the Northfield area in 2004, building a house 6 miles south of town, so that she could build a wood-fired kiln. The wood-fired kiln has been redesigned and rebuilt twice, and its third reincarnation was finally fired in August of 2016. But her main body of work is glazed ware, fired in reduction in a propane kiln. She sells her work from her studio, and at various events in the Northfield area.
