After playing on a National Championship Basketball team in college, Diana Kersey threw away a previously much dreamed about exciting career coaching high school basketball and explaining to parents why their perfect daughter was not getting more playing time, and became a potter.
Twenty-two years later, she has no regrets. She has earned a BFA from Texas Tech, and a MFA in ceramics from Washington State. She has taught ceramics, drawing, and design at the Southwest School of Art, San Antonio College, and Palo Alto College. She has run her own business, Kersey Ceramics, for over a decade, producing functional pottery, architectural ceramics, public art, and irrigation ollas. Diana has just moved into her new studio space, built to all the specs she has dreamed about, and is looking forward to what the new space will bring in regards to her art practice. She lives in San Antonio with her loving wife, Christina, and the required allotment of dogs and cats.
My pots are about making decisions. When I am throwing a pot, I decide how wide the lip should be in relation to the foot. I decide how full the belly is in comparison to the neck. When the pot is leather-hard, the decisions are about where to make the first mark. How can I best divide up the space for that particular form? Using drawing tools, I make decisions about where to put lines on the pot in relation to the form. When I am carving the pot decisions are made about where to make marks, where do I want the glaze to pool and darken? Where do I want raised areas so the glaze is lighter? I decide what sprig molds to use to add embellishments and help tell a narrative story with my pots. When the pot is dry the decisions are about where to paint colored slips or underglaze, in relation to all the previous decisions. Finally, once the pot comes out of the bisque fire, the decision is about how and what glaze to apply. Where to apply and how thick or thin? All my pots are about making a decision, not correcting or reworking a bad decision, but working with it and constantly moving forward.
My making process reflects and informs how I wish to live my life. I spend very little time on regrets or changing my mind. I trust that I make the best decisions I can, relying on the information at hand. So my pots, basically, represent my philosophy about how to live a happy life with no room for regrets. As a result of my pottery practice, I have learned that there are many solutions to any one problem, and that a bad decision can lead to a previously unimagined genius solution. And, that if a pot does not make it through the process, the next one will be even better as a result of what I learned from failure. Working in clay has given me resilience, hope, and a constant feeling that the best is yet to come.