I think some of my most interesting art comes out when I am just pissed off.

Environmental issues have been a theme throughout my life.

And our addiction to fossil fuels has very serious consequences for the entire globe.

Climate change is depressing.

It's scary.

It's terrifying.

But artists must be leaders and leaders must be artists.

Clay transmits all of my feelings.

If a person is drawn in by a piece of my art maybe the story I'm trying to tell about climate change will reach them.

I did not begin my ceramic journey until I was 30 years old.

I had a career prior to that as a teacher and I decided to enroll at Otis College of Art and Design Extension ceramics classes.

You want this blended in, huh?

Yeah.

I had no art background when I arrived at Otis.

Zero.

But as soon as I touched clay I knew that this was going to be something I could do for a very long time.

My mother was actually a beauty queen and my father was in U.S. military intelligence during World War II.

He was educated as an architect.

He could draw anything.

He could build anything.

And so when I told my parents I was going to quit my job at Crossroads School in Santa Monica my mom looked like she was going to go into complete cardiac arrest.

And my dad said you've finally come to your senses.

Otis College of Art and Design has a hundred-year history.

The first campus was close to downtown Los Angeles.

Many prominent Los Angeles artists at some point graced the halls of Otis.

Peter Voulkos arrived in 1954.

Voulkos could throw beautiful pots and he started tearing them apart, abstracted them.

Pete Voulkos opened the doors for all of us to create much more expressionism in clay.

I became a faculty member at Otis teaching English.

And faculty can sit in classes.

I, of course, took ceramics classes.

Ralph Bacerra was in charge of the program.

He taught us so many technical skills from glaze chemistry to plaster mold making to potter's wheel, hand building, slab building, coil building.

It was rigorous on all technical fronts.

It was the Harvard of American ceramics.

But when we moved to the new campus Otis closed the ceramic program.

Later on, the school decided to bring it back and I was tapped as the ceramic instructor.

The idea is to make this part blue and then cover the whole thing in red.

If you do the bottom side first, then you don't mess up anything.

Yeah.

Joan's biggest influence is her belief in her students.

What are you going to do on the stripes?

Her belief is so matter of fact, so strong that you start believing yourself.

These are going off to your first gallery, huh?

This one just came out of the kiln.

That's sexy.

Really sensitive glazing.

I've been an Extension student of Joan's for the past year and a half.

And just from, I think, day one, she really took an interest in my work.

I have met so many interesting Extension students.

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

Yeah, somebody's going to cut themselves.

Yeah, I had the same... You're going to draw a little blood with that one.

I really like surfers because they have strong upper body strength.

I also like dentists and orthodontists because they have good hands.

That's why...

Wait, same problem.

Yeah, I can't sell those but... You won't ever do that again.

No, definitely not.

Right?

Yeah.

Joan really helped our ceramics department recapture that past prestige.

Her work has appeared in the Smithsonian and, and just been in a lot of different museums internationally and nationally.

Her shows are taking on environmental issues through representations in clay.

My brain and my heart are connected to my fingertips.

That's how I transmit my thinking.

As we create more greenhouse emissions we have atmospheric tipping points so I have one cup that's tipping with SUVs spilling out.

And then I did another one with little sushi that have oil derricks on them along with all these contributors to climate change.

Whether it's airplanes, cars or the way we produce food in America overconsumption is what we do best.

About 2009, one of my students came back from Christmas vacation with a bag full of bleached coral.

And she gave me a few pieces and she said, these are all over the shores of Guam and our coral reef is sick.

And she said, what used to be the colorful coral is now just turned white breaking apart and landing on our beaches.

The warming oceans are creating bleaching events.

And because the coral are so sensitive the entire ocean ecosystem is under pressure.

I carried that bleached coral in my apron for a couple years, thinking about it.

And finally, I decided to switch my work from flamboyant, colorful theatrics to all white.

I started thinking of the bleached coral events as the canary in the coal mine, warning us of climate disaster.

I think this is the next step in the climate change series.

It's called Water Warrior and it is about the future issues of rising sea levels, but also of potable water for people.

We can all do our part to decrease our carbon emissions like growing your own food or buying what you need and not waste your food and throw it out.

We can avoid climate disaster and artists can translate the science so that everyone can understand it.