An Epitaph for Alice, by Gail Karwoski

Most people knew Alice because of her art. Art was her core. Her meaning. Who she was. What she did. Why she lived. How she cried and when she laughed. As the dancer cannot be separated from the dance, Alice cannot be separated from her art. 

For decades, Alice’s art was functional in every sense of the word. She created art to earn her living, to feed her family. She made bowls and plates and mugs. Her pottery held a family’s food and drink. Thousands of functional pieces. Alice held earth - clay - in her hands and shaped it into vessels that held the essence of daily life. Thousands and thousands of people are using her pottery. They remember Alice for the sky blue glazes that gave everyday ware the patina of heaven. All those years, Alice, the master craftsman, was the artist who imbued our everyday tables with the colors of heaven. 

In the middle of her life, Alice redefined herself as a healer, a nurse, a person called to help others. But art was the center of her being, and she was destined to return to it. When she did, Alice returned with a vengeance. She grabbed slabs of earth and heaved them into vessels to scream at injustice, at pain that drives a boy to renounce his life. To mourn for Sam - her son who committed suicide - and all the people whose suffering is impossible to soothe. 

She returned with a vengeance and shaped earth into women, women with stories to tell. Stories so profound, so powerful, that they made us join hands and weep. Warrior Women. This collection - the Warrior Women - stands one hundred plus. The skill, the attention to detail, the sheer craftsmanship, is magnificent. An army of clay, of everywomen, who marched into our consciousness and gave us strength to declare, “Never again”! Women can never be silenced again by rape, by slavery, by brutality.  The Warrior Women collection was Alice’s masterpiece, which she created against the odds. As she fought her own battle with breast cancer. As she shook her fists - wet with clay - at the heavens. As she promised that women can rise, can rise from the depths of horror, can shape a fair, just, and beautiful future. Warrior Women was Alice’s promise to her beloved daughter Ann, to her precious granddaughter Luna, and to all of us, every one of us who beheld her work and were inspired - nay, transformed - by it.  Her promise that the future can be better than the past, that we can endow the patina of heaven into the vessels of our days. 

But Alice the artist wasn’t done. Before she breathed her last, she shaped the earth into whimsical critters who frolicked and danced. To make us giggle, to remind us in the very best way that there is joy and laughter amid terrible suffering. 

This is Alice’s legacy. Her art encourages us to see heaven everyday, to know we are strong, to scream when we see injustice, to recognize beauty, and to emulate our heroines.  And, finally, to remember to giggle.