Chicago born Los Angeles resident, Bari Ziperstein, never set out to work in clay. She learned some basics in high school and more while in college at Ohio University in Athens, OH, but her majors were painting and women’s studies and her parents demurred when she wanted ceramics as a third major as that meant another year at study. After moving to LA early in the new century, she enrolled for her MFA at California Institute of the Arts, where “ceramics weren’t even on the table”.¹