Jill was born in Saskatoon and stayed there long enough to finish high school and develop a yearning to travel.  She spent two years travelling in Europe and then on to Asia through Afghanistan and into Thailand.  She has travelled in Australia and Japan and in 1973 bicycled from Windsor, ON to Nuevo Laredo in Mexico.  Jill was then beginning to get a sense and an understanding of pottery and the endless realm of possibilities that that art form offered.  Jill then attended the University of Saskatoon and took further courses at the Banff School of Fine Arts.  Here she met a Japanese potter who aided her in gaining an opportunity to take an apprenticeship in Japan where she really learned and saw what clay could offer.
She has worked as an apprentice in Japan and as a production potter in the Okanagan before stretching out on her own.  Jill has a wonderful sculptural ability and a strong sense of the mystical world beyond our reality.
Jill specializes in dream keepers, masks and dragons.
Jill says "I feel I have something that I must communicate that I can't express in words.  Images are more basic, more primal; and clay is a most basic substance-pure earth.  I've loved working in clay since I was a child.
Jill has specialized in two seemingly opposed areas, in sculpture and classical ceramic vase shapes.  Her sculptures run the gamut of dragons and human forms while her classical shapes revolve around her Japanese experiences.    Her most popular shapes became the dream keepers that have become so popular since we began to feature Jill's work.   They are the classical shapes done in raku, the style of ceramics made popular by the Japanese tea ceremony.   They exhibit the spontaneity of raku in the spectrum of glaze colours that only raku can provide.   This is an art form truly on the edge of what the potter is able to control.  The colours and shading are what attracts people to raku, showing the glazes developed by the potter and the spontaneity provided by the reduction atmosphere of the fire and smoke.
Dream keepers are traditional Japanese pots that hod the dreams of the owners.   To use the dream keeper, you write your dreams on a piece of paper and hang it from the loop under the lid.  When you have fulfilled your dreams, you then remove them and replace them with new dreams.  You can be as creative with your dreams as you wish and you can be limited only by your imagination and your ambition.