The Crossing Point

MARY CAROLINE RICHARDS ? "M.C." to her friends ? attended Reed College (A.B.) and the University of California (M.A., Ph.D.). Her professional life began conventionally enough, as member of the English faculty at California, Central Washington, Chicago, Black Mountain. These assignments brought her face to face with a question: "Why is it we are all so well-educated and brilliant and gifted and artistic and idealistic and distinguished in scholarship, that we are so selfish and scheming ad dishonest and begrudging and impatient and disrespectful of others?" The answer, she concluded was to be sought in arts of transformation: pottery, poetry, alchemy, spiritual self-development. Her life since then, one might say, has been just such a quest: creation in pots and in words joined with bold, original thought and with many occasions of sharing. As speaker, artist in residence, participator in conferences and seminars she has offered her search and her wisdom to hundreds of students and peer at Colby, Penn State, Antioch, Goldsmiths' College(university of London, Haystack School of Crafts, to name a few. Through her widely read book Centering she has reached thousands more in a less direct but possibly more lasting way, Today she lives on a farm in northeastern Pennsylvania; and from that rural center, her message rings to the world.