Lois’ first forays into clay began in 1980 when she wandered into a studio in Brooklyn, NY and asked to rent space to play with clay.  Her only previous exposure to clay was in the sixth grade.  After a few years working in clay, life intruded and she stepped away for three decades to grow a career in architecture and to raise her family. During those decades away, she dreamed of coming back to her first artistic love to fully immerse herself in exploring ways to capture the beauty of the world around her in clay. Her work is all hand-built to produce wonderful abstract combinations of colors with a variety of techniques.  Thin wall, slab-built works in porcelain and stoneware with highly decorative surfaces run throughout her work with several carved to enhance the forms or to expose the striations of colored clays.  She bounces between small functional pieces that can be picked up and used as a part of every day life and sculptural vessels glazed with designs reflecting the environment around her and carved with messages memorializing thoughts she wishes to share. 

 

Recently retired, Lois’ career as a practicing architect focused on sustainability as intrinsic to design aided by the application of green technologies and sustainable planning. First joining Wight in 1995, Lois led Wight’s efforts to embed sustainability in all facets of this innovative design-led, design build firm as its Chief Sustainability Officer. Recently, Lois led the effort to design several buildings to meet the criteria for Net Zero Energy. Her work raised the bar for high performance, healthy buildings for the work designed and built by Wight. Lois is also adjunct faculty at Northwestern University where she continues to teach master’s level courses on sustainability. She has educated, volunteered, and lent her energies to promulgate an understanding that creating places where people thrive demands deeply sustainable solutions for the built environment.

She carries her passion for sustainability into her work and loves the ability to endlessly recycle clay.