When I first started making things in clay, we were all into abstract expressionist ceramics. We would throw something on the wheel and then roll it around on the floor for a while, kick it, and throw things at it. We also threw things at the walls and each other. But this got boring after a year or two.

After doing the Tarzan pots, I thought it would be nice to do some elephant things. I did an elephant head trophy, but that wasn't much fun, so then I made some elephant foot stools, elephant foot cups and this elephant foot spear stand for some stuffed leopard skin naugahyde spears.

I was never that great of a potter, so these ashtrays are pretty heavy. They're just the right size to use if you were sitting in an over-stuffed chair, but, you have to empty them with a vacuum cleaner.

After the fun, yet silly abstracted pots, these mosaic-like plates and bottles, inspired by Zuni jewelery, which I loved but couldn't afford, were the best things I had done and were the first things I ever sold (30 dollars for a bottle). I was also able to trade some for food.

This is the first elephant foot stool which was in the Funk Show at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and which I sold for 50 dollars. It was made because one of my professors also got interested in animal things and was able to buy the real thing, but I had to make mine out of clay. This was quite functional.

I made a whole series of lidded pots in four different sizes and functions. There were cookie jars, candy dishes, casseroles, and incense burners. You could put incense or a cigar inside the pot and the mountain would smoke! This was the cleaverist thing I thought to do in clay.

Other than pots about my favorite African movies, there were also ones featuring prehistoric mammals. I had wanted to make little scenes but they looked like fragments if you just did them on a slab of clay. When I saw Tang Dynasty Hilltop jars at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, I knew that was the place to put the scenes.

This was the first pot influenced by the Tarzan movies of my youth.

Emma, named after a pharmacist I had been a stockboy for when I was 16, was built with slabs of clay over wood excelsior and in sections so it could be lifted and fit into the kiln. She has her own lily pads upon which sit the first frogs I ever made. She is life-sized.

This piece which is now in an outdoor pond at the Oakland Museum of Art, is 10 ft. in diameter. Originally, water was supposed to squirt out the birds' mouths, real lily pads were supposed to grow around it and fish were to swim in its vicinity.

"Tarzan and His Mate", Johnny Wiesmueller's second Tarzan movie made in 1932, was my favorite Tarzan movie, so I did a series of around 6 pots to commemorate my favorite scenes.

The concept of the elephant graveyard where all elephants go to die was my favorite concept that reoccurs in African movies and stories over and over again. It is probably an H. Rider Haggert original idea.