Minnesota is a long way from Santa Ynez Valley, but after five years in Solvang, Jane fits in like a native. After all, she spent her formative years living the ranch life; her family ran about 100 head of Hereford cattle, and as a teenager, she participated in the Minnesota State High School Rodeo.
She participated in girls' cow cutting, barrel racing, breakaway roping, pole bending, and goat tying, going to the NHSR finals for four years in a row. But riding wasn't her only love. She also loved art, particularly pottery. "I love to paint," she says, "but not as much as I love to throw pots."

Jane majored in art at Minnesota's Moorehead State, and during her last year of college, she did an internship with potter Jim Ulmer, whose functional work influenced her own style.

" He had an old milk cow barn and the main level was his studio, and I lived up in the hay mound, on the second level. He'd built 12 x 20 platform, and I had a bed, a hotplate and refrigerator. It was the best time I spent in college, because it was the real world. I learned what it takes to operate a studio, how the production cycle works; from throwing pots, to getting them dry, fired and glazed, firing them again and unloading them, pricing and boxing them and taking them to shows."

If Jane's parents hadn't moved west, she might still be in Minnesota throwing her pots in a horse stall (where she had moved her studio from the feed barn.)

"But when my parents left, they took the horses. I really missed the horses." She felt a special bond with the Santa Ynez Valley when she first came to visit her parents here twenty years ago. "I realized that my visits to my family were becoming longer, and more frequent," she recalls. "Finally, I decided to pack up and leave."

Jane renovated a house in Solvang&emdash;a carpenter friend helped her with the plumbing and plastering&emdash;and she set up shop with her studio in the garage.

Here, she invites the public to her annual Christmas Open House in Solvang to buy gifts and share some holiday cheer. This season, she'll be holding the open house on the weekend of November 22. In anticipation of big Christmas sales, she's busy throwing what she describes as "functional stoneware."

The western look in Jane's work is appropriate to the valley but actually came from Minnesota. "I started with my original idea of a contemporary shape and then started using pieces of barbed wire in the design. I added clay horseshoes for handles, instead of pulling them. Some of the designs took a few years to manifest, in terms of figuring out how they'd work and connect."

After five years in the valley, Jane finds herself doing more horseshoe pieces than she did in Minnesota. "But I really didn't change much of what I was doing before," she says. "It's just that this is a horsier place and there are more opportunities for equine-related work."

Meanwhile, she continues to add a new piece every two years "because it's hard enough to keep up with the 66 pieces I make now." She admits that artists have been hit hard by the recession, "but we're trying to muddle through. We have that wonderful product that everyone loves, but doesn't really need."

When she isn't potting, Jane rides her quarterhorses, Lena and Monty, with the Fillies, an offshoot of the women's riding group, the Sage Hens. She didn't waste any time getting involved in the community; she's a member of the Valley Penning Association, the Santa Ynez Valley Equestrian Association, and she's a tenor in the Santa Ynez Valley Chorale. She and Jackie&emdash;her sheltie&emdash;are very happy in the valley. "There's so much here," says Jane. "So many things to do and people to see."