Of course she has exhibited around the globe. If you are really fortunately, you know her from both. However, these represent a scintilla of the vast reservoir of life experiences and accomplishments that embrace the whole person that is Ms. Fortescue.

“I have had a long and varied journey, and it not over yet,” says Fortescue who plays tennis, for fun only, with a mean backhand.

Cecily Fortescue was born in England and received a doctorate in languages from Oxford University. After four years as Associate Professor of Medieval French at London University she tired of teaching and left for Rome. It was there, while working as a free-lance translator, that she first put her hands to clay. Later she became a full-time, primarily self-taught, potter after moving to New York in 1973. Her husband, Arnie Friedman, thought it would be good for her to have an interest that would keep her in one place for awhile. She found an ad in the Village Voice for a one hour class and the rest is history. By choice Fortescue had been a major peripatetic in her years between the time she left England, lived in Rome and Greece, and then moved to the States.