Maureen grew up with an interest in making things from sewing her own clothes to knitting blankets and sweaters. She didn’t discover clay until she was a sophomore at Knox College in Illinois, where she finished her degree in Chemistry but continued to pursue her passion for clay. As a potter for more than 35 years now, her love of surface design is unwaveringly evident and well documented in her book Surface Design for Ceramics published by Lark Books in 2008. Her unquenchable interest in researching design led her to teaching. As the former Ceramics Department Chair at the New Hampshire Institute of Art, and now Adjunct Professor at the University of New Hampshire Durham, she continues to travel nationally teaching workshops and maintains an active studio with her husband Steven Zoldak in Portsmouth New Hampshire. Exhibiting her ceramic vessels nationally and internationally, her work has been included in the 10th Gyeonggi International Ceramics Biennale in the Republic of South Korea. As a member of the International Symposium on Ceramic Art Education and Exchange, Maureen has taken groups of faculty and students to Japan, China, England and The Republic of South Korea where she presented her research on surface design, taught workshops and gave demonstrations of her process. Honored for her work in ceramics and her commitment to the New Hampshire artist community, she is a recipient of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation’s Artist Advancement Grant and was awarded an Artist’s Fellowship in 2012 by the New Hampshire Council on the Arts. In 2014 she received the Alumni Achievement Award in Art from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she earned her Master of Fine Art degree in Ceramics and Drawing.