Recognizing their shared love of ceramics and their combined talents in sculpture and functional arts, Lucie Piedra and Meg Oliver joined forces and opened L&M Studio in September of 2011. Lucie and Meg were resident artists together at the Byrdcliffe Artist Colony in Woodstock, NY in 2001 and have stayed friends. The spring of 2011 found both Lucie and Meg with young puppies on their hands, namely Max and CC. At the time both women had private studios at their homes- so during that first summer they decided to have full day puppy play-dates while helping each other with specific tasks whether in the studio, garden or house. They would alternate weeks, one day a week, helping each other while the puppies chewed on each others' faces. When hurricane Irene flooded Lucie’s studio in the fall of 2011- they decided to take this helping each other to the next level- to that of collaboration. They found a store front in Catskill, NY equidistant between their homes. Lucie’s previous work was sculptural and primarily in low-fire red earthenware- while Meg’s work had been high-fire functional porcelain. They decided to meet in the middle in terms of temperature (cone 6) and to make work by slip-casting, which, although they both had experience slip-casting, neither had used it a primary method of making. In terms of collaborating- Lucie and Meg liken the experience to completing a crossword puzzle together (neither can do an entire puzzle on their own) and find that if one starts a project ,the other will tweak it a bit, then the first will come back to add a little and so on until the design works for both partners and the puzzle is completed.