Annie Brooks was 27 years old when her mother died of lung cancer.

A year later, the young artist was also diagnosed with cancer.

“Having cancer at a very young age and holding your parent as they’ve died from what you’ve been diagnosed with is a very sobering experience to say the least,” Brooks said. “Having cancer at a young age, it changed me.”

At her 15 month checkup, Brooks, who had watched her mother suffer through chemo and radiation, refused the treatments, despite the doctor’s insistence that she would only live for another six months without them.

“I was becoming weak. I was definitely succumbing to the cancer,” Brooks said. “These were very good friends and neighbors, and the guy came over one day and said, ‘I’m taking you to this naturopath, and you can come willingly, or I’ll knock you out.’”

She followed a naturopathic treatment plan for four months. At her next biopsy, she “was told it was benign. That was 42 years ago, and it’s been benign ever since,” she said.

“My attitude is, don’t (mess) with me, cause I’ve danced cheek to cheek with death, and I won,” she added.

Brooks is now 73 and an accomplished teacher and artist who is deeply rooted in the valley. She’s lived in Garfield County since 1987, and was an art teacher at Glenwood Springs High School for 20 years.

“I didn’t know why, but I felt like I was spared for a purpose,” Brooks said. “Teaching was my purpose for a long, long time.”

She retired from teaching in 2007 and refocused on her own creations. Brooks, who now works in stoneware, porcelain and glass, began her artistic journey molding clay.

“I was going through some old papers, and I saw my kindergarten report card. And it said that of all the things I liked the best, it was playing with clay,” she said. “I’ve always loved clay.”

She rediscovered the medium in high school after signing up for a pottery class with one of her friends.

“That was it for me. It was like bells going off. It was like a marriage in my mind,” she said. “I would stay after school and work on projects and would lose track of time.”

In college, Brooks studied art in Italy for a semester, later graduating with degrees in art education and ceramic design. In 1999, she was awarded a Fulbright Memorial Fund Scholarship and traveled to Japan to study the work of her favorite potter, Shoji Hamada. Her style still echoes traditional Japanese Raku pottery.

Brooks began dabbling in glass art later in life. She wanted stained glass windows for her Victorian house on Palmer Avenue in Glenwood Springs, and her husband bought her one as a birthday present. “I was doing the laundry and I was checking his pockets and I took out the receipt, not knowing what it was, and I saw how much he paid for my birthday present. I was shocked,” she said.”I wanted to learn how to do it. So I took a class, I went crazy, I loved it.”

“When I have a goal, like learning how to do glass or creating something where I see it in my mind, I might fail five times, 10 times, but I have a huge inner drive,” she added. “I know I get that drive from fighting my cancer.”

After living at the top of Palmer Avenue for 26 years, Brooks moved to New Castle, where she continues to create in her multi-room home studio.

For her, artistic inspiration is everywhere in Garfield County. From incorporating found wood and horsehair into her stoneware to picturesque scenes of aspen trees and meadows carefully constructed out of tiny shards of glass, the valley’s natural beauty is encapsulated in much of her work.

“Ideas just come to you out of the blue,” Brooks said. “Sometimes I’ll get up in the middle of the night to use the restroom and something comes into my head and I get a sketchbook and I’ll doodle it.”

She rotates between glass, stoneware and porcelain, picking a medium based on how she feels and what is selling at the gallery. “There are days I just want to work in porcelain. And then there are days I just want to work in glass,” she said. “I’m fluid between both studios.”

Each medium has unique qualities that appeal to Brooks.

“(With glass), I love the fact that I know what the colors are going to be. When I put glass in the kiln, I’m either getting it to stick together, or I’m having it melt together. But I know what the finished color is going to be,” she said. “Working in clay is sort of more like Russian roulette. It’s like Christmas morning. I don’t know what I’m going to find when I open the kiln. But with glass, I’m pretty sure of what I’m going to get. I like that diversity.”

Her favorite medium is porcelain, which she uses to create functional art like mugs, mixing bowls and serving platters. “It’s like heavy cream versus skim milk,” Brooks said. “It’s just buttery. It’s really small particles. I love the way it feels…and it’s more challenging, it has a greater mind of its own.”

Her porcelain, stoneware and glass work is displayed at Cooper Gallery, 718 Cooper Ave., an artistic co-op that Brooks has been a member of for 15 years. Instead of paying commission, artists at the gallery, who are each equal partners, work a set amount of hours each month.

When Brooks isn’t chatting with customers at the gallery, she’s creating in her home studio, occasionally returning to the high school to teach guest classes, and reveling in life. “It’s an honor to be alive, to be able to give back to somebody else that’s battling cancer,” Brooks said. “That’s pretty much what governs my life: trying to be a righteous person, trying to enjoy life, trying to give to those in need because I can now.”