I am an artist.

It took me a while to believe that. I was certainly a mother, a wife, a daughter, a friend… there was proof of these vocations, But in spite of being an on-and-off participant in the arts for as long as I could remember, there was no current proof I could call myself an “artist.”

After receiving a degree in graphic design in 1993, working in a landscape architecture firm, getting married, moving to a new city, and having two babies that I stayed home to raise, I found myself a bit lost without a personal purpose. On a whim, I took a ceramics workshop and quickly fell in love with clay. I was able to intern with a local potter, and soon opened a studio of my own. For the next five years I ran a successful retail ceramics business called Crave Studio. It was a wonderful time; I learned a lot about my craft, but I found that creating within the retail space left little room for exploration, something I deeply yearned for.

In 2015 I closed Crave and timidly opened a private studio where I could address a persistent desire to make conceptual work that explored my inner landscape and the complex condition of being a human. This presented a question almost immediately; if I’m making art solely for the purpose of satisfying a compulsion to express myself, would anyone else care about it? The answer seemed to me, at the time, to be a resounding “no.”

So I quit. Art is hard. No one will care. Clearly I’m not an artist. Cue the three year identity crisis.

By 2018, my inner landscape was a desert. I desperately needed a new focus, so I took an immersive workshop at Penland School of Craft in a subject I’d never before studied. That new skill wasn’t the golden takeaway from this venture, though. Penland is where I learned what being an artist means. Making art, viewing art, thinking about art, talking about art, connecting with other artists … this is where I feel the most centered, clear about my role here on this earth, powerful in my purpose. I learned that i am profoundly compelled to process what I experience, both internally and externally, through creative form, a monumental turning point for me.

In 2020 I presented my first body of work in the main exhibition space at Art & Light gallery. The show was a resounding success, giving me some much needed validation that this pursuit of mine was important … not because of the sales, (no complaints though!), but because of the transformation that had taken place within me. I’d really found myself.

I have continued to make work of which I am proud ever since, growing and evolving with it, challenging myself with new mediums, and refining what it means to live my specific life as authentically as possible ever since.

I am (indeed) an artist.