Those considerations are different for each artist. For some, it may mean that their work actually equates to an income that is a living wage. For others, it may simply mean that their work brings them a degree of notoriety, often short-lived, but something to give them a professional boost. But for most, I don’t think it is even a part of the artist’s early vocabulary and thinking…just having the opportunity to work is accomplishment enough. 

Having my work recognized and commissioned by clients to be installed in homes or businesses has certainly been overwhelming…that individuals and families want to live with my work everyday in their most private of spaces. That is powerful. And, at its core what that has done has given me the ability to continue to create, because for me, that is what I understand the work of the artist to be about. 

For most of my forty years in clay, I have felt driven to not only be a maker but to share the experience of engaging with this most captivating medium, to help others come to know the healing and delight of the responsiveness of clay. And I have shared with children and adults how creating with clay is a collaborative experience where you and sister earth create together. In these past few years, however, I have come to recognize that my relationship with the medium needed to deepen and, as with any relationship, more alone time together was needed. And with that realization, I ended nearly a half century of leading others in the way of making with clay to focus on creating my own work…creating what sister earth and I need to say together, beyond what I was specifically invited to create for others. 

In doing that, in taking that step, I have found continuing acknowledgement of the quality of my work not only by clients, new and ongoing, but also now by my peers, those sister and brother artists who are responsible for recognizing excellence in the arts and calling it out. The invitation to mount a solo exhibit, a retrospective of my work, has created such a moment for me, in essence saying, “Don’t create anything new…just stop for a bit and look back…show us some of what you’ve been about for these past forty years.” It is a profound moment for an artist to be invited to do that. And after that pause, to recognize with tremendous gratitude that the real accomplishment is to just be able to continue working.