Why make stuff?

getting my creative juices flowing in my studio

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to change up my paradigm as an artist. For a few years I’ve been hungry for something more and in the process of discovery, I’m regularly asking myself - what’s missing, what do I want to make, how do I want to earn money, is making things still important to me, still necessary, and the big questions of whether being an artist contributes enough to the world, whether it’s important enough.

cutting tile is always a meditative experience

The question of whether art is important enough has always been a big one for me. Years ago as a student I was wresting with this same question and one day a professor from the graduate art program was listening in on a friend and I talking about this. She first asked me why I made things in clay and I said something about loving it and that it was the first thing in my life I could fully give myself to. Her next words have stayed with me all these years and helped every time I had doubts about the validity of art as my profession

she said that if I wasn't doing what I had to, what I loved, what enabled me then I wasn’t going to be of much use or good to anyone anyway.

So here I am 30 years later and finally at this point I no longer have to pull her words out of my pocket to revisit, I feel their truth. I KNOW in every cell of my being the power for me of engaging in creating.

It puts me in the dimension of joy, of wellness; my spirt relaxes, my heart opens, and my smile comes easily for days to come.

I wondered if moving and living in a different place would shift this in some way and I’m sure it will, but so far I’m even more wedded to my love of creation and more acutely aware of the power of handmade beautiful objects once they are in use in my life! These things make my day measurably better every single day.

So for today, I'm at peace with my searchings. Maybe tomorrow my asking will yield something else and when it does I will share it.