Do you see yourself as an artist? Why or why not? Do you give your artistic self the permission, love, and priority in your life that it deserves and that you need?
The conversation today is centered around the idea of becoming or growing as an artist and really owning the idea of what that means so you can pursue a fullfilling and successful artistic life.
My guest, Melanie West, an artist with a chronic case of curiosity, doesn’t define her artistic identity by any one of the wide variety of mediums she works in. She has not, however, always identified as artist regardless of working artistically from a very young age. She joined me to share thoughts and stories and to get you thinking about what kind of growth and understanding of your artistic self you need for your version of artistic success.
Contact Melanie:
http://www.ravensclay.com/home
https://www.facebook.com/melanie.west.528/
Sources Mentioned:
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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CREDITS:
Cover design by Sage; Illustration by Olga Kostenko
Music by Playsound
Transcription (AI transcribed, unedited. Please excuse the copious errors. When we have a more robust budget, we’ll get these cleaned up!)
Okay. But I got to promise myself one thing, so I have to always do it for myself first. And that’s when I finally realized that I’ve been doing everything but allowing myself to be an artist. Hello, all my lovely creative friends. Thank you for joining me today on the Sage Arts podcast. I’m Sage, your host and companion on this not so lonely artistic journey of ours. I’ll be joined shortly by a brilliant, insightful guest. We have a lot of ideas and stories and wonderful conversation for you today, so we’ll be keeping the intro short so we can get to the good stuff as quickly as possible. I just have a little housekeeping to take care of real quick. I want to thank some of the supporters that reached out to me this last week to give back and help fund me, as well as leave wonderful encouraging notes. The comments were a little ego boosting this past week. Nothing wrong with that, and I do thank you so much for it. Danny Rapinette left an alltwo lovely note saying, I love your work and always look forward to anything you put your name to, as it’s always inspirational. What a boost that was for me. She herself is quite the powerhouse. She has a wonderful shop, the Whimsical Bead in Hillsville, Victoria in Australia, where you can find polymer and quality jewelry making tools if you’re in that part of the world. She also runs classes and has tutorials available online for polymer and jewelry creators of all kind. That’s on the whimsicalbeed.com au. So check that out. And Marie from Fickle Muse did a little giving back and left a comment saying, there are lots of teachers out there on art and creating, but for some reason, your take on it is more enriching for me. That just made my day. Well, actually, it makes more than just one day for me. Thank you so much, Marie. I loved hearing that enriching your lives is what I’m here for. So if you want to send me a comment or give back through a donation or tell me what you want to hear that you’re not hearing yet, anything at all, go to www.docharts.com. Scroll halfway down the home page to find the Buy Me a Coffee and PayPal donation buttons, or go to the contact page to leave me an email or voice message for me. I love to hear from you no matter what you have to say, good, bad, or otherwise. And with that, let’s just get onto the talk for the day and our guest. The conversation today is centered around the idea of becoming or growing as an artist and really owning the idea of what it means to be an artist. So the questions you can keep in the back of your mind as you listen are one, do you see yourself as an artist and why or why not? And secondly, do you give your artistic self the permission, love, and Priority in your life that it deserves and that you need. So my guest today is Melanie West. She’s an artist with a chronic case of curiosity. Among Other things, she’s worked in a wide variety of mediums and doesn’t define her artistic identity by Any One Of them, which we will learn about. She has not, however, always identified as an artist, regardless of being exposed to art and working artistically from a very young age. So today we’re going to talk to Melanie about the process of becoming an artist, what that means on a personal level, not just for an artistic career, and how to define your own artistic identity. So welcome, Melanie. Thank you So much for Joining us today. Thank you. It’s great to be here. Yeah. Now tell everybody where you’re talking to us from so we can get kind of a picture of where you’re at. I am in my bedroom in bed. Nice. I know I shouldn’t, but I work in here and you’re in Maine? Yes. Right. On an islandish. Technically, locals don’t call this an island. I mean, it is an island, but you have to take two bridges to get to where I live. So it is an island. There’s water all the way around us. It’s a series of a bunch of islands all clustered around each other near bath. That’s so cool. So you’re very rural, kind of isolated. Did you choose that because as an artist, you just kind of wanted to be more isolated? I chose it because I grew up in Manhattan, but we would spend seven weeks every summer on an island with no phone or electricity or running water in Penovska. Wow. So I got kind of used to nature is so important to me. I’m with you on that. Well, why don’t you start off by giving us some Cliff Notes, kind of your career as an artist, what you were doing previously and what you’re doing now. Sure. Probably my first step into doing art really was working in high school at a Talex Foundry. It’s called? It’s an artist lost wax foundry. It was just an after school job to make money, but apparently I was really good at it. So that was the first time I really realized that I was good at something that I did with my hands. I think I have all three siblings. Older siblings went to Cooper Union, which, at the time, it was a free art school. Being the youngest, everybody turned to me and said, so we needed to go to Cooper Union. And I said, I’m not. I’ll make my own path. Thank you. Exactly. I’m following you guys. So I witnessed studied natural sciences in an art school. I still didn’t notice something was wrong. But then when I really got involved professionally was when I started getting into photography. I started assisting other photographers. Slowly but surely, they began trusting me behind the camera, and that went on for quite a while. The photography business then had my son and worked part time in a nonprofit for the environment. And then during that time, I started hand painting my black and white photographs, got into digital photography, manipulating Polaroids, that kind of thing. And then I hit a wall and got fibromyalgia, and everything changed. That’s when I discovered polymer. Yeah. And that’s where we know each other. From the polymer world, of course. But over the last few years, you have done this and that. I mean, wonderful, beautiful paintings and your felting work and mixed media. You went on an exploration of different materials, although you’ve been working in different materials for life. Yeah, well, you know, like those seven weeks on an island with no electricity or phone or any other families. My mom had two huge wicker baskets of our supplies, and whenever we said, Mom, I’m bored, she’d go point at the baskets. They see what’s in there. She’d always bring up something. So you grew up with the whole, like, just play with whatever material interests you at the moment. That’s great. All right. I’m going to be honest here. I have a problem with the material that I love so much. Polymer is safer than it used to be, but it’s still plastic. So I tried to get into painting on fabric, and then I have a friend that is a filter, a great filter, and very spiritual in her work. I took some classes with her, and I got a little sold on that, and that was very exciting. And then I started developing eczema on my palms. Oh, wow. Both hands. Really bad. Turns out that things like wool, the metals in fabric, paint, are both really unhealthy for eczema. So problem was, I wasn’t making any money. It’s like money became an issue, and I was good at polymer, and I had the recognition I was selling for outrageous prices. If you’re doing something really good and people are admiring it, you are allowed to charge more for it. Yeah, well, you’re charging what it’s worth. There’s a lot of work behind that, a lot of education and trial and error and all the skills you’ve acquired that have gone into this. And your sanding alone is worth it. Oh, God. Tell me about it. Oh, my gosh. Her stuff is the most tactile, beautiful, soft polymer. I just love to touch your work. Well, okay. So when I got back to polymer one, it felt fantastic, but I also got to find ways to do it so that I don’t have to sand as much. Your limitations define your style. My limitation right now is my hands. So I’m changing how I’m working, and that changes what my work is looking like. But that’s okay because I just spent three years working on patterns in fabric, and my brain is ready to play with pattern in different ways. I really think that working. I mean, even when I was working in photography full time, I would take a class at least once a year in something entirely different just to shake my brain up a bit. Yeah, we’re always learning it’s good to throw something new in there. But we got a lot of background on you. I don’t know if I should do the get to know you questions. Whatever you want, darling. Well, let me ask some of the basic ones that I personally find interesting, I guess. Are you a planner or a panther? Do you plan your creative work or do you make it up as you go along or little? Both. What’s your approach? 100% of the time, if I draw down an idea, it’s done. It’s out of my head. Even if it’s a loose drawing, it becomes too concrete in my head. I’m impulses anyway. This is why I won’t do commission work. I can’t have limitations from other people. I’m already limited enough. So I have ideas all the time. I have a partner who is also extremely creative. He’s a welder. He plants these images in my head and my brain explodes and I’m like, oh, my God, I got to do something with this. But the thing is, I can’t do it at that moment in time. Yeah. So I have a stew pot in the back of my head, and all these ideas that come into my head, they go into the stew pot, and what rises to the top when I’m ready to work is usually what’s going to happen. I have immense trust in that stew pot. What’s in there is good, and if it rises to the top, it’s worth looking at. So I’m not a planner. I’m a panther. Yeah. Well, and then the other question I did want to ask you, because we had started a conversation about this. We were talking about spirit animals, ravens, a thing for you. That’s the name of your business, right@ravensclay.com? But you have another animal that you feel very in tune with right now. You want to tell us about that? Now, I’ve always had it. It’s my ad d spirit animal. It’s the naked, blind mole rat. If you don’t know what it is, look it up. Yes, they’re naked. They’re pretty much blind, and they live underground the entire time. And they don’t use eyesight. They use their sensitive whiskers, and they’re really sensitive hands, and they’re really sensitive nose. And they basically are nudging their way, digging, smelling for grubs. They’re also very community minded. They live with brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and stuff like that. They’re community, which is great. But for me, I don’t always know what I’m going to do, especially when I come up against a problem. As long as they don’t have fixed outcome ideas, I take problems as opportunities. You get an idea for a pattern or a cane, and you’re like, how the heck am I supposed to make that. And then I go into the studio and I play and I dig around. You feel your way around? I feel my way around, yeah. So more power to the naked blind bull. Right? I have to look those up. Okay. So we’ve been talking about your art life and whatnot, but you wanted to talk very particularly about your personal process for becoming an artist, which I thought would be a fantastic conversation for those of us who sometimes don’t feel like we’re artists or maybe we’re kind of starting out or we left it. We’re coming back to it. And it is a process of becoming an artist, or whether that means that you have a successful art business or you feel able to label yourself as an artist. Everyone’s success idea is different. Well, let’s start with how did you find art? Or how did it find you? I know you grew up with all these different artistic things, but when did it kind of hit you that art was going to become your identity? There were a lot of road tests. You’re at a bar and someone says, hey, what do you do? And I’m like you can say it. Come on, you can do it. I’m an artist. And even now there’s a part of me that’s like, yeah, right, good. Yes, sure. But I don’t listen to her anymore. Yeah. Being able to call yourself an artist is so closely tied to can you make a living at it? And so I think it hit home finally when I was working for the Audubon Expedition Institute, and my employee and at the time, best friend shouts out to Lynn, double day. She kept on telling me, Mel she called me. Melt was her nickname. At the time, I was very rigid because I was trying to be somebody I wasn’t. She’s said, you know, you’re an artist. I said no, I’m not. I know you have all had conversations like this, too, out there. I know you have. Somebody says, Geez, you’re a great artist. No, I’m just playing with stuff. My sister and brother sisters and brother artist. No. Right. And then I got hit with fibro. I literally had a crash and burn. I had a breakdown. I had nervous breakdown. So along with going back into therapy, emotional and physical therapy, but after that break, I had to do something to feed my soul. And in my therapy session, I remember that day, she was like, trying to encourage me to do more work. And I was like, okay, but I got to promise myself one thing. I have to always do it for myself first. And that was my pact with myself at that point in time. And that’s when I finally realized that I’ve been doing everything but allowing myself to be an artist. I was still doing art because if you are an artist, you can’t not be an artist. And that was when I first realized that, oh, my God, after looking back on all these years of trying to be something else, and that’s another thing about Add. 99% of the time, you are trying to be something. You’re not being what you are not. Just don’t do it. If you’re coming home sobbing every night, just trust that this isn’t where you should be. I’m happy finally giving myself permission to be who I am, and I’m still learning. That’s great. So the moment someone told you that you were an artist, that was eye opening. Was there anything when you were creating where it not only came from an external source, but internally, you’re like, yes, this is me. This is my identity? Yeah, I think so. When I started exploring this concept, what does it mean to be an artist? I was listening to other artists talking. I was reading, and I heard about this thing called The Zone, but I was like, oh, my God, I do that. And I knew that things were getting better for me because it was happening more and more often, where I stopped the chatter in my head of the judge. I wasn’t questioning what I was doing, and is this really what I want to be doing as I’m working? That’s different than saying, oh, this will never fly. No one will want to buy this. That kind of talk started to go away, and as that happened, I got into The Zone more often, and I think that Zone, I want to know more about it, because I think there’s something really important about it, and that’s the more spiritual side of me that I’m exploring now. It gets a little woo, but you got to go there when you’re talking about consciousness and that creative process. And I know so many artists that say this. They’re like, it doesn’t even feel like it’s coming from me. Right. It feels like it’s a gift. And I was like, oh, my God, I know this. I know this. I want more of this. This is beautiful. It’s divine. Yeah. There’s a book called Flow. It’s by a Hungarian American psychologist, I believe, named Mihai chicksA. Mihai, I think I said that right. And the formula he had is that you have something that’s challenging enough to hold your interest nonstop, but not so hard as to frustrate you. And if you find that thing and you get into it, you can get lost for hours, lose time. You don’t know about anything else that’s going around you. That’s the flow. So it’s not spiritual, but it really was a wonderful scientific look at that state of mind, which is extremely important, I think, for any kind of creative artists, writers, dancers, whoever, to be able to get into that. Because that’s the point at which your imagination and your creativity can really blossom, because your judge isn’t there, your critic isn’t there, your editor isn’t sitting on your shoulder. Right. Although you have to listen to that because it’s either, oh, my body hurts, or, oh, maybe I need to shift my thought process or not thought process, but maybe I’m pushing too hard. Yeah, you need to step back. Yeah. And that’s part of the dance. Sure. When you’re coming against something like, oh, I have a Blister on my foot. I can’t dance anymore. I need to take a rest. And you go get a drink. Yeah. But frustration is just information that is worth paying attention to. Yes. If you’re being frustrated, according to this book, flow is a sign that you’re overchallenged or you’re not quite at that level yet, that you need to step back and either relearn skills or take down your expectations. Yeah. A lot of frustration is simply out of expectation. No, I was actually having a discussion with Brett about this. I can’t remember what the particulars were about the subject matter, but the fact that you need to do something over and over again, just like a dancer would or a sword fighter or a tennis player, you do something over and over, and you practice all the time because you want it to become automatic. When you’re in that state of creating or performance or whatnot, you don’t want to be thinking about those things. And it does take practice. So I’ll interject my thoughts here on the idea that our society makes us feel like we need to make money at what we’re doing. If we sit down to do something, we think we have to make money from the very beginning. If that’s your expectation constantly, then you lose the opportunity to play and let go and explore and find things as well as practicing your skill. Right. So this process of becoming an artist was a difficult step for you, just coming to that identity really hard. Yeah. How about the practical steps to becoming an artist? Did you go from working the corporate job to being a full time artist, or what kind of transition did you have? Well, my partner soon to become my husband at the time, he got fired from his job, so we decided to move up to Connecticut, closer to my parents, blah, blah, blah. That’s when I decided I was going to try to become a professional photographer. And the best way to do that, in my mind because I didn’t have money to go back to school, was to work for a professional photographer. It was interesting, but it wasn’t satisfying the muse. When we decided to move to Maine, I knew I had enough business under my belt. It was really a question of, can I sell my work professionally? And that is hard. That’s really hard to take that step. And it was baby steps. There was a lot of humiliation, a lot of humility. I think one of the things that really helped is I joined a cooperative gallery. Highly recommend it. Yeah. So is that what you did. Like, you left the corporate world, and you went to photography, but eventually you went into gallery selling. No, I worked in nonprofit, still doing artwork, but that’s when I crashed, and that’s when I was just doing art for my soul. And, I mean, I still only do art for my soul, but now I need to sell it. But you didn’t think of yourself as an artist then, right? I didn’t. I was doing lots of presents. Lots of gifts to families. Right. Look at this photograph I made and framed it for you. Merry Christmas. But I learned how to sell working at the gallery in Belfast, Maine. Then I had friends who knew something about selling art, and I listened to their advice, and then, really, it was mostly just going and knocking on doors. By the way, if there’s any artist reps out there that want to represent me, email me. Okay. Who will have her information at the end of the show? We will. So the question really is, at what point did you say, I’m going to become an artist? Because you’re a full time artist. Yes, I am a full time artist. So what was the transition? It was slow. I knew how to sell my photography, so that was the first thing I started selling. I want to make a note of something. When I asked how you transitioned, you start talking about selling. Yeah, because well, TC. There you go. There is that definition that we have in our heads that you have to sell in order to be an artist. And I still have long conversations with myself. Thank you for pointing that out. I appreciate that. Unless somebody asks me, I don’t really call myself an artist. I am. If I put the label on me, it’s harder for me to separate the money from it. When somebody asks me or if I have to write up a bio, melanie west is an artist who blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I can do that. Yes. If somebody asked me, first thing that comes out of my mouth is, I’m an artist, and that’s what I am. But I don’t think of myself, oh, Melanie is an artist. It’s an experience as opposed to a label for me. Right. I got you. And I want to get back to the technical aspects or steps you might use to become an artist. You know what the most important thing is in my book? Have a door you can shut in your house that is your studio space, so that you can, for a little while, at least, not be a mother, a father, a wife, or whatever, or a corporate lackey or whatever. And then you’ll have the time and space to actually put together a portfolio, which is really important. Have somebody whose opinion you trust look at that portfolio, then take it to galleries and say, can you give me some feedback on this portfolio? This is what I’ve been doing. Is this something you might be interested in carrying? Talk to other artists who have worked in galleries and ask them, what kind of things do you have to negotiate with a gallery? What’s negotiable? What are the normal terms for a gallery if they’re only offering you 25%? No, they’re not going to work very hard for you if they’re taking 50%, it hurts. It hurts to my core, but if they sell my work, I’m happy to give them 50%. Yeah. And as a side note, if you don’t know anybody who’s in galleries or whatnot, look around for groups in your area, artist groups, Coops. Just get yourself into a network or into a community of artists and they’ll you’ll find people. Yeah. As artists, I think we’re that’s one of the most wonderful things about the art communities that I’ve been in, is everybody is willing to help because we all know how hard it is. We have to kind of stick together and give everybody a lift up wherever we can. It’s true. It’s very true. Have people you can share your work with as you create it. Have people to bounce off ideas with and then get your work out there. Very early on, I was making note cards with my manipulated photographs that I found a rep for. And again, yes, it’s money, but it’s also getting my work out there. I went to the local library and I said, look, I have eight large photographs framed and ready to be hung. Can I use your lobby to do that? And they were like, yeah, we’ve been looking for artists. Come on. Oh, that’s great. And I even sold a painting from that. Just say, get your work out there. Even if you’re not selling, put it on Facebook or whatever social platform you’re on, don’t hold it close to your chest. In my book, that’s not being an artist. An artist is communicating. And if you’ve got something to say in your work, even if you don’t know what it is when you’re doing it, when it’s done, probably you know what it is that you were trying to say. It’s like two phase. For me, at least, the actual act of creation is for myself. The act of getting it out there is to show people what it was that was happening inside your head or your heart or your soul or whatever when it was happening. And then shut the door, set it loose time. Make it clear to whoever you’re living with, this is my time, okay? It has to be your time. It has to be. And then just play. Get back to being three. And I mean that with all my heart. And don’t think about finished product. Whatever you do, don’t set your sights on the end product, because if you’re thinking about, well, today I’m going to paint a picture, or Today I’m going to throw a pot, if anybody’s a potter out there? And you love that feeling of centering. Take that feeling and go, okay, I’m going to feel this all the time. This feels good. I want to do more of it for the Add crowd. Catch my hyper focus, because that’s a sweet spot, right? Yeah. It’s hard to explain to anybody who is farther over on the other side of the spectrum what hyper focus is, but it’s that beautiful place where everything disappears. It’s a superpower, man. It is. It really is. Exactly. Let your limitations define your style. And that’s the other thing that’s the other thing that I think is vital for being an artist is okay, so you can’t center clay. Try coiling. Let your clay if you’re working in clay, let your clay move the way your fingers dance with your fingers and find what it is your style is. So essentially, you’re saying that let the material in the way you work clay until you feel like a synergistic, but you’re talking together, and you’re communicating with your this is the kind of thing that’s so hard to explain. When you get it, when you feel it, you’ll know it, and just tell yourself, I want more of that. Right. The rest will follow. Not even talking about money, if it’s pleasing you, that’s really all that matters. If money is not the issue and you just want to let your creative side out, it doesn’t matter what other people think, but it’s good to hear what other people think. Yeah, well, I think it’s good to hear what other people have to say, and then, you know, especially people that you trust, that they are giving you constructive criticism and that what they’re doing is to help better what you’re doing. But I think we need to build a thicker skin as artists. Thank you. That’s a lot of times, in a lot of artist communities I’ve been in, criticism is not welcome. And I think that’s sad because I think it’s a necessary part of growing to hear not just what works, but what could be improved. I also think you need to choose your critics well, because there are people who don’t understand what good criticism is. Good criticism starts with, what were you intending on doing? Yeah. What was your intention? Right. What were you thinking about creating when you created it? The second question a good critic should ask is, do you think you got it? So you leave them with questions, and they’ll come up with answers themselves. Nine out of ten, they’ll realize, oh, the balance on this is off, or, There isn’t a place for my eye to rest, or whatever it is. Choose your critics well, I have three critics, as well as Facebook, and I have a couple of really good friends who are artists. Well, one just thinks everything I do is wonderful, and that’s great, but I was like, that’s not helpful. Right. I have a. Couple of others I can send photographs to, and they’ll go, can you tell me what you were thinking about when you were using those colors? That kind of thing? Yeah, I’m finding that these colors are kind of blending together. Is that what you intended? That kind of thing. So find your critics, ones that will help you as a naked, blind, mole rat going through. Feel your stuff out. Yeah, that’s great. So get your own space. Play and play and play and play and play and play and play. Find people to share your work with. Find somebody who will help you grow your work through positive critique and questions. And then how about, like, routines or commitments? Are there things that you think that you really need to do on a regular basis? Should you be working on it daily? Those kinds of those kinds of approaches? Yeah, for some, that works great. I hate being told what I have to do, especially by myself. I do it. But if you can do it with love for yourself, do it. I’m at a point where the addiction is so strong that I have to have discipline to not go into my studio nonstop or my body tells me not to. Then I have to draw on my tablet. I think that early on, even if I wasn’t touching clay per se, I went into my space every day. Even if you can’t do anything else but just tidy up, or just to stamp that space with your creative energy, which in my mind, it’s a thing. It’s a real palpable thing. Yeah, just show up and see what happens. I know people who are just like, it’s got to be only on the weekends. Then on the weekend, set a time, honey, in the mornings when I’m best at this, I’m going in and you won’t see me on Saturday morning. So prioritize it. But work on your own schedule. If you can’t work every day, you can’t work every day. But it should be a priority. When the time is available in a loving way, it’s something you’re doing for yourself. It has to be. So a lot of people will tell you, you need to find a niche. You need to have a particular medium. You need to have a particular style. You need to be doing things in series. There’s all these kinds of recommendations, but what do you think is most important about approaching any kind of focusing of your artwork? Okay. If you want to sell, I think your work will get a better reputation if you are recognizable, having a recognizable style. Style or medium. Those who don’t know, I post almost every day to artists. And please don’t bombard me with share my work. I find artists whose work I want to share. And there are some artists out there who are all over the place. I make jewelry because I know it can sell. I’d probably be making totally useless vessels and totally useless teapots, because I love teapots. I’ve been threatening to get into painting with polymer. When you’re starting out, I think that exploration is vital. You don’t need to find a voice yet. You just need to find what gives you immense pleasure and then play with it and listen to it and listen to it. And only when you’re comfortable with your medium or mediums and comfortable with knowing what gives you pleasure, then start looking. If you want to sell, then look at how could you do those things and sell at the same time? And where’s that market? So you’re not necessarily saying, find your niche or do a series. Just listen to yourself first. Yeah, you have to. And then work it from there, and then find the market that fits. I wholly agree. Well, that’s two of us. I don’t think we’re alone. I don’t know if it’s talked about quite as much as how to sell and how to find a market and how to submit to shows, and those things are all out there, and it’s wonderful, and I’ve done a little bit of all that myself. But I have to agree that finding yourself and finding your voice when I started selling just based on what I want to do on the voice that I thought was most authentic for me, I was much more successful in selling at the shows that I sold at. Exactly. And these are the folks that I’m just like, darlin, it’s about time you had your stop working on a kitchen table. Right. Unless you’re the only one living there and you’re okay with leaving everything out. That’s part of prioritizing yourself as an artist. Well, that’s basically everything I’m talking about, is prioritizing the right you have. You deserve to do this for yourself, because if you don’t, what is life about if you’re not feeding that part of your soul? Yeah, absolutely. That’s true for anything. If you’re into model trains and it gives you immense pleasure, what is life about if you’re not indulging that even just to some degree, you have a room to do your model trains and think of it that way. Yeah. Prioritizing your passion. And I think that’s a big part of enjoying life and just being human. I think our passions define us more differently than animals than our thumbs do. Some animals actually do have thumbs, even though people say that’s what defines us. But yeah, our passions, our desire to create, our desire to have something outside of ourselves, become a reality in our world, I think that’s what really is the core of what makes us human, and I think it’s very necessary, and I think the happiest people are the people who have that and prioritize that. I agree. Yeah. So we’ve kind of worked into one of my final questions, what it is that defines success for you as an artist. Number one is if I make something, and it hums. I’m happy. That’s so great. I love that. And then if I put it out into the world and somebody buys it, that’s the second part. Because I have to name that as an integral part of my life as a professional artist. I get such spiritual, soul healing when something has come out of my hands. It’s not an ego thing. It’s like that’s what I’m trying to say. Okay, small tangent, but it’s related. I love nature shows where the photography is everything, especially, like, underwater. The crazy parrot fish shows up and looks at the lens and goes I’m like, oh, my God, I want to make canes like that. And then I manage to make not only canes like that, but maybe a necklace, too, with those canes. And then I don’t care if anybody else sees the parrotfish in there, but I want to be able to know there’s a parrotfish in there. Yeah, exactly. That’s your story in the piece. That’s my story. However, at shows I had I think it was probably also at the Philly show upstairs. It’s at this convention center, and upstairs there were neurologists or something in their own conference. And at break time, they came downstairs, and they were looking around, and this woman came up to me, and she looked at one of my bangles, and her mouth opened. She went neurotransmitters. I was like, My eyes just open up. And I said, oh, my God. Yes. That’s so awesome. And that just brought everything back to me. That was like, I didn’t know I was making neurotransmitters. I just knew that something in the pot back here in my head was saying, make this form, this pattern. And then I needed her to come to me and tell me that was neurotransmitter. And that’s what I look for as an artist, is when I can put something out there and somebody sees something, either that I knew was in there or wasn’t in there. It’s like they’re seeing you. Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Like my friend who kept on saying to me, melanie, you’re an artist. No, but you got to be open to that. You got to be open to people offering these things that they see and then realize, yeah, they’re seeing me. You know? It’s something else. People who want to sell their work but can’t because they don’t want to let go of it. Yeah, that was the thing. Yeah, it is a thing. And this has to do, I think, at least in my experience, this has to do with the same thing of you have an idea of how you want something to look. You make it the way you want it to look, and you succeed. You don’t want to let go of that because you’ve put so much into the end product. For me, the only thing I want to put into my work is I want to be able to look at and go, okay, that says enough of what I wanted to say. I feel it. That’s the humming. Then I’m like, okay, now I can let go of it because now somebody else might also hear that hum because then I get to make more. If you’re in process instead of outcome, then you just want to make more. Yeah, it’s sharing. It’s sharing. Yeah. I love that. So basically your version of success is getting that satisfaction from connecting to someone else as well as selling. And I like that you say that, because I think there’s a hypocritical kind of message that we end up with that we do feel like we have to sell in order to be defined as an artist, whatever label it is. But at the same time, we feel ashamed of selling our art because it’s personal and it’s something that should be above commerce in some way or there’s some voice in the back of your head saying, it’s not good enough. Even if somebody is willing to pay for it, they don’t realize it’s not good enough. I know. That was me. Yeah, I know. Everybody very hard. Everybody. Yeah, but yeah, we’re taught that money will define our position. But then also, as artists, I don’t know if we’re taught this or we just feel this, that the art should be above the sales, but it can be a very important part of defining your own success. And I think if it is that for you, you should own it. And hopefully it comes from a very authentic place, like what you’re saying, that it’s because it’s connecting and sharing, and someone else has seen something in your work that is so wonderful, they want to put money out for it. They want to own it. They want to take you home with it, embrace it. This is all about self love. It really is. Yeah. And it’s a hard thing sometimes as an artist. Horribly hard. We have a lot of things to contend with, but at the same time, the things that we struggle with as artists, as creative people, are the things that are going to help us create, and it’s something we can pour into our art. So we have that as an outlet as well. Great. Well, we solved that problem. Yeah. Right. Done. All right, well, the last question I always like to talk to people about, because I think this is so important, is what kind of new or novel experiences have you had recently that feed your muse? The community that I live in has a dock on a tidal river. All of that is where I go to get inspired. Whether we’re crabbing and giving our dog the green crabs, which are invasive, I’m throwing the red crabs back. I’m sitting there looking at the crabs, and I’m looking at the colors and the spots and the forms on there and the little pointy things around their eyes and the way the eye sort of goes back in the joints and how the joints are made. I have a constant curiosity. It’s like a chronic curiosity about the natural world. Always have, always will. That’s what comes out in my work, in one form or another. I’ll see it wherever I go. Paul accuses me of bad driving because there’s a bald eagle. We have lots of them, but they just happens to fly over the car. I’m like, oh, yeah, right. Eyes on the road, Wes. Sorry. So for you, it’s really just going out into the natural world and finding that thing that fascinates that inner child. That’s what I’m hearing. Does that sound right? Yes, it’s always been there. Playing with muscle shells and seaweed, having them relate in some way. Going out in the world and putting your hands in it. Yes. Touch it. Unless you’re interested in things like flame work and stuff. Well, yeah, not the dangerous stuff, hopefully. All right, well, I think we’ll go ahead and wrap it up. Thank you so much for joining us and talking about your experiences. You have so many stories. 105. You look fabulous. I have to say. Amazing. So why don’t you tell people where they can find your work online and how they can connect with you? Yes. My website is Ravensclay.com. You can email me from there. I also am on Facebook, Melanie West, and you’ll find me I’m pretty prominent there. And come look at the posts. I try to inspire, I try to provide things that will raise questions. I try to put out what I would like to see more of in the world. Yeah, our posts are just fascinating. I love the people that you find. So yeah, great. Well, thank you so much, Melanie. I really appreciate you joining us today. Thank you, Sage. It’s been wonderful. It was a great experience. Thank you. So, what do you think? Do you give your artistic self a lot of love and permission to be the kind of artist or creative person you want to be? I hope Melanie’s thoughts and stories have you thinking about that and will help lead to the kind of growth and understanding of your artistic self that you need for a truly fulfilling and successful creative life. If you’d like to share your stories or thoughts on today’s podcast, I’d love to hear it. And I’ll work in comments into future podcasts with a shout out as time allows. You can send thoughts as well as criticism or questions to me by reaching out on the website at www. The Sagearts.com. Go to the contact page and use the email form or even leave a voicemail using the red button you’ll find there, as mentioned at the beginning. If you’re enjoying the podcast and you find value in what I’m doing here, consider giving back. You can do that by going to the Sagearts.com website. Scroll halfway down the home page to find the donation buttons for Buy Me a Coffee and PayPal. You can also follow the podcast on social media, on Facebook.com or Instagram.com, both under the Sage Arts podcast. And if you want to help spread the word, hit that share button on Facebook. And you’re also welcome to grab the images I post on Instagram or repost them. I won’t object in the least. Well, that’s it for today. I’m off, actually, to set up another interview. For some reason, they’re all happening at once here, but I’ll be sneaking in a conversation with Brett in a couple of weeks. I have the episode on AI art or imagery, as I like to think of it next week. And just so many amazing subjects and guests coming up in the near future. So stay tuned and remember to hit that follow button on your podcast playing service so you know when new episodes are available and I know that you want more. In the meantime, as always, I encourage you to keep your muse wealth, ed with story and fun new experiences. Stay true to yourself and your weirdness, and we’ll see you next time on the Sage Arts Podcast.
