“Prayer”

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of interviews with women artists. I met Tammy Vitale after I discovered and commented on her blog, Women, Art, Life: Weaving It All Together. Tammy paints, sculpts and works in ceramic - she’s very mulit-talented - but it’s her ceramic masks and torsos that got my attention. Simply stated, they are incredible! The mask above, “Prayer”, is my current favorite and is the piece that inspired me to ask her for an online interview.
Meet Tammy Vitale!

1.What is your earliest recollection of when you knew art was your passion?

I have always had pencil and pen and crayons and reams of newsprint. For many years all I drew was horses, horses, horses. In fact, were it not for coloring books (I colored outside the lines, impatient with restrictions I guess, though I couldn’t have said that), I would think the horses came first and then the drawings. I tried paint by numbers as they were all the fad in the 50s when I was young, but, like coloring books, I didn’t do well with them.

At 26 I started college with the intent of studying art. Took 2 semesters of drawing, art history, and then-husband noted that I would never make any money as an artist (and since my making money was necessary since he made very little and not steadily, I listened).

I comfort myself for this decision by telling myself that what I bring to my art now is different than I would have brought then. In fact, I might never have made it to clay had not so many things gotten in the way of my art – not the least my own decisions.


“Mayan Artifact”

Part of me wishes that I had been stronger in defending where my heart was pointing, but the journey in between was obviously something I needed to do to get my head where my heart is. I think that is the biggest part of making art: I’m not worthy, I’m not good enough, I can’t make enough money (the only measure in our society), I have responsibilities, I have kids, I should….you get the idea. I had to find a way through the thicket of culture and inherited and accumulated “shoulds” before I arrived at a place where I could give myself permission to follow my passion. And some days, it’s still hard!

2. What was the very first medium you seriously worked in?

I took up acrylics in the 70s when I first found them. Oil paint has always made me sick to my stomach, so I was excited by this new medium. Only to find, at the time, that acrylics were “less than” oil and not considered “serious” art. It’s always something! But I liked them. They were affordable. And so that’s what I worked in for a long time. Along with pencil, which I don’t do at all anymore.

3. How long have you been creating masks and torsos in ceramic? What drew you to those particular subjects?

I’ve always loved masks.

“Shaman”

In the 90s, when I was working on my master’s thesis, Story and Social Change, at Goddard College, I began looking at masks and costumes: what are they really, who and when to we wear them, are they only theater, what about women and makeup, what about the way we hold our face with or without makeup. When I started full time at clay (2002), it was a natural to start playing with masks. I stopped making them for a while because they weren’t selling well, then recently (within the last year) decided to start making them again because I love making them, whether or not they sell.

The torsos have been around for 2 years. I found an old mannequin in a thrift store on a trip one and painted and collaged her. I was show sitting at a show where she was displayed, and the thought crossed my mind: wow – that would work for an armature for clay if she weren’t already finished. I came home, hit EBay and started researching mannequins. I currently have 4 that I use for armatures. It took a bit to figure out how to get the clay on and off, the right drying time: too little, the clay still flops, too much, the clay is clamped onto the armature and cracks when it comes off, and then learning to carefully handle the piece to get it through firing. And how to get big pieces like this all the way through a raku firing without their falling apart. It’s been an adventure.

“Retro”

The masks and torsos are my favorites of all the things I make. Now that I have the technical end down well, I can explore the creative aspects more. I think that will last for a long time.

Both masks and torsos fit within my on-going interest in the divine feminine, how women are portrayed in society (ours and others), how, after all these years, we are still seen by many as “less than.” I want my work to honor the “anima” in each of us, to make a connection between the way women and the earth are treated.

“Empress”

I want spaces to open up between viewer and viewed and stories to be told – stories that change as the viewer changes and discovers new things to see in the viewed. As the viewer changes, so does the viewed – that’s been proven by quantum physics. So in art and life what we see, what we choose to see or not see, makes a difference.

4. Tell us a bit about your creative process. Do you start a project with a picture in your mind or does it evolve as you go?

I always start with something in mind, and it always changes as it goes. I see myself as a conduit for energy that wants expression in the world – for energy that has been called into the world, not necessarily by me. I believe that each piece is waiting for its caller, and its my job to get the work out there so the one who did the calling can find it.

I never sketch my clay work on paper first…well, not totally true. When I did my 7.5’ x 11’ public work for North Beach, Md., Chesapeake, I did sketch it out first so they could see what they were getting. But everything else takes place between the creative energy and my hands. Part of the reason I love clay so much is it gets me out of my head and makes “the voices” be quiet – you know the ones: the critic, the A student, the hamster who runs around and around the same thing over and over. They all go to sleep and it’s just me and the process and what wants to be born.

“Raku Amazon with Amethyst”

5. Is creating art your full-time occupation or do you have to “fit it in” whenever possible?

For the past 6 months I have had a part-time job as executive director of a local environmental non-profit. I expect that to end soon. At any rate, I am an artist first and everything else must fit in with the art. I did it the other way around for too long a time. For almost 5 years I have lived off art sales and my bank account and am now looking at ways to work the art so that there are no more part-time jobs. That said, even doing art full time means a lot of time at the computer and figuring out marketing and finding shops and loading and unloading shops and shows and learning that the customer base is a gold mine – how to capture and work it. But my full-time occupation (i.e., what I think about, scheme about, dream about) is art.

6. Who’s work has inspired yours? And what elements inspire you?

I love art with movement in it: Van Gogh, Rodin/Camille. I find myself moving toward abstraction, even though I cannot tell you that I like it (Moore). My own work is as often inspired by the local artists I work with on a regular basis as by anyone whose name you would know, in fact more so because I see their struggles, and they are human, like me, not a myth. And they’re women like me, not men. You will find if you look not too hard, that up until recently (and still) women have not been given the creative space to be artists – that was reserved for males. While many of us are now claiming our space, it is not what it should be. To state the reasons I believe would take another page.

I love nature and that which is inspired by what is. I’m not crazy about installations with light bulbs or the same piece repeated 50 times. I’m not up on all of the current schools of art, and don’t appreciate, say, Pollack, no matter how much that may be seen as heresy. I like abstract but I want a point of reference of some sort. At least design/color.

Things that make me go “Oh!” when I see them, and make me feel a tug toward them in my gut – they inspire me and make me want to emulate them somehow.

“A Promise of Peace”

7. What do you do to get out of a creative funk?

I play Luxor II on my computer. At least I can feel a sense of accomplishment for 5 minutes (or an hour or a day).

Most often for me a creative funk has more to do with “why bother” than with “nothing wants to come through.” Sometimes too much wants to come through and I have to give it space so it makes some kind of sense. I talk with my community on-line and here on the ground. I cry on someone’s shoulder. I allow myself 15 minutes of being angry at what is, including stamping my feet and shouting at the Universe.

Then I put myself in the studio, put clay in my hands, promise myself it doesn’t matter what gets made or just make the rote things like word and prose tiles or Wylde Women.

“Wyld Woman”
In the end, this last always works. And often I get the rote things out of the way and they go off to be sold and something wonderful comes through.

8. Where do you see yourself and your work in 5 years?

I haven’t gotten that far in my current business/marketing plan. =]

Where I would like to be? I would like to have an assistant to scout high end shops for me and another one to handle the administrative part of my work. I would like to focus 20 hours a week on making art and the rest of my time traveling to see art and the shops where my art is. I would like to figure out an easy and inexpensive way to ship my art, and have someone doing that for me (husband has volunteered to handle this if I make enough money).

I would like to double my art income every year (I can’t do that math, it’s exponential – never was good at that). I would like to be able to raise my prices regularly (and I have been doing that. Torsos started off at $180. Demand has driven them to a minimum of $400 within 2 years – that’s good. I want more of that).

I would like to be doing a lot of business off my blog – something that has recently occurred that I hadn’t anticipated.

I hope that I continue to grow and develop as an artist and as a human being living on this planet at this particular time in history.

“Turtle Mermaid”

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