We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jacqueline Yvonne Tull. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jacqueline Yvonne below.

Jacqueline Yvonne, appreciate you joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

A lot of people, women especially, ask me how I got started learning metalworking and woodworking. Throughout most of my art education I focused on two dimensional mediums such as drawing, painting, and printmaking, but when the assignments were taken away from me and I was given the freedom to explore what my art was about, I couldn’t stop working with three-dimensional materials. I decided late in my junior year of undergraduate studies that if I was going to be successful at making more ambitious sculptures, I had to learn woodworking. Luckily, my sculpture professor had a relationship with a local master woodworker, Gene Shaw. He mentored me through projects in his beautiful wood shop, and I left with the ability to build furniture, picture frames, and anything I could imagine in wood.

I then pursued graduate school in Sculpture at the University of Delaware, where I was able to teach myself welding, and taught my first sculpture class that incorporated casting and mold making, woodworking, and metalworking.

After graduate school, I worked male dominated jobs that were physically demanding and underpaid, but further honed my skills. The first job I had was historic window and door restoration, which required long hours on ladders, scraping lead paint, and fine carpentry and finishing techniques. Then I became a metal fabricator for a high end furniture and lighting designer. It was a small enough business that I had to learn multiple skills quickly. I was the only woman fabricator, but became the person my team would come to for high precision work, due in no doubt to my extensive art background. I later carried those skills into my teaching and shop management jobs. However, you don’t need to have a special art education to get started in woodworking or metalworking. Check out your local area for workshops, community classes, and Makerspaces.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

The interdisciplinary work I create is about the relationships between people and their sentimental and decorative objects, and how we use objects as extensions of the body. We pass objects down to family members to live beyond death, collect souvenirs to remember places wherein we can no longer be, and display objects to project parts of our identities. My recent work has included sculptures, drawings, and digital paintings available as archival prints. My inspiration for this subject matter stems from the decorative figurines, vases, and family heirloom furniture I grew up surrounded by from my mother’s collection, which place me in a narrative larger than myself.

One thing many people don’t realize about artists is that we are running businesses. Most of us have to “wear all of the hats,” being the web designer, photographer, editor, email and social media marketer, in addition to having to package and ship or deliver all of our work to galleries and/or collectors, and attend openings of not only our own shows but in support of one another. I do not have exclusive gallery representation, which means I get accepted to shows through applications and networking. When I am in the studio, I am in a state of flow with the medium in front of me. Once I step out of the studio, I’m in the business of promoting my work.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In my mid 20s I left an unfulfilling, but stable, industry to go back to school and finish my undergraduate education. I ended up divorcing my first husband during graduate school and was forced to file bankruptcy as a result. I also graduated with little money, no job, and a lease that was about to end. The place I had lined up to move into dropped out from under my room mate and I, so I had to find places to stay and apply to every job I could find for months. I crashed on friends’ couches, stayed in one room in a shared house with my room mate and my dog, exchanged my web and photography skills for room and board in a cabin where I had to split firewood. At times my car broke down on the highway with my dog in the back seat, and my dog even impaled himself on a steel rod while chasing a chipmunk and had to have surgery (he recovered!). When I finally did settle somewhere, I worked labor intensive jobs with long hours and lived paycheck to paycheck. I had no time to make art, the thing I had left my former life behind to pursue.

I knew that the cycle I was in of working overtime for little money would leave me with no time or energy to make art, so I took a second leap and left my full time job with benefits to pursue teaching as an adjunct professor at a university. Adjuncts are paid like subcontractors, so there is no guarantee that your contract will be renewed from semester to semester, and there are no benefits, but I knew that I loved education and that I needed to be in a space that fed me creatively. Eventually I became the Makerspace Manager at Swarthmore College, a prestigious liberal arts college. It was life changing to have a full time job that expanded my skills, supported me with a salary and benefits, and still gave me the opportunity to teach. Now I manage the Interdisciplinary Sculpture Studio at the Maryland Institute College of Art and teach Metalworking to undergraduate students. I work on my personal studio art outside of my full time and teaching jobs. It’s a constant time juggle, but teaching students, fixing machines, and making art all fulfill me in different ways. I often tell students that if I could survive all that I went through, they will be fine once they leave school and venture out on their own.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think an unfortunate byproduct of the way we structure education in our society is that many people grow up thinking they are not creative. When I talk to people about creativity, it seems as though they have a narrow view of what creativity means, and that if they don’t fit within that “special” box, they just aren’t creative. I see creativity all around me, from the way people garden, cook, host events, do their work, and so forth. Creativity is part of human evolution and is built into all of us.

Some people think they are “bad” at art because they didn’t sit down and draw like an Italian Renaissance painter the first time they tried, but there are a wide diversity of art and art mediums, and not all art looks the same, nor should it. That artist you admire, and think is so talented, actually put in a lot of hard work and struggle to achieve the skill level you now see (even years), and there is no arrival point. They are still experimenting, working out problems, and learning new methods of expression. The process is supposed to be uncomfortable at times. That is growth. If you want to make art, let these words right now be your permission. No one is going to die if you make a bad painting or sculpture, or whatever you want to make for your personal joy. Every good artist has made bad art. Life is short. All you need is time, space, and a medium.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jacquelineyvonne.com
• Instagram: @jacqueline_yvonne_art
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JacquelineYvonneArt/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline-yvonne-tull-418748147