We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Melissa Williams . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Melissa below.
Alright, Melissa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you tell us about a time that your work has been misunderstood? Why do you think it happened and did any interesting insights emerge from the experience?
I have felt misunderstood many times in the 20 plus years I have been working full time as an artist. I believe that there is a great misunderstanding in the world about the ability to actually make a living as a creative person and artist. People always ask me “Is this is your full time job?” “You can make a living and support yourself doing this?”
The truth is before I was introduced to the creative world I was completely unaware that is was a possibility to make and sell your own art as a career. Figuring it all out was not fast or easy. I had to maintain a few jobs for many years to make ends meet. Even when things started going well, providing myself with affordable health insurance was a hard thing to do. Over the years when things we tough I often was told to get a real job. As if somehow everything I was doing to try and build a business for myself wasn’t real work. Which leads into another great misconception people seem to have that I don’t work a lot when I work a ton. Often when I talk with people about what I do for a living and explain that I am usually working at art shows on weekends I often am asked “What do you do the rest of the week?’ Well I make everything I am selling, I am do bookeepking and accounting. Updating my website, scheduling my shows, ordering supplies and packing/shipping orders….
Working with glass bottles is also physically demanding as I have a lot of heavy lifting and physical labor involved in breaking the glass down. It’s not what people envision when they think of sitting in a studio and making art. Then there is the very intense amount of work I do at the show itself. This is also something that isn’t thought about by someone who has never done it. I usually travel anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour and half to get to each show. I arrive at least 2 hours before it starts and that is how long it takes me to unload all of my belongings to set up my “shop”. Then for the next 7 hours I talk to everyone who enters my booth, package and wrap up all of my sales and after all that’s done I break it all down and pack it all back into my truck and commute back home. I am often outside so I have to battle with heat, rain and my least favorite element the wind! It is a ton of work and a lot more work than people realize. It is a real job and it is a very demanding job. No complaining here though… I love all of it.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Hello, I am Melissa Joy Williams and I recycle and hand craft discarded glass bottles into art.
I didn’t set my intentions on becoming a glass artist… I went on a journey in search of a creative lifestyle and it unfolded into more than I ever imagined it could be…
I did not attend art school. In fact, I never quite found a medium I really clicked with in school but I had always been very creative and I learned at a young age that working with my hands made me happy.
In high school I started working in the restaurant industry and stayed in it full time until my mid 20’s. After losing my mother very suddenly, I set out to pursue a life that was more aligned with the things that made me feel inspired and happy. I tried a few random jobs and one of these was assembling glass jewelry for a local artist. The pay wasn’t much and I honestly thought it was just another layover until I found something else, but something very unexpected happened, I was learning so many things about jewelry and glass, and I was good at it. This job also opened my eyes to a world of arts and crafts that I had never even known existed. A world where you could make things and sell them and actually make a living doing it. I worked at this job for many years learning many different aspects of the business. In time I even became set up to start working from home which allowed me the creative freedom to start my own designs. I began selling my own work at local craft shows and officially formed my own business.
In 2010, I started playing around with glass bottles. With all the skills and equipment I had to work with glass it just seemed natural for me to try and use all this glass that was being discarded daily literally by the buckets full. These bottles are made in the most gorgeous rainbow of colors and it was all just heading to landfills.
Bottle glass has a different makeup than glass you purchase for the purpose of art . It melts differently and may not be compatible with other glass bottles. I stared playing with it. Melting and trying things just to see what would happen.
Each bottle I use goes through a multi step process. It is cleaned and cut, broken down and separated into tops, bottoms and middle parts. I utilize each part in my work for different applications. The glass is then put through one or multiple kiln firings. It is a labor of love and a true transformation from trash to treasure!
I am really proud with the work that I do knowing that I can take all this beautiful glass that may otherwise end up in a landfill and reuse it. I love that I have created something new and truly unique. My work consists of large variety of Jewelry in many styles and beautiful colors. I even mark each piece to tell the history of what bottle each color came from.
I have a great line of garden art where I have reused the bottoms of the bottles and made them into mushroom and snail stakes.
I feel that in these times it is really important to be environmentally conscious and I am proud to say that my work is Recycled, sustainable and eco-friendly.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
There are so many rewards to being an artist it is hard to narrow it down to just one thing. Seeing my progression and growth in the quality of my work and the success of my business through the years is really a huge reward for me. The process to make my wares is not something that I learned by taking classes or watching YouTube videos. They are creations that have been born through a lot of trail and error and many mistakes and mishaps. It is truly rewarding to know that all of my hard work and perseverance brought me to the successful creative life I live today. I am rewarded every day by being my own boss, making my own schedule and to work out of my home with my dogs by my side. It was a high and winding mountain climb to get here and what a reward to look at the view from where I am.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
For a long time I didn’t even consider myself and artist and struggled with being called one. I didn’t grow up thinking I was given a great gift to be an artist. I didn’t pursue art in school and simply didn’t consider that I would be able to create art as my means to make an income. It was a journey I went on to find my place in the world and it took a lot of hard work and persistence to get where I am today. At shows, I often hear people saying that they are amazed by all the talent they are seeing. They usually declare ” I don’t have a creative bone in my body.” I do not believe this and I do believe that we are all born with the desire and ability to be creative and somewhere along the journey it gets lost for so many. I know it did for me. When I was a child I always gravitated to the arts and crafts isle of the toy store. Always wanting more crayons and paint. The art I was exposed to in grade school was limited to ceramics, drawing, painting, and photography. I tried them all and I did not feel connected or inspired by working with any of these mediums. I would compare myself to those who enjoyed and excelled in them and they were the artists, not me.
I always still tried my hand at being crafty and making things, I even tried Culinary Arts while working in the restaurant business thinking that might be my place. It wasn’t until I discovered glass, which wasn’t until my mid 20’s, that things began to change. I found something I really connected with and I felt I was good at it because I really enjoyed it.
Things became much different when I decided to try to sell my art. Whether it was because of fear and self comparison,
I often felt like a fraud, especially for the first few years when people would ask what art school I went to. It took so much courage for me to set up and display my work. Sometimes I sold stuff, sometimes I did not. I felt completely exposed and raw being judged by the public. Art work is subject to opinion and it can be scary and really hard to put yourself out there week after week, show after show because it is so personal. There is also being judged by a jury. To get into a lot of higher end art shows you need to be accepted through a panel of jurors. They do this with photographs you submit of your work. This rejection was one of the hardest parts for me and became the biggest stepping stone on bettering myself. I am now a part of shows that I was once not ready to be apart of and there are still more that I haven’t done for fear that I am not there yet.
This was not a full time job for many many years and I had to have other jobs to be able to pay bills and survive. There wasn’t a lot of support either. “When are you going to get a real job” was a phase I heard often especially when times were hard.
This journey as a creative has been my biggest teacher in lessons of personal growth and courage. Learning how to let criticism bounce off me, which took a really long time and can still get to me. Learning how to talk to people about my work and to accept myself as an artist. There is so much more to it than just showing up and hoping people like your work enough to buy it. I had to learn to have faith in myself.
I know that it takes a lot more than just being good or gifted with a certain something to make a living as an artist.
Being a creative person who sells their work for a living has a lot more to do with than just creating the work. It is a job and it takes a lot of work. It also takes up a ton of time and you have many positions to fill in your business. Accounting, bookkeeping, ordering, inventory, and finding show to work at just to name a few. But just like anything you decide to take on, if you give it your whole heart and lots of determination it can be amazing.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.spiritglassworks.com
- Instagram: @spiritglassworks