We were lucky to catch up with Shistine recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Shistine, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

Honestly I don’t really know if I ever seriously considered a non-creative career. I grew up knowing that I was in love with making things. I was lucky to have found clay and ceramics pretty early on and got into photography too. When it came to going to college I did as a lot of 18 year olds do and just picked what I liked and hoped it worked out, so I studied photography. It’s been an interesting path I’ve taken since, moving through different jobs and figuring out a good balance between supporting myself and fulfilling my creative needs, but I’m very happy with where I’m at right now. I have a full-time job in the creative field that I can rely on for income that still leaves me with the time and energy to pursue my own creative projects and for that I am grateful.

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?

I’d always been an artsy kid growing up but my strongest memory that really solidified it for me was my mom taking me to my first wheel throwing class when I was ten or so. That’s when I fell in love with clay. I’d go back to ceramics off and on basically through college. After graduating and moving to Austin, I got involved at The Contemporary Austin Art School at Laguna Gloria to get back to ceramics yet again. I had just started to settle in there when COVID hit and the school had to temporarily close. Stuck at home with a need to create, I, like so many others stumbled into the fast-growing polymer clay community that was on Instagram at the time. Polymer clay is oven-bake clay that you can do completely at home. I’d worked with it some as a kid but had never explored much more than that. How I was witnessing it being used by all these amazing artists on Instagram blew my mind and I dove straight in. I started out making earrings, quickly specializing in sculptural hoops but now I’m most known for my miniature swimming pool I’ve been making for the last few years. For whatever reason they’ve really struck a cord with people and I’ve been lucky to find my audience! Things really started to pick up when I released my most popular item, a heart shaped swimming pool that holds rings. I’ve been so fortunate to be able to sell hundreds of them so far and people are still asking so I’ll be making them for the foreseeable future! It was really fun to figure out the best way to product them on a larger scale. I’ve been designing and 3D printing my own tools to help improve my process and it’s been so rewarding to see something you’ve been working on for so long just keep getting better.

Have you ever had to pivot?

A big pivot I did when it comes to my art was sort of letting go of ceramics for the moment. I have been drawn to it since I was little and I know I’ll come back to it again but for now polymer clay is working for me and I’m grateful. It was very discouraging when I felt like I had finally found a good situation for working in ceramics. I’d landed a little side job at a ceramics studio in a small local arts school where I could make work and use their facilities (and get paid a little??). It really felt like a dream. But only a handful of months after that COVID caused them to close for a while. I didn’t know when they would re-open or if that job would still be there for me. Looking back now, I wouldn’t say that I’m grateful this happened obviously, but I do see the good things that came from it for me. Because I had to find something else to fuel my creative needs, I stumbled into polymer clay and the huge community that was growing on Instagram at the time. The connections I made there, the extra time spent at home, the quickness of polymer clay compared to ceramics, all of these things came together to help me grow an amazing following of people who love and appreciate handmade art. I really don’t think this would have happened as quickly or maybe at all without this shift at this exact time. Now I’ve really grown to love exploring polymer clay along with other mediums that it can be combined with like resin which I use to make my swimming pools. But don’t worry, Ceramics. I’ll be back again one day.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I put my own love for the work first. I make things I like because it gives me joy. That being said, it is an incredible feeling when your art is loved and appreciated by someone else. I get emotional thinking about all the homes my work is so lucky to be in now.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://shistine.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_shistine/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@_shistine_
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shistine