The Decorated Betsy by Pamela Spiro Wagner
The Mental Health and Creativity contest winners were chosen in June. At the convention, in NAMILand, a table was set up with a laptop where you could view a streaming video of the artwork.
The winners are:
Betty Marschner, peer - Life on the Prairie with Bipolar Disorder
Dorothea Bawks, caregiver - Eleven Years Later
S. Dawn Pawlowski, peer - Depression
Pamela Spiro Wagner, peer - the Decorated Betsy
Holly McCoy, caregiver - Your Bipolar Disorder
Storie Hawkins, peer - Living with Schizophrenia
Astraya, significant other - the Hall
________________________
I was pleased to interview Pamela Spiro Wagner about her work, and would like to talk with Storie Hawkins, too. Storie, if you're reading this, maybe you could contact me via the Connection e-mail. Your painting was beautiful.
Pamela Spiro Wagner is a poet and author who is also an artist. Here now I'll transcribe the chat we had on the phone one night shortly after the convention.
CB: How did you start doing art?
PSW: My mother started us all out by teaching us. We did lanyards-that was my first memory. Billy Collins-the poet laureate-has a poem about lanyards that's very funny. It's an experience a lot of people have. That was my first art or craft experience. From there she had us in front of an easel doing paints from when we were young. After that, I started doing art of all sorts. I always did art-I didn't take it up professionally and I wish I had been encouraged to.
CB: What materials do you work with?
PSW: Right now I work with papier mache which includes paper, clay, and various different adjunct clays but mostly papier mache and I make jewelry. The papier mache also involves acrylic paint, and I smooth it out with modeling paste and paper clay and things like that.
CB: Then you have to spray it or is it shellacked?
PSW: I varnish it with polyurethane sometimes. The acrylic paint is fairly waterproof so you don't necessarily have to use polyurethane.
CB: How did you get involved with the jewelry making?
PSW: The reason was I wanted to try my hand at taking a course. It was the first time in a long time. I looked at the adult education courses in Wethersfield where I live. There wasn't much I dared take because I didn't want to take an academic course. I thought of taking traveler's Italian for the fun of it but was afraid of taking something academic, if you know what I mean. So I saw this thing on Central American jewelry and said, "It's a craft, okay. It's working with your hands. It's not going to be something they test you on or that I have to study." I thought, just try it-what's the worst thing?-I lose fifty dollars.
CB: That's a positive attitude.
PSW: I signed up for it and the first thing we made was a bracelet, it was so easy-with memory wire-wire that keeps its shape, basically a bracelet shape and you string it with beads. That was simple. It was so simple that it got me excited. Then we made earrings and a necklace and we learned how to make a loop. After that you couldn't stop me.
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