My aunt used to tell me repeatedly that I “should go get a ‘real’ job.”

But I was passionate and utterly entranced with experimenting with paint, clay and paper, and I persisted in following my heart’s desire, which was and still is creating things of beauty.

Not pretty, sentimental or decorative beauty, but a beauty that feels right tome, that somehow strikes an  inner chord with which something deep inside myself resonates. Yes, others resonate with it too, but if it doesn’t resonate with me, 9 times out of 10 it won’t for anyone else, either.

I went to art school for, and started out in, advertising and graphic design as an Art Director, but was shocked and blown away by the cut-throat politics behind the scenes. It was disgusting.

So I dropped out and hitch-hiked to Big Sur and hung out camping and dancing and dropping acid with the Grateful Dead and other groups of musicians, artists and healers. We were having the time of our lives discovering brown rice and seaweed, Jimmy Hendrix and alternate states of consciousness. To say it was an exciting time would be grossly understating it.

But underlying all the new ideas, exploration and experimenting, I had a continual, nagging feeling that I needed to find something, something that would help me feel better about me. I was terribly shy at that time, hardly able to take part in a conversation.

My life seems to come in clear segments. One day I was a pot-smoking psychedelic hippie artist making posters and abstract paintings, and the next I was settled in a small house in Santa Cruz going to college learning ceramics and Chinese with my surfer boyfriend.

I became a mother and a divorcée, still feeling like something was wrong with me, something major was missing in myself. My black periods of self-hatred turned into extreme irritability and yelling at my kids, then feeling guilty and ashamed. It was an emotional roller coaster.

It was 18 years now since I’d learned how to make a pot. I had refined my work to the point that I was considered a fine-art potter. I made these amazing porcelain pieces you could almost see through. I invented unique underglazes and extreme high-fired glazes with impossible properties, like not melting at more than 3000 degrees.

I developed a technique to create very powerful designs under the glazes, and carved beautiful images in the pots themselves. My work was so unusual that to this day no one knows how I did what I did – it was supposed to be impossible. I was highly regarded by other artists and potters, but I was still broke, still crying almost every night.

Then from one day to the next, I stopped being a studio potter and began to inhabit a broken body that was not expected to walk again after a car-wreck in which I was broad-sided left and right.

After hiring and firing 4 or 5 nay-saying doctors who declared I’d be wheel-chair bound for the rest of my life, I finally found a chiropractor – right down the street! – who had me walking again and on the path to strong, hale and hearty in six weeks.

A dear friend, also an artist, took me up to Grass Valley and introduced me to soapstone. Love at first sight. I was hooked the instant I saw all those rocks lying in that big jumbled pile – there was just something about the way each stone held such possibility in it. I could gaze at each one and see it finished, polished, on a shelf or pedestal in someone’s home or office. That innate feel for stone has never left me, and I remain passionate about it still.

When I saw one particular piece of stone, my first thought was, “Huh! That piece is upside down!” I went over, flipped it on its rightful side, and saw the woman whose image appears at the top of this page. I took it home and carved it right away. It was my first big piece – I did a few fist-sized ones for practice, and then – I couldn’t stop!

I wonder now and then what would have happened if I hadn’t been in that ‘accident.’ Would my friend have still brought me to soapstone?

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Angela Treat Lyon • The Gateway to Angela: AngelaTreatLyon.com. You’re welcome to use this in your own newsletter or blog – please include the entire article and this resource box with the live link. Thanks! © Angela Treat Lyon 2009 • All Rights Reserved

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Image: Ku’ulei: Bronze LE 3/5, 9″ x 19″ x 8″ © Angela Treat Lyon 1982 (sold) (Ku’ulei, pronounce KOO oo LAY, is Hawaiian for Beloned. This was a bronze I cast from the piece I did out of the soapstone I saw in my friend’s yard that fateful day!)