Rising Stars: Meet Paige Stewart

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Paige Stewart.

Hi Paige, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.

I believe there are many beginnings in anyone’s story, but my sculpture career started out with me being disgustedly jealous. In 2012, I was attending a graduate program for Spiritual Psychology in Santa Monica, California, and a fellow student was also enrolled at UCLA doing an MA in Ceramics. He had the audacity to have his own studio and the kindness to invite me to it.

He offered me clay to use, and I refused, saying I was just there to study; after 30 minutes, I broke down and picked up the clay. It had been a decade since I touched clay, and I cried a lot as I made three small figural sculptures. Now jealousy, I have come to realize, is just an arrow pointing us toward what we want, and I realized I wanted to make art again and have my own studio. This was wild since I was actively pursuing a Master’s in Psychology, but I knew ceramics was the way forward.

When I was first learning to throw on the wheel in 2013,  I spent two 12-hour days a week at an adult education program in Monrovia, CA. Where I learned everything and anything I could from my contemporaries in the ceramics studio, the other days of the week I was working for a jewelry designer, as her assistant, learning the industry and she taught me about presentation, quality, and that anything is possible.

During those 5 years, I had a pottery line called Soil + Toil, which, while profitable and educational, was not fulfilling. In 2017, I stopped working for the jewelry designer to focus on sculptural ceramics. I interned for  a ceramist and during that year and a half, I was inspired by his dedication to excellence and benefited from his kind mentoring. This time taught me how to value my work and make work that was valuable and timeless.

In 2019, I relocated from Los Angeles to Gunnison, Colorado, for love, and I worried that I had destroyed my career in the process. I had moved to a small, isolated town when Covid happened and everything closed. So I did the only thing I could do and went to the studio every day. I started making larger work, using everything I had learned along the way. It was the very isolation that led me to a better understanding of my own purpose for making art as a means of collective healing.

At the end of 2022, after maxing out the small studio space, a 1000-square-foot studio became available around the corner. I was terrified to take on the responsibility, but a part of me said, “It’s not for you,” and I felt something surrender to that gentle wisdom. I moved in February of 2023, and this past year has truly been a dream come true.

I converted 240 square feet into a showroom/gallery called The Calm & The Current, which is a sober space for gathering and healing. The space hosts all kinds of diverse programming: psychic mediums, art therapy, reiki workshops and training, meditation, art openings, artist talks, and monthly artist meet-ups. It has become a container for everything I love.

What I have learned through that isolation and integration is that while I still value timelessness and quality, I want to make work that creates the opportunity for others’ healing. My own work was for me to heal and integrate, the focus now is a legacy of experiential artwork which activates an individual to heal and transform.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?

I have had many opportunities for growth along this road. The greatest of these is giving myself permission to be an artist. My original degree was to be in art, but as a freshman I was sexually assaulted and I could not go inside to the place where my art comes from. So, I studied Biopsychology and Clinical Psychology as if by being able to ascribe language to how I was responding to that trauma, I would be okay, but I was not.

During my MA in Spiritual Psychology, I came to realize in order to heal I had to feel it all. So it makes sense to me now, that jealousy was so strongly awoken in me, it was desperately trying to get my attention and direct me into something soul-fulfilling and healing. When I started ceramics I still had a lot to work through internally, so I gave myself a small permission to make pottery, it felt like a safe and smart choice.  I had a pottery business, and it was successful but ultimately not what I really wanted, so it flailed.

In 2017, 5 years into making pottery, I gave myself another level of permission to make sculptures. The dam opened, and a flood of creativity and work flowed out effortlessly. I was very clear, and so I single-mindedly made a body of work to present to design showrooms. All went really well until the end of 2022, where I experienced an impasse, a creative block. I tried everything, and still, I stared at the block of clay and saw no forms for which my hands were meant to bring forth.  So the final permission, which was waiting inside of me all along, has come to pass that the material is immaterial.

I am an artist, not just a modern ceramic sculptor, but an artist. I had felt I must limit myself to one medium to be successful, and that has fallen away, and all the creativity and flow are leading me towards making a fiber installation piece. I see it fully formed even with my eyes open; that is all I think about now. As though it lives beside me, walking where I walk, eating breakfast with me, telling me its story and what it endeavors to achieve once made.

It’s called “Re-Wombing” and will open on October 5th, 2024, in Gunnison, CO. It will serve my local community first, to continue to create opportunities for transformation here, but all are welcome! So, each weekend, there will be specific healing programming set up in conjunction with the artwork which will act as an amplifier for healing The programming deals with womb-related opportunities for healing; sexual trauma, endometriosis, stillborn and miscarriages, mother wounds, shadow work and several other small group processes.

Certain trauma can be a kind of death; the girl I was died, and I know others have felt this same kind of death in different ways. There is power in rebirthing ourselves, Re-Wombing is meant to create a safe space for anyone to bring themselves back to life, not the life they had, but one tempered by trauma and the desire to live anew.

Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I have been a ceramic sculpture artist for the past six years, and I wanted the work I have done to be timeless and modern. I have several series: Embodiment, Bodies at Rest, Non-Dual, and Reservoir, and they are unified by their refined, sensual, and simple forms.  I use both throwing on the wheel and coil construction to create my forms.

They are abstract and organic, but as a recovering perfectionist, they are thoughtfully and intentionally rendered. As a student of Spiritual Psychology, a lot of that learning is imbued in the artwork I create. Through Joesph Campbell and Carl Jung’s work with the Hero’s Journey, I see my obsession with negative space.

If there is a hole through a piece, it acts as a threshold one can cross, or as the entry to the void; it is always an invitation to the viewer to go deeper, to leap. Artistically, I am inspired by Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Jean Arp, and Brancusi. Their study of human and animal forms rendered down into component aspects ever leaves me awestruck at the beauty in those simplified remains.

I am most proud of continuing to challenge myself in this medium. I have a series called Bodies at Rest, that are abstract figural study that I have continued to scale up. When I began them they were palm-sized maquettes and then forearm-sized sculptures, and then 2ft long by 2ft tall, and now they are 3ft long by 2 ft tall ceramic sculptures.

I choose to make work at a larger scale because I find the impact of large work so undeniable, so unavoidable. I think when an artwork fills your entire vision, you enter a different reality, and it creates an opportunity for a shift in perspective or understanding, and that is what I seek to create.

The series that really stands out is the LEGACY Totem series. It was my first attempt at making work that was also created to uplift others. The series asks the question, What are we leaving for those who come after? When this sculpture is done as a commissioned piece, I ask a series of directed questions to bring forth a unique answer for the client.

We dive into all aspects of familial, environmental, spiritual, and societal experiences, and I listen for the culminating truth of each of those aspects: the legacy that an individual wishes to leave behind. It was my first foray into bringing my Spiritual Psychology background into the artwork I make and as a process for the client. It is a powerful practice. I think I have just scratched the surface of my totemic work with this series, but I know it has been immensely valuable to those who have taken the journey, including myself.

The most important feedback I have received from having several solo shows is how powerful the artwork feels. As though it is working magic on the viewer and that the pieces feel alive. Come experience the work for yourself at The Calm and The Current in Gunnison or in design showrooms like Lawson-Fenning in Los Angeles and Studio Como in Denver.

Now that I understand my purpose, I am actually looking forward to finding the right gallery representation. It seemed daunting, but now it will be an alignment of values. In the future, I am excited to work in other mediums; those who know how to look will be able to see my unique hand in whatever medium I choose to use. The material is immaterial, but the vision and purpose of the work are now unified.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Something most people do not know about me is that I am working on writing a science fiction novel. I often sit down to write when I am blocked on a sculptural project.

The novel is a terrible work of trash at the moment, not even a first draft, but I can see the quality within the mess much the same as when I am making a sculpture; the process feels familiar and yet so different. I think that parallel allows me to work through a block in one creative endeavor while pursuing another.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.paige-stewart.com
• Instagram: @paigestewart.art
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecalmandthecurrent

Image Credits
Allison Sinkewich