June 2004 Polymer Clay Polyzine Artist Interview: Mary Novak

Mary's Magic in Polymer Clay

Mary Sophia Novak is a lover of patterns. She creates some of the most wonderful designs and with these design sheets creates purses and other covered items. Once you use Mary’s methods, you’re addicted to designing your own. It’s like Magic right before your eyes!

Mary Sophia Novak I met Mary when I took a workshop from her in Dallas with the North Texas Polymer Clay Guild. She taught us a couple of techniques that really makes polymer magic. It is an easy to do, non-controlling way to design a pattern. That is what I love about her method----it’s non-controlling and it’s a surprise every time. Mary is a wonderful teacher and her calm spirit shows thru in her teaching and her designs.

Mary lives in Bryan, Texas, and has an extensive background in art. She graduated from Bryan High School in 1990 and got her BA, Plan II Liberal Arts Honors Program from the University of Texas at Austin and then on to her MA, Arts Administration (Museum Education) University of Oregon, Eugene.

I asked Mary to tell us about herself in an interview. She is a very interesting and cheerful person who LOVES her art in Polymer!

Marty: What is your background in Art?

Mary: I have no formal art instruction. Both of my grandmothers were extremely craft-oriented, and my father's mother especially was a gifted artist who could do any craft she tried, and well. I grew up with the idea that making things is just something one does, and that it should be pleasurable. For a long time I thought I had no artistic ability because I have extremely poor 2-D skills -- I can't sketch or paint worth a darn.

Marty: Do you work outside Polymer? Hoping to have Polymer support you?

Mary: Yes. I teach LSAT, GRE, and SAT for Kaplan Test Prep, and tutor students in many other subjects. I am also a writer. Since 2000, I have worked as a reviewer for the website All About Romance. (www.likesbooks.com). I've stopped reviewing, but I'm about to begin a demographic study for the site.

I'm hopeful that polymer clay will eventually provide a larger portion of my income. However, I hope that ultimately, my writing will support my clay work, and my clay will support my writing. I don't want to leave one for the other.

Marty: What are some of the special places you have worked?

Mary: Gosh, so many I've begun to lose track, although most of them were short-term opportunities. I've worked with museums and art groups including the Met and the Brooklyn Museum of Art in NYC, the Columbia Gorge Arts and Culture Council, and the science center (WISTEC) and Oregon Bach Festival Elderhostel in Eugene. (I may have been the youngest person ever to run an Elderhostel. My hostelers were good sports about it. Catching a little gang of them raiding the fridge while giggling that I mustn't find out was a pretty transcendent experience.)

Mary Sophia Novak Design #2 The most profound artistic experience I've ever had was during the first of my two AmeriCorps jobs, which I spent in Hood River, Oregon working for a fledgling arts council. I moved in with a bunch of young environmentalists who were also doing AmeriCorps and had basically gone feral in an old camp at the base of Mount Adams. No TV, no money, hardly any books, just a few CDs and guitars and such. I know that most of us expected it would be a long, solitary winter out in the woods. Instead, it was the single most creative environment I've ever experienced. People filled their days with music, dancing, pranks and play readings and a weekly dojo and a poetry club. At Halloween, there were so many brilliant costume ideas it took two different parties to use them all. With so little outside entertainment, the campers got down to the business of making their own, with no self-consciousness or hesitation.

But the job everyone asks about is my two weekends of utter failure as a telephone psychic.

Marty: What is your teaching background and what are you doing with teaching?

Mary: Again, there's more than I can list, or remember. I have taught toddlers, I have taught 95-year-olds. I designed a special program for the Brooklyn Museum of Art (through Learning Leaders, a school volunteer program) that was designed to help families enjoy art together; I'm really proud of that one. I led dozens of tours through the Met.

One of the most valuable classes I took (and TA'd) in graduate school was a class on how to teach art to children. The textbook was Experience and Art: Teaching Children to Paint by Nancy Smith, and I highly recommend it to anyone who would like to hone their art teaching skills. I have found the techniques I learned there to apply well to all ages. For instance: never comment just by saying "Oh, isn't that pretty!" Find something specific in the artwork, and discuss it.

In polymer clay, I have taught classes and demo'd for the Houston and North Texas polymer clay guilds, and at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft.

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