Discovering Your Inner Artist

I am hanging in the balance of a perfect finished plan, like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

Bob Dylan

Carving out Loud!

Recently I had the good fortune of catching up with two old friends, both of whom have made significant lane changes in the last couple years.

I was taken by their stories and thought that if we were writing Changing Lanes today, we would certainly have chosen to profile them in the book. Both of them are artists today, building on creative talents they each had just touched on as young adults but never nurtured. Now they hope to be recognized for who they believe they really are. 

My friend, Jean Duane, went from being a business development manager in the cable industry, to a role as business planning consultant and college instructor before creating a business from scratch: Alternative Cook. More on Jean next week, when I’ll share how she conceived, bootstrapped, and now builds her business—using television, the Internet, and other media channels to make her food company a go-to destination.

Now let me tell you about Greg Spitzer. I’ve known Greg and his wife, Susan Dalton, for over 12 years. Susan was doing technology consulting and we became kindred spirits given the dearth of women in technology roles at the time. When she introduced me to Greg, he was just beginning his midlife journey. 

Greg’s a native of Montana and worked to help support his family throughout high school. Upon completing his required studies, Greg promptly went to work full time and started building his own life. Marriage and three daughters quickly followed and he put any thoughts of college studies on the back burner. 

College may not have been in Greg’s immediate future, but he was unwilling to relinquish his fascination with art. He’d been interested in figurative drawing since he was young—and first experimented with watercolor, pen & ink, and pastels. Disappointed with two-dimensional representations, he took to stone carving when his girls were first born. But then, again, life overtook him, as it does most of us, and he took the more reasoned path of furthering his career in to pay the bills—rather than advancing his artistic hankerings. 

Greg’s first full time job was for Mountain Bell as a male telephone operator. Bravo for Greg, as I can confess that, having worked as an operator during summers in my teens, a co-worker of the male persuasion is as unusual as a penguin on the equator! But Greg used that position as a critical stepping stone in a 20 year career within the telecommunications industry.  

After a series of career moves that spanned testing new telephone switches, to providing technical support and finally to developing new software—Greg took a one year educational leave of absence with the intent of finishing the bachelors of science degree that he had scratched at by taking evening classes off-and-on over the years. 

The year 1997 proved to be a crossroads for Greg: on the downside, he had separated from his wife two years before and was in a dreadful custody battle for his daughters. His very solid relationship with Susan, however, was the delightful counterbalance. 

A couple words about Susan. If you’ve read our book, you’ll remember the story of Woody and Anita Duxler. Anita was a shape-shifter of sorts, gently and knowingly guiding Woody’s midlife transformation from tire store owner to baseball spring season manager. Susan is that person in her husband’s life also, but she works her magic much more unswervingly. I experienced her straightforward nature when our lives converged at a Silicon Valley start-up—she as a consultant to the company while I was the key liaison from one of the cable companies which was both an investor in the start-up and a distributor of its services. We quickly became comrades-in-arms. 

According to Greg, Susan has been incredibly supportive of his career, education and decision to switch roles and directions. “She was the main reason I even considered finishing my undergraduate degree,” he says. 

Susan’s suggestion for Greg to take a year off coincided with the two of them being awarded custody of his daughters. Within that time period, Greg was able to complete nearly four years of college while participating with his girls’ day-to-day activities. He shares that being a stay-at-home dad allowed him to grow in unexpected ways. When he did go back to his corporate career, “I had a fresh outlook and optimism for the future.” Susan’s attitude had made Greg realize that he needn’t be boxed in by his career—sounds awfully like Woody Duxler’s epiphany! 

Even with this new knowledge Greg wasn’t exactly ready to change lanes. Susan, however, continued to provide opportunities that stretched him beyond what he could imagine as he began to take on a variety of consulting gigs. But then, in 2005, as their youngest daughter was entering high school and Susan began to travel internationally non-stop, Greg volunteered for the job of “domestic engineer.” Little did he realize that this change would represent the tipping point for his reinvention. 

I’ll let Greg tell you how it happened:

 “After several months of managing the usual mundane details such as shopping for and preparing meals along with catering to the needs of our 15 year old, I uncovered a small piece of stone that I had started carving about 20 years before. It was not long before I had taken over our back patio in my attempts to rediscover my inner artist. Amazingly, the fact that our patio was trashed and I had purchased new stone and tools did not faze Susan in the least. Instead, she pushed me further all the time to challenge myself.” 

Greg’s ability to see and model three dimensionally came easily to him and it wasn’t until he was around other sculptors in a studio that he realized it wasn’t an ordinary talent. He now credits genetics for his skills. That, and bowling balls.  

Greg’s father was interested in anything related to bowling. He drilled his own bowling balls, and engaged his son in many late night conversations involving the imagery of drill presses and the complex geometry of hole angles, ball composition, and precision weighing. The knowledge imparted to Greg helped him get up the power curve quicker than normal as it related to using power sculpting tools and mentally manipulating form and material dynamics. 

Becoming a sculptor requires the successful combining of an artistic eye, an ability to visualize three dimensionally, a talent with power tools, and the physical endurance to muscle the stone, whether it’s marble, granite, or alabaster.

When it comes to the mind’s eye behind the artistic concept, Greg says that he’s like many artists who suspect that they have something interesting and important to convey through their media: they are all insecure about their works. But the good ones admit that they are always learning. 

Greg made his first commitment to learn his art by attending a marble workshop, then by studying with Madeline Wiener at The Purple Door Studios, where he rents space. Over the last two years, he’s produced over a dozen major sculpture pieces, been shown in two galleries, juried into the New England Sculpture Association, and had a piece selected for public display by the Longmont, Colorado Art on the Move program. He even shares his journey with the public on YouTube. 

Greg’s pieces are rhythmical in nature, informed by his diverse musical tastes. You should check out Greg’s website, SculptureBySpitzer, where you’ll see that Greg’s philosophy about “sound’s ability to create motion and strong emotion” is indeed captured in “fluid forms as permanent as stone.”  Each day he’s at the studio, he’s aided by the sound of a variety of musical artists—from the musical score to 2001, a Space Odyssey to Jimi Hendrix, to current day fare.

When I asked Greg how he went about “composing a new business card,” he answered the question literally—and I was fascinated to learn that designing his business card was another opportunity for artistic expression and not the chore many of us experience. It was important to capture an image of the physical piece of sculpture that would convey the same message as was intended in the original. When you think about it, few of us get to see “The Thinker” in person, but most of us have seen one or more photos of it—and that’s how we develop our personal response to the piece. So creating an image for his card was a big challenge for Greg, but one he enjoyed tackling. 

Greg captured all the photographical images himself.  And while Greg describes composing his business card as a scary process, he also admits it was liberating—especially when he handed them out at a gallery opening! 

Greg admits to finding magic and joy around every corner of stone, but still has to contend with the financial reality of his lane change. When he was reluctant to jump wholeheartedly into his new passion due to the required investment, Susan was there to support him financially and encourage him emotionally.  

At first, he rued his de minimis financial contribution, but now, after getting recognition for his work, some of his worries have diminished. Still, he continues to assess his financial viability at each milestone of his business plan. Prudently, Greg’s kept his expenses in line by putting his computer skills to work—as trade for certain sculpting expenses, and in creating his website and maintaining a blog, Carving Out Loud! Greg states that his blog contains his “ravings about stone, sculpture, and carving.” To be certain, each contains beautiful examples of his work. 

Greg and Susan plan to move to the Boston area to be near her family as their youngest daughter goes away to college this fall. And while our visits have been irregular since I’ve moved to the mountains, I’ll certainly miss having them only four hours away. But I’m content in the thought that I’ll be able to say, “I knew Greg when….”  

My favorite sculptor has always been Auguste Rodin. He once said, “I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don’t need.” 

Aren’t we all just blocks of stone—and over time we chop off whatever we don’t need to get down to the essence of who each of us really is?     

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