Aidan Fraser & Sally Caldwell Fisher

Interview by Mercedes Arnold

Maine Vibes Magazine: Can you state your name, your pronouns and a little bit about who you are and what you do? 

Aidan Fraser: I'm Aidan Fraser. I use she/her pronouns. I am a full time ceramicist in Portland, Maine. Running Luster Hustler, my ceramics business. I'm also assistant Gallery Manager for Sally's Gallery in New Harbor, and I work part time for a ceramics artist in Scarborough, Meg Walsh at C&M ceramics. I'm very art-focused and women-focused, which leads to a really happy life. 

Sally Caldwell Fisher: Sally Caldwell-Fisher, I identify as she/her. I'm a Maine artist, I've exhibited all over the country in many parts of the world. My inspiration has always been the contrast in nature, that's where I started as a very young kid. Painting because my mother always furnished me with watercolors, and so I had good materials to work with. Once you've done it for a while, you realize it's chemistry. I think that I developed my passion for the simple reason that it was the one thing I could do to really please my mother. I was not a difficult kid, but we were restless people, and she had a lot of kids and she would always tell me to get downstairs at the ping pong table and make a painting.

MVM: Where are you in the line of your siblings? 

SCF: I am in the middle. My mother would always tell me to get in the basement and get painting, don’t tell me you’re bored. I never resented that because I really loved it. It wasn’t long at all before I started going to art fairs with her and seeing the work of other people and realizing that I can do that, I know I can do that. That’s exactly how it started. All through college I was selling paintings in galleries and continued to do so ever after I got married. It’s daunting to get married and have a child and still be a painter and try to make a living. My art has evolved over the years, many years into a passion for painting. I paint people with affection, and paint people working, doing what they do with earnestness and accidental artistry, like when they hang laundry, they don’t know they made something really beautiful and they just walk away from it. It's inspiring to me.  

MVM: That's really lovely. Was your mother an artist? 

SCF: Yes. My mother was an artist who gave up immediately and surgically when she had five children, that was my father. Nobody ever encouraged her to do it. She took some lessons, but she just quit. And then she actually said to me in my lifetime, “You're doing it better than me now, so I quit.” 

MVM: When was that?

SCF: Oh, probably when I was 25.

MVM: So you’ve already answered one of my questions, but that brings me to the next, is what was the path like to what you’re currently doing? 

SCF: I would say that I didn't have any trajectory that was going in any other direction. When I was a child, I always wanted to be an artist. I wrote that on every form and everything I filled out, I'm an artist. Then I got to do certain jobs around school when I was in elementary school to do the murals and the calendars and not anything that required drawing, so I've always just done it. It's like a language. I was lucky enough to have the materials and also a lack of stultifying experience in art school. I never went to art school, because it scared me. I was so afraid, having always done it by myself on a ping pong table that I didn't know what I was doing, so I didn't go to art school. I'm really glad I didn't because they never would have put up with stuff that I've read.

MVM: Your mother gave you watercolors when you were younger, did you find this encouraging or was she trying to get time to herself?

SCF: I think she loved me unconditionally and she showed it. She was an overworked person, but she made sure I had those materials. My father was a doctor and he was constantly campaigning that all three of us girls had to marry doctors and our brothers had to go to college. We were not mentioned going to college, but we all did great. My sister and I came out of it as lifelong artists. 

MVM: Do you and your sister use the same mediums? 

SCF: She’s oil and I work in paint; acrylics, watercolors. Annie [my sister] works in pastel. She's a nature painter and does exquisite animal studies and studies of the Great Lakes, where she lives, and she teaches and exhibits. She's very, very fertile and also does a lot of portraiture, which is a tough topic. I could probably draw someone's face but not their eyes. Getting them in the right place, if you don't get your eyes in the right place, everybody knows you're no good. Everyone’s wearing sunglasses in my paintings.

MVM: Do you recall the different emotions you were feeling and processing when you were growing up painting in the basement? I know I keep referring to this.

SCF: I think I know where you’re going, because it was a family dynamic. My father would come home from work, he’d be on the expressway after being in the hospital for 18 hours. He’d come in and would expect a drink to be handed to him in a frosty glass with ice before he put down his briefcase. That was him. Then we would be summoned to come upstairs and show him what we did. We would get approval from him, but it was the deeper approval from my mother knowing that I was doing something she wanted me to do because in her heart, she wanted to do it herself. 

And then there was the constant. We're very much aware of the indoctrination of the men by the women at that stage of our lives. It was crazy. You didn't have to go through too much, did you?

AF: Yeah, I did. I don't think it was quite as obvious as that, but I grew up in the early 2000s, where the stick-skinny, thigh gap thing was huge. That was kind of silently a huge pressure. 

SCF: What I wanted to say with regard to this, is that my father definitely carried those values straight over from the 40s and 50s and straight to us, and we were all very nice looking teenagers, but he gave us amphetamines to make us stop eating, the doctor.

And then my mother started taking them because she wasn't thin enough either, because of course she had five children and no car. 

AF: Wow, that's intense. 

SCF: Yea, that part of it is the raw truth. So you make out of things what you want to make them into, but what came out of it for me was that I was good at it [painting]. I did not encounter a lot of negativity or rejection or criticism. I got put into galleries at a very early age. I'm lucky that way. I didn't feel that I had to climb a mountain, until I got into corporate art and then everything went to hell.

MVM: Yeah, that's a very different world.

SCF to AF: That's why I told you to stay away. My favorite gallery director was a woman in Kennebunkport, two of them women, but all the rest have been men and very unartistic and very corporate and very demanding and very dry.

AF: Not what you or your paintings are at all.

SCF: Oh, no, no, they just didn't even know what to say about the painting sometimes. They thought they were corporately successful. It’s all numbers, it’s all dollars. 

MVM: It’s making art into an entirely different concept. 

SCF: It’s a commodity. Then they can begin to go into the artist and say, here's what's wrong with what your paintings. Your paintings should be recognizable from 400 feet away? Everyone should know. I’ll paint an eggplant, I'll paint a sandwich, I'll paint dandelions or anything. But I don't think it's all going to be recognizable from across the room. 

MVM: Thank you for sharing about your mother and your father. My grandmother painted as well, but her role was to be the mother and wife, it wasn’t to be creative. 

SCF: I know, what I described to you right then was pure 50s and 60s, for everybody. Everybody was the same because nobody was interested in thinking outside the box. The box was everything and you take that normalcy, even if it's fake, to school with you, out into the world with you. It's like we're doing okay, we're all normal, and keep the rest of yourself.

MVM: Aidan, how did you come to do ceramics full time? 

AF: It was because of the pandemic, during that time, it just so happened that I was in my very last class in college, an elective, and I got to take ceramics for a second time. I took a bag of clay and some tools from the Art Department with me home. I was making ceramics on my kitchen counter. We literally had nothing to do and nowhere to go, so I was making them and started making my figures and posting, then selling them through Instagram. Very quickly, different women were reaching out to me, asking me to make them a piece, so I just kept doing it. For a few months I was making them in my kitchen and driving all the pieces up to the midcoast where we're from. I have a potter friend who has a kiln and she would fire them. I'd take them back to my apartment in Portland, glaze them, and bring them back to her. That’s all I was doing because I could. 

Then I went to Portland Pottery, which is right on Washington in Portland. It's a community student-based center, where you get a shelf and you can use all their stuff. So I went there to be able to more efficiently fire things and quickly grew out of my space there. 

Within a few months I moved to Running With Scissors down the street, which is an independent artists studio with ceramics, painting, a woodshop, and graphic designers. I had a half shelf there, which is again, a little space. I grew out of that, got a full shelf, and then just this past month moved into a 9x9 studio of my own under their roof. 

It just worked out, I'm an official LLC and I'm self employed. My parents were always entrepreneurs and self employed. I was a part-time waitress right before I quit to do ceramics. It didn’t feel like there was any other option but to be self-employed.

SCF: Do you mind if I interject something? You always loved ceramics when you were in school. I'm her godmother, by the way. 

MVM: Yes, I know that you are Aidan’s godmother! How did this come about? 

SCF: Because Barbara has been my best friend forever.

AF: Yeah, my mom is Barbara. 

SCF: When she [Barbara] had Aidan, that was a really big day at the hospital. They said who’s that woman screaming in the hallway? But really, ever since Aidan was really young, she’s taken ceramics up in school, made some interesting pieces and sold them in local galleries. They were very different from other people’s work. They were vessels with meaning and she’s stayed in that same inspirational pattern.

AF: I remember my first ever clay class at six. I have a terrible memory, but I do remember throwing on the wheel when I was little. I may still have the same pieces from that time, and we painted them ourselves. Having those is probably part of the reason I can remember that, because it’s kind of the proof. But it wasn't until high school that I got into it again and I had a really awesome ceramics teacher. Jonathan Mess was my teacher, he's a really well known ceramicist, not only in Maine, but in the world now. He's so fun and cool, and showed me respect and saw that I loved it, so he kind of let me do my thing. I was down there all the time in study halls after school. 

MVM: What were you originally going to school to study? 

AF: I didn’t declare a major when I first entered college. I came out of school with a degree in liberal arts and humanities, and double minored in women and gender studies and race and ethnic studies. Doing that all while being in the studio. And, without me realizing it at the time, my degree really has influenced my work. It was all kind of crazy weird to get me back to where I have always wanted to be.

My mom was always fun and flexible, not in an irresponsible way, but I’ve grown accustomed to that so now I get to have a fun and flexible life, albeit very stressful to be my own source of income. But I get to take the day off if I need to. I don’t know how this ties into my liberal arts degree, but…

SCF: Aidan, it does because it goes back to money. Don't tell me the money doesn't matter, money matters. And if we choose to just do this, instead of going out and getting a real job, it is the diving board feeling like ‘Man, this is sink or swim, me’. Those things go through ups and downs throughout an entire lifetime. Moods change, tastes change, assholes change, people who are trying to eat up your life, it all comes and goes up and down, up and down. And in the meantime, you're trying to keep an even interest in what you're doing, even though what you're doing is being effective. At the crux of it all, you're doing it to feed your family and pay the mortgage. It was always my job to support the family. There are a lot of forces that make it an uphill climb if you choose to do this on your own and not not have a solid backup plan, which everybody in the world is always telling you to do.

AF: It's too distracting to try and think of a backup plan. 

SCF: But I mean, I do think that all does tie in with your education, your choice of education, you've always had a solid interest in the arts because of your mother. 

MVM: I have a liberal arts education as well and I think it gave me so much insight on how the world works, how systems work, people work, etc.

SCF:  I think it does inform you with so much more insight into the human condition. If you are reading all the time, you take the writings of brilliant people, and they're gonna lay it out and tell you this is the meaning of love or the meaning of sleeping outside or whatever we're talking about. They've set it for you and it resonates, and then you bring it back in cocktail conversation and people think you're a genius. Just trick people into thinking you’re a genius. 

AF: That's all I'm here for. 

MVM: I tried that with my friends and they didn't buy it. So, talking about you [Sally] as a woman and also an artist, has that helped you move through the world as both?

SCF: Oh, it’s hurt me terribly. I was brought up in the cool 60s and 70s, and that kind of patriarchal BS was everywhere, and it still is. But, without a doubt I bring a feminist sensibility to it all because I'm in the world of marine art. I would always make paintings that had laundry and fruit, things that wouldn't necessarily be in sailing scenes but selling man's world things in, and the women loved it and that's why I did well. 

AF: I think that being a woman and an artist at the same time for me is paramount in my confidence, actually. Which is kind of backwards, because before my work and before I had something to be proud of and could tell myself, I'm good at this, I didn't have the confidence I have now. But now I have to rely upon myself to show people my work and get the word out there and constantly be thinking about why I’m making what I’m making. It’s created this rebellious, bold feeling which is really cool. 

And because of the internet and the community on Instagram that I'm in, it's cool to obviously be frustrated at men on the internet, making fun of them and I enjoy that and my followers do, too. 

I get comments from men at shows all the time saying they don't get it [my art].They act like children around my work, whispering to their friends, pulling their friends by their shirtsleeves and pointing at my work as if I'm not standing right there. Or they're laughing, where on earth did you get this idea? Women sometimes say these things, too, but mostly, it's men. For the women, I don't feel frustration, I feel more pity, if anything, because I understand where that's coming from and why they might be uncomfortable in front of my work is a whole different reason than why a man might be uncomfortable with my work. For me, being a woman and being an artist making the art that I do, which is mostly women's bodies or femme-presenting bodies, it's empowering. 

I've kind of taken it as a way to train myself to be more confident and to confront these uncomfortable moments, and work through it and head on into the uncomfortability. I'm not making work for them. I'm making it for the women or people who see themselves in my work. 

MVM: I think it's more about uncomfortable feelings with themselves and probably like their own sexuality.

SCF: Yeah, and the thing is her presence online is very creative, very sassy. Just fresh and new, which really helped my life greatly to do what I'm trying to do. I had to buffer and dust off my image.

AF: So what I do for Sally, which we haven't explained…Sally had a gallery most recently in Kennebunk and then moved up to the mid-coast and brought her gallery with her and opened it in her home in New Harbor. It worked out that I could help with her social media and website.

SCF: It’s a classic case of the older generation leaning and learning from the younger generation about technology, which doesn't come naturally to us. When I look back at my work [with Aidan] I realize I’ve infused almost every single composition with an implied narrative about me or a woman. It’s like having some peril, I like to put peril into the maritime paintings you know, there’s fear. 

MVM: That’s great that you, it’s almost like you’re helping each other. 

SCF: Very much so. 

AF: It’s interesting too, we are in such different mediums. I can’t paint. I’ve had to learn a whole new language about what prints can be put on what canvases, what this is worth and why, there’s so much practical knowledge. It’s really incredible to see all of her files and files or work.

SCF: Yeah, we were talking about this a little bit earlier about feminism, which I said was the consequence of morality, period. 

AF: You're like, I don't know how to answer it. I just am and it was never a question. It's just that, right? Are you a good person or not? If you are, then you're probably also a feminist.

SCF: I think that feminism is young and it's gone through so many changes that for a while, we thought it wasn't gonna stay around. I was there for Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. But it's evolved into such a multifaceted thing so that now we have a multitude of choices of what to call a person so that we don't offend their sensibility about who they are. It used to be so black and white. I think that’s why I like the word nonbinary. 

I think maybe there is a future in which things become much more homogeneous. If you begin to be aware of your own use of feminist ideals as small or as subtle as they might be, in your own work, it's not an accident, you're doing it because that's how you feel. And with her [Aidan] it's a reverence. It's a reverence that kicked in with women. I know my audience. It's mostly women. And women love your work, and it's because they see themselves and also they can see that you perceive them to be beautiful and admire their surfaces as well as their insights. Those are the people that you want to communicate with.

AF: Right. I’ve built the most wonderful community that I get to hang out with of cool, like-minded women who are supportive of my work and I'm living my dream now. It's very cool.

SCF: You can expect it to evolve because it's evolved fast within the past few years. You began to embellish them and change their colors as if you know all of a sudden Yes, color matters because I want this green to be just right. But color doesn't matter any other way. My personal favorite is black with golden nipples.

MVM: Sally, how has your art evolved over the years? And in what ways?

SCF: Oh, I can answer that quickly. From the very beginning, I taught myself through photography, how to create images and textures to look how I wanted them to look in print, just bring it into nature. When I started my career, which actually increased along that path for a long time, I was always putting people into the paintings because I liked that narrative. I liked the narrative, lyrical quality of that, sometimes it was too many people. Then I got sick of them and stopped inviting them into the paintings. When I was an older woman, I realized what an actual scene means to me when I internalize it, and it doesn’t have people. I developed a passionate interest in mood paintings of my personal reactions to where I live, which is why it’s a great place. 

MVM: I read that you reference photographs that you collect? 

SCF: I’ve always collected antique photographs, I have since I was a teenager. I'd study the people and I go deep into a black and white photograph and put much more into it myself than I would if it were a color photograph. I love to look into the past, I don't know why. I did the same thing with reading. Nowadays I'm much more into taking my own photographs and keeping them raw so that I have to bring to it whatever is going to be brought to it. 

MVM: Aidan, can you talk about what your work means to you? 

AF: It’s that feeling of a sort of rebellion, being an artist and like sculpting things that make people kind of uncomfortable, there's something really satisfying to me about knowing people are weirded out by my work. I like that challenge. That’s the only time I feel comfortable challenging someone is in my work. I’m not confrontational outside of that, but that’s changing as I continue to be out in the world with my work. 

It all came together in college when I started sculpting figures. I noticed I felt vulnerable at first sculpting them in class, no one else was sculpting bodies. I myself felt very naked making them because I'd never been so open with nudity. As I kept sculpting, I realized I was feeling more and more comfortable with the idea of having something new, like a new body out in the public space. I realized it was really therapeutic for myself, I was becoming much more accepting of my own body. That's kind of when it kicked in, this is a kind of body empowerment and body positivity, which was at a pinnacle when I started more than two years ago. I was riding on the coattails of a movement that's been a long time coming.

I used to focus a lot on body positivity as a kind of a mantra, for lack of a better word, but I've changed it to self acceptance, because we don't have to be positive about our bodies all the time, that's just not realistic. I try to focus on self acceptance, which isn’t easy. It’s something I practice daily. Without my work, I’m not sure if I would have been able to find that out. 

MVM: Thank you so much for talking. One more thing, Aidan, you said your love language is laughing…Sally what is your love language? 

SCF: My love language? Mine is definitely about people. People make me want  to show them that I love them. And yet at the same time, because of the pandemic and the current nature of our whole life on Earth, I don't like people at all. Except for the people I like. 

AF: Write that one down!