President’s Message – October 2026

I’ve been thinking a lot about failure lately. Not in an “oh woe is me, I’m a failure” way. Not at all! More about how much trial and error goes into making sculpture and how valuable it is to learn what doesn’t work.

I started playing around with fused glass over a year ago and confess I refer to much of my glass work as The Parade of Failures. It’s a cheerful phrase for me. I mean, it’s a parade! Who doesn’t like parades?

What I find interesting is how often people rush to console me – “Oh, those aren’t failures! Those are lessons you’re learning!”
Lessons? Absolutely!

But also there are failures. Things I thought (or at least hoped!) would work that absolutely didn’t – either aesthetically, as with the color transitions in this piece…

Or technically, as with the bubbles and carbon build-up in this leaf piece.

As disappointing as sculpting can be at times, the reminder that not everything is going to work out is useful. LOTS of things don’t work out the way we’d hope.

As we build our “artist muscles” we’re also building our “disappointment muscles” and “bounce back from disappointment muscles”.

Which brings me to my main point: making and appreciating art builds up our human-ness. It expands our ability to look closely at the world and often, to look closely at our fellow human beings. Best case, it helps us look at ourselves and see how much we have in common with others.

May your art flow,

Leslie Crist

P.S. The turquoise image at the top is the first of several failures on the way to successfully collaborating with Jenny Poston for the November “Coalescence” show at Art at the Cave in Vancouver. Entries are due Oct. 11. Hope to see you there!