Today we’d like to introduce you to Patty Spyrakos.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
After having my first child I took a ceramics class at the Lincoln Square Pottery Studio. I quit my career in visual/UX design about 2 years later to focus on art, predominantly ceramics. I’ve always had an interest in art but did not really know what that would look like or how it would translate into a viable career, especially growing up to parents with a hard-working immigrant ethic. My parents grew up in small mountain villages in Greece, with no indoor plumbing, basically came here with nothing, worked hard, and did good for themselves.
So, rather than art, I got a degree in the ever so promising field of psychology. Specifically, I studied sensory systems, perception and evolutionary psych at Loyola University. I taught myself HTML, design, and a bunch of Adobe products around the time I was graduating – this was around the beginning of the interwebs. Got myself a pretty sweet paying gig at a consulting agency downtown – if you knew any HTML or photoshop during this time you were gold. After a few years of office life I decided to go freelance, and around the time of the dot-com bust decided that none of this was for me and studied herbalism and TCM. But California was calling me, specifically San Francisco… I knew quite a few folks there from my days on IRC.
I lived in SF for 10 years where I got back into design to support myself. I landed a job at Yahoo and worked my way into a position directing design for the front page masthead (designing animated logos and selecting events/holidays to feature and create microsites for). I also did UX work for the front page and applications. I met my husband there, he had immigrated from Iceland to get his MFA at the Academy of Art. We moved back to Chicago when I was pregnant, and when SF became unfathomably expensive.
I was able to transfer to Yahoo’s Chi offices at the John Hancock. I’d been looking to get out of corporate desk job for some time though and something about having a kid makes you realize that you want to spend all of your minutes doing what you really love. That, plus I managed to save up a little.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
So much of my identity was tied into my career as a designer that it was difficult and anxiety-inducing to take the leap. By the time I dealt with some of those anxieties I was in the midst of being pregnant with my second daughter. The pregnancy sapped me of energy so I was unable to work as much as I would have liked. She’s a year old now and my other daughter is four so it’s still a struggle to find time. My husband, Baldur Helgason, is an artist as well so there is a lot of creative scheduling of studio time.
I also struggle with depression and anxiety in general so the instability of a career in art tends to exacerbate my symptoms. That said, working on art and pursuing what gives me more meaning has therapized me immensely. And of course, the art world presents its own specific set of hurdles. As does being female in a male-dominated industry – but I’d like to think that is changing.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
I’m a ceramics artist and painter. In ceramics, I primarily handbuild figurative pieces, predominantly female forms. At the moment the figures I am creating attempt to engage the properties of the limbic system which focuses on memory, basic emotions (fear, pleasure, anger) and drives (sex, hunger, care of offspring) via cartoonish form and gesture, where breasts and lips act as principal appendages – acting to replace arms as ruling attachment in the weight they are given.
The female is reduced to something meant to suck and be suckled, with wide eyes placing her in the position of a passive observer. The reality of how the value of the role of female, mother, primary nurturer, has been reduced in modern society.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.pattyspyrakos.com
- Email: pattynopatty@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pattynopatty/
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