Transcript
Speaker: you
Speaker: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Able Voices Podcast.
Speaker: I'm Dr. Rhoda Bernard, founding managing director of the Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education and the assistant chair of the music education department at Berklee College of Music.
Speaker: And I am proud to present this podcast featuring disabled artists and arts educators.
Speaker: We are inviting artists with disabilities to be guest hosts for the Able Voices Podcast.
Speaker: Today, you'll meet our next guest host, Carly Carr Rieger.
Speaker: Carr Rieger is a chronically ill and disabled artist, writer, curator, and advocate from Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Speaker: They utilize porcelain and installation artworks to express inner feelings and narratives of disability.
Speaker: Rieger has organized several important exhibitions for artists with disabilities through the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, including Crip Clay in Cincinnati, Ohio in 2023,
Speaker: and Outpour in Detroit, Michigan in 2026.
Speaker: Rieger is also the recipient of the 2024 Midwest Artists with Disabilities Award.
Speaker: They hold an MA in Disability Studies from the City University of New York and are currently pursuing an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Speaker: Both Rieger's artwork and career goals involve disability inclusion and rights.
Speaker: They are working to expand
Speaker: how the arts communities work with artists with disabilities, and how the disability communities utilize art to express complex disabled ideas.
Speaker: Welcome back to the April Voices podcast.
Speaker: My name is Kar.
Speaker: I am the guest host for the next few episodes.
Speaker: I am a ceramic sculptor and a 3D artist.
Speaker: And today I have Sorrel Stone.
Speaker: Sorrel Stone is a sculptor originally from Connecticut's dairy farming region, now based in Toledo, Ohio.
Speaker: Their figurative sculptures explore storytelling and placemaking for feminine, queer, and immigrant bodies.
Speaker: Through this work,
Speaker: Stone engages with identity politics shaped by the colonization of land and bodies throughout the Americas.
Speaker: They hold an MFA from Syracuse University and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Speaker: Stone is a professor at the University of Toledo and co-founder of the Trans Inclusive Ceramic Collective and a Regina Brown Fellow with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts.
Speaker: Welcome, Sorrel.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: It's a pleasure.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: So I will get right into the questions.
Speaker: So I'd like to start off by asking you to tell us your story as an artist.
Speaker: How did you start as an artist and how did you get to where you are today?
Speaker: Yeah, I love this question.
Speaker: It's funny how complicated an origin story is when you start to really parse it out.
Speaker: But yeah, I was really fortunate in that I grew up in a family that loved the arts and I had a landscape painter
Speaker: as an uncle who was fully living off of his paintings.
Speaker: So it just always seems like something that was reachable and acceptable and well-loved in my family.
Speaker: So I never really second-guessed it.
Speaker: I will say, growing up in a rural town and in the livestock industry, I did have a moment in high school when I was like, I'm either gonna be an artist or I'm gonna be a veterinarian.
Speaker: And so my joke is actually I became like an artist because I went along on a, you know, follow along with a vet and we
Speaker: there was a goat castration that left me with testicles in my lap heading back at the end of the day.
Speaker: And I was like, I don't know that I can do this.
Speaker: So that's actually why I'm an artist is a goat castration.
Speaker: It's a very marked moment in my past.
Speaker: But yeah, I, with all the family support, I went to undergrad at MICA.
Speaker: I thought I was going to be an illustrator because it seemed, I love stability.
Speaker: And I was like, this makes the most sense.
Speaker: But freshman year, I had a phenomenal illustration teacher and I was freaking out because I was lagging behind.
Speaker: I felt terrible at it.
Speaker: And then he walked up and he was like, Zoril, you're terrible at this.
Speaker: And I was like, I've been found out.
Speaker: But also it was so freeing.
Speaker: And so it enabled me to go figure out what I was interested in.
Speaker: And that kind of kickstarted.
Speaker: It's been 11 years since my undergrad and it kind of kickstarted my journey.
Speaker: where I'm trying to find my identity, but also in that I...
Speaker: have been able to be free and open to my identity finding me.
Speaker: So I've been kind of a ceramic figure sculptor for most of my life and really am starting to enjoy the crafts and head into a craft history and see where that takes me.
Speaker: So that's along with teaching at local community schools and potters guilds and then heading to my MFA.
Speaker: I took a long path to get where I am today as an academic, but all of those spaces and, like, I don't know, acquisitions of, like, inquiry of what's next has kind of led me to be where I am and love where I am and understand myself as an artist.
Speaker: Yeah, and, I mean, interestingly, you do feature animals a lot in your work, right?
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: It's funny.
Speaker: I really...
Speaker: didn't feel like I understood people when I was younger.
Speaker: So I just felt like I could communicate through the animal figure and expression.
Speaker: And as I jokingly feel like I understand people more, I'm heading into the human world.
Speaker: But man, I only understand animal anatomy.
Speaker: So I don't know about you, because I know you work with the figure too.
Speaker: But sometimes I'm like, hey, yeah, I end up, if I don't pay attention, sculpting anatomy a little wrong.
Speaker: I actually have the opposite problem.
Speaker: I feel like animals I have a really hard time with.
Speaker: So I'm always impressed by your work.
Speaker: Oh, we can trade.
Speaker: I used to have a roommate in undergrad who was like the best illustrator and she was incredible with dogs.
Speaker: And I do not understand dogs because I didn't have a dog.
Speaker: So I didn't draw dogs.
Speaker: And she didn't understand horses.
Speaker: So we would like trade homework sometimes.
Speaker: It was great.
Speaker: Next, I'd like you to tell us about your experiences as a person with disability.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's interesting to think back to that.
Speaker: So I had a kind of memorable entry into life as I know it in that I had a life changing car accident when I was graduating high school.
Speaker: I was hit by a drunk driver.
Speaker: And I, it took probably five years for all of kind of what was left of that injury to be fully diagnosed.
Speaker: But that also meant that I was learning how to be an artist and a professional with a disability.
Speaker: And it kind of,
Speaker: started me down the pathway of understanding like the genetic disabilities I was already born with and exacerbated it.
Speaker: So it was really interesting going to like undergrad and being like, I don't know what I'm doing professionally.
Speaker: And then I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing with my body.
Speaker: It was a very chaotic time, but it also, you know, I grew with it and it's like always been a part of me and been part of how I navigate my experience of the world as an artist.
Speaker: I don't know anything else.
Speaker: So, you know,
Speaker: I'm really appreciative, which is a funny thing to say about disability, but I feel like it's allowed me to figure out really early on how to caretake for myself.
Speaker: And I think us as artists have a huge problem with taking care of ourselves.
Speaker: I also think, especially as ceramicists, we're better at taking care of others because it's such a community environment that, I don't know, you're just, I feel like I just was like,
Speaker: happy to take on things for other people while not listening to myself.
Speaker: And my body very quickly told me, hey, I'm here and you have to listen to yourself.
Speaker: And it's led me to have a really healthy career.
Speaker: It's also led me to be able to kind of watch that unfolding, learn that about myself, and then apply it to my peers and helping them, but also helping my students.
Speaker: You know, I...
Speaker: I grew up in the 90s.
Speaker: I went to school in like, you know, the early teens of 2010.
Speaker: And while.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, while it's like disabilities existed and we were talking about it and it's still much more present than, you know, the world my parents grew up in, I didn't have.
Speaker: people in the room that looked like me.
Speaker: I didn't have mentors.
Speaker: I didn't know how to navigate that.
Speaker: And it was a very isolating experience that caused me to harm myself more because I just thought I had to keep up and there wasn't space for me.
Speaker: And so really with my career as a community facilitator and a teacher, I want to make sure no one else experiences that.
Speaker: So that's very much like what my activism is about.
Speaker: And
Speaker: yeah, it's once you talk about it, you know, there's so many people that meet you in the room where you're at and, you know, that are happy to have representation.
Speaker: So, you know, I'm glad of where I am.
Speaker: And it was a very long, hard kind of lonely journey, but I'm excited about like breaking the system and making it not so lonely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I have like a really similar experience of just, yeah, being the only person in the room, but
Speaker: Also, I'd have like random personal conversations with people where they'd be like, oh, yeah, I have this problem.
Speaker: And yeah, like ceramics is just so physically intense.
Speaker: And that's how it's been taught.
Speaker: But it's interesting to think about ceramics not being physically intense and being something that you can withstand for a whole career.
Speaker: Yeah, I always feel like I don't belong because of that.
Speaker: And I still grapple with that despite thinking I'm resolved enough as a professional to be like, no, I've made it this far.
Speaker: But yeah, I think ceramics and sculpture together, both of those are facilities that haven't traditionally left a lot of space in the room for
Speaker: for people and we very quickly other people and sometimes that's intentional and sometimes it's not but I think there's a lot of really loud historic voices in the room and I've you know ended up kind of being sneaky about my disability it's like and I hate that I have to do that which is why I do the work I do so that you know the people that follow behind me don't have to be sneaky but I don't know about you but there's been times where I just show up to opportunities and I'm like
Speaker: Oh yeah, I can't do that by the way, but I can do so many other things that don't require me to lift 500 pounds of clay right now, you know?
Speaker: And I think that's okay.
Speaker: And I also don't think that people should be lifting all of this by themselves.
Speaker: You know, people like, was it like one in three people experience disability in their lifetime?
Speaker: And so just because people are currently able-bodied, you know, doesn't mean that like they won't face this later.
Speaker: And if we caretake for ourselves, our bodies are going to last longer, too.
Speaker: So I think everyone wins when we have those conversations.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so we've already kind of touched on your arts education, but kind of going into that a little bit more.
Speaker: Can you talk about how you learned in the arts and how you continue to learn in the arts today?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, you know, I started off with an incredible undergrad experience.
Speaker: I got really lucky that I fell into the community and the faculty that I had at MICA.
Speaker: You know, I didn't go there for ceramics, so I didn't look into who the faculty were.
Speaker: And, you know, to this day, these people, I just, they have changed my lives, like my life, and they continue to
Speaker: And then after that, I, it's so funny.
Speaker: One of my faculties, David East, he had us all practice writing grants
Speaker: grant proposals for like homework and I got one of the grants which was ridiculous and I never expected it because I was like this is homework this isn't actually an opportunity I'll get and it took me out for a year to Alberta Canada in a residency and that I mean so much of my learning happens outside of academic spaces and that was one of them where it was to
Speaker: terrifying and wonderful.
Speaker: But it really like made me have to like dig deep into who I am and what I want.
Speaker: Because like just it's being in a vacuum of space where you don't have any real structure.
Speaker: You're trying to figure out how you make it as an artist, how you feed yourself.
Speaker: And also taught me so much about burnout.
Speaker: burnout was a huge thing that then affected my career for like the next couple of years following.
Speaker: So after Alberta, I ended up directing a ceramic studio for about six years where my community taught me so much of who I am.
Speaker: And, you know, I experienced the burnout there and then was inspired by my community to start making.
Speaker: But it also taught me so much about
Speaker: who I am as an educator and who I am as a community member.
Speaker: That by the time I was ready for grad school at Syracuse University, I kind of understood who I am and how I need time to make my work and learn, but I also need time to care for other people as part of my practice is just like,
Speaker: a person and an artist.
Speaker: So I ended up at grad school for three years.
Speaker: I wanted that whole three to really invest in myself.
Speaker: And then from there on out, I've been making sure that I always put myself in places where I'm still a student.
Speaker: My biggest thing is like, I love to say that I don't know anything, you know, I think, you know, in ceramics, there's so much trial and error and chemistry and, you know, science behind it, that we really become so specialized.
Speaker: And it's easy to think that you know everything, but every semester my students are constantly surprising me.
Speaker: My favorite is like, I'll tell them like, you can't do that.
Speaker: You know, there'll be, someone will ask me like, can I do this to a mold?
Speaker: And I'm like, that will never work.
Speaker: And then my students will be like, I'm not going to listen to you.
Speaker: And they'll do it.
Speaker: And it will be the coolest thing that I've ever seen.
Speaker: So I love like leaving that opportunity open to myself and to them.
Speaker: I also think it like disarms me.
Speaker: you know, what a making practice is for my students as well, because they get to see that it's not just like making products and having successful pieces.
Speaker: It's learning and it's exploring.
Speaker: So now as a faculty member, you know, because I'm giving so much of my myself and my practice to my students, I do make sure to spend the summers going to workshops.
Speaker: I remember I worked with Misty Gamble this summer in her workshop, and she's like, I hadn't
Speaker: thought about taking a workshop for myself in years.
Speaker: And I think it's wonderful, especially to go into spaces where you're like, I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker: I don't wheel throw ever.
Speaker: I'm not a functional artist.
Speaker: I wheel throw to get the job done and teach.
Speaker: But I'm trying to find spaces that make me feel uncomfortable and see how that affects my practice.
Speaker: I don't want to be too set in my ways.
Speaker: But sometimes I
Speaker: I you know, you end up in spaces where you're like, oh, I'm really scared about letting people down and myself down.
Speaker: And it's good.
Speaker: The critical voice is like a good thing to.
Speaker: I don't know, to work back and forth with.
Speaker: So I think that's where the biggest growth is.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker: I'm so excited for that because I'm kind of like just getting started teaching and I'm just so excited for the learning that comes from it.
Speaker: Like you're saying of like students just not listening to you at all, like because they're so interested in what they've come up with.
Speaker: I think that's like one of the most exciting things about getting into teaching.
Speaker: even more than like being in academia in general.
Speaker: Yeah, no, absolutely.
Speaker: I feel really lucky because my studio, the ceramic studio is right next to like our wood shop, which is really kind of a 3D like tech space.
Speaker: So, you know, I go from my sink to like a laser cutter in the same space and having like being in a space like that where you just the boundaries and the walls are gone and you can carry these materials over the
Speaker: to these machines and just play around and ask questions.
Speaker: It's really exciting.
Speaker: And I also love that they're not as worried about fire safety and that kind of stuff.
Speaker: So they're more willing to take risks that I wouldn't do.
Speaker: We love a good fire extinguisher nearby.
Speaker: But in that risk, it's just I learned so much about my materials.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so what advice would you give to other artists with disabilities?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I think it's something like you and I have talked about in this and we've worked together a bunch, but it's just that like community is important.
Speaker: Like your community is the most important thing.
Speaker: And I'm so glad I've met you through all of our work we've done together and a bunch of our peers through, you know, exhibitions that we've run.
Speaker: Because I find myself, you know,
Speaker: calling up those people and asking them advice because we're all navigating these systems together.
Speaker: And it's hugely important to help one another through that.
Speaker: And I also think if you can't find your own community, then make it because there's always someone in the room who's going through the same things as you.
Speaker: And if there isn't, there's people who want to be a part of it and who care about you.
Speaker: I think especially right now, you know, with everything I'm going through in my life as like a disabled trans artist in an immigrant family, it's hard to find communities.
Speaker: And so I've been really big into making it and figuring out what that looks like.
Speaker: Yeah, working and living.
Speaker: alone and in silence.
Speaker: It's really hard and it's really scary right now.
Speaker: So that's my biggest thing.
Speaker: But I also think your success in the field as a disabled artist is a contract that you have with yourself.
Speaker: And I know that it's really easy to, you know, our field is incredibly competitive.
Speaker: I think we do a good job of caring for one another, despite all of the competition.
Speaker: But
Speaker: Artists of all kinds, disabled or not, we're really pushing our limitations, physical, mental, workload-wise.
Speaker: And it's a conversation I've been having with the Center for Craft cohort that I'm in of, you know, artists who have been in the industry much longer than me.
Speaker: And we talk about work-life balance and taking care of our families and what's more important.
Speaker: And, you know, there's people in the industry who
Speaker: that have been there twice or three times as long as myself and they're having trouble making space for their family and for hobbies and for themselves.
Speaker: And I think it's really easy, especially as a disabled artist, to feel like you're falling behind.
Speaker: I do all the time.
Speaker: And I found ways to temper that in my practice with my research so that working doesn't have to look like physical work.
Speaker: It can look like other work.
Speaker: The best gift that we have from this is that our bodies tell us to stop and it enables us to have healthier boundaries.
Speaker: with our workload, I believe.
Speaker: And so, you know, I think comparison is the thief of joy.
Speaker: And, you know, as disabled artists, it's like we have this like really cool skill, you know, to balance that and let's use it.
Speaker: And I think that we're actually like able to have healthier lives than some, you know, physically able people because we know that there's those boundaries.
Speaker: And then finally,
Speaker: You know, with all of my work and all of the different groups that I identify within, I always lean, come back to this author who I love named Joshua Whitehead.
Speaker: He's an indigenous artist and he has a quote that says, I must remember that a story can be eaten much like a body.
Speaker: And so I think that one of our greatest strengths is our story and it comes out in our work and it touches people and it changes lives and it
Speaker: you know, changes histories.
Speaker: But I also think that we're allowed to protect ourselves and we're allowed to care for ourselves.
Speaker: And while allyship is wonderful and there's people and organizations that want to support us, I also think it's important to make sure that allyship is not predatory and that our stories are serving ourselves and that you're a willing participant in it.
Speaker: And we're not glorifying
Speaker: these things that are happening to us that are some things maybe we don't want to share.
Speaker: I was in grad school with a person who was a printmaker and she, with her disabilities, like faced that she only had so many prints left in her life to make before she would be unable to make anymore.
Speaker: And I remember someone commented that
Speaker: she should document all of that and make the piece about it.
Speaker: And I remember kind of speaking up being like, you know, I think that that's a wonderful idea if that's how you want to document it.
Speaker: But I also think that right now you're talking about your work and how our bodies exist in the universe and you have your own research.
Speaker: And I think that you should only bring in this performance aspect to the work if
Speaker: But watching the loss of your practice feels important for you to document, but I don't think that it necessarily needs to be on the stage for the viewer if it isn't something that you want to give and share to the viewer.
Speaker: So I think we have to protect our peace and love ourselves in order to make the change.
Speaker: Because if you give away everything to the viewer and to the art world, you've lost yourself.
Speaker: And that's not the point.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that's really intense.
Speaker: And it's really intense to have to put that on or feel like you, you should put that on stage for people because that's your experience when, you know, yeah, that's a really personal journey.
Speaker: Yeah, I think young artists, you know, when I go on like visiting artist talks, young artists assume that they have to share all of that, you know, and that's like,
Speaker: you know, their big statement.
Speaker: So I always am mindful to be like, it's your choice and your art can have tons of other meaning without being excruciating to yourself.
Speaker: You know, we can make change in a healthy way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Our listeners would love to hear what you're working on today.
Speaker: Can you please tell us about any current projects?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So as I've shared a little bit, my family is going through an immigration journey.
Speaker: And it's obviously very hard right now.
Speaker: And so I have been making a body of work kind of trying to support the persistence of identity in times of erasure.
Speaker: And so I've been doing portraits of both my family and other families in the same place.
Speaker: immigration status is ours.
Speaker: Because I think, you know, back to like protecting ourselves, and it's been something I've been like trying to figure out and balance too of sharing the story and advocating, but also doing it in a way and sharing, you know, a careful amount of context so that I'm still protecting ourselves.
Speaker: Yeah, I've been doing figurative portraits of these people and also joining in craft practices to them, specifically quilt making.
Speaker: I'm really leaning into like my soft sculpture and quilt era right now.
Speaker: But yeah, I think there's so much history of craft in America and across the world, but specifically I'm drawing from
Speaker: quilts like prairie era quilts in America and protest quilts because craft is like has always been a survival you know survival techniques act of care for one's family and one's community but also forms of protest there's been some incredible protest quilts out recently in the world and they are just absolute works of art
Speaker: So I've been doing that, and I just finished a quilt that I'm about to unveil.
Speaker: Because we're an immigrant family and we're in the state of Ohio, there have been flyers posted all around town for families like mine to self-deport.
Speaker: And that has been a really hard reality to live in and to feel safe in and feel supported in my community.
Speaker: And so I made a quilt out of moving blankets and white bedsheets.
Speaker: because unfortunately the posters were printed by the Klan.
Speaker: And I've been laser cutting text about the story of my family.
Speaker: And it's been very powerful.
Speaker: And because it's a quilt and it involves tons of hand stitching, I've been carrying it around and like slowly working on it in certain places and getting a lot of like very interesting responses from the community.
Speaker: Lots of
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: I've had some people approach me and be very excited and I've had other people approach me and ask me what it says.
Speaker: And I've been very like vague and what it says.
Speaker: But I remember recently I said, oh, it's about my immigrant family.
Speaker: And there was a person who said, you can't say that around here.
Speaker: So I'm working with some heavy and powerful things and kind of like figuring out how to speak out and protect my family and also soothe the wounds of feeling a little displaced where I live.
Speaker: So it's big work.
Speaker: I'm really excited about it.
Speaker: But I also, yeah, feel intimidated to share because it's, while my work's always really vulnerable, I think this is the most vulnerable.
Speaker: But I'm hoping to unveil it in like the next year and have a bunch of quilts out with ceramics and figure out where I exist in the space as a clay artist and just an artist.
Speaker: So it's a fun place of discovery I'm in right now.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker: really heavy, especially I lived in Ohio for a little bit too, in kind of the middle of nowhere also, like actually around sort of where you're at.
Speaker: And it, those topics are just so difficult.
Speaker: Like they're, people are so unwilling to move in their stance.
Speaker: And I mean, yeah, your work is just like, so, so, so, so important right now.
Speaker: And I'm really excited to, you know, keep working with you and see where you go.
Speaker: Oh, I'm just so excited to like have you as a community member and be in each other's corners.
Speaker: I think it's been a really huge gift of my practice over the last few years, but like especially this year.
Speaker: Oh, thank you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thank you so much for speaking with us today.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Oh, it was absolutely my pleasure.
Speaker: Able Voices is a production of the Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education, led by me, Dr. Rhoda Bernard, the founding managing director.
Speaker: It is produced by Daniel Martinez del Campo.
Speaker: The intro music is by Kai Levin, and our closing song is by Sebastian Batista.
Speaker: Kai and Sebastian are students in the arts education programs at the Berkeley Institute for Accessible Arts Education.
Speaker: If you would like to learn more about our work, find us online at berkeley.edu slash B-I-A-A-E or email us at B-I-A-A-E at berkeley, that's L-E-E dot edu.
