Seller Story: Bethesda, MD

“My mother, Rima Schulkind, was always very creative and visual, always building furniture and tiling things. After she married my father and had my brother and me, she went back to school and got her Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology from George Washington University. She went to work as a social worker and was looking for a creative outlet, so she wound up taking a pottery class at the local community college. That was where she really found herself. She began creating art professionally through that discovery. I remember when she got her first kick wheel and starting to use portions of our basement as a studio. She started throwing pots, but quickly realized how much she loved working with slabs of clay. Her early trademark pieces were very thin, translucent porcelain that she would use for bowls and light fixtures, some of which are in the sale.

The other work she did that was very much recognized was the stoneware – with very natural, unglazed rust and earthy tones with beautiful glazes inside. She’d collect natural things to make imprints in them — pine cones; tree pods. You can tell how tactile she was about her work because when you look at it, you can imagine how it felt to touch it and build it.

She started with vessels and then moved into more sculptural forms, that was one of the ways she really grew in terms of her work. The other was that she started exploring media in addition to clay; bending neon, working with plexiglass and developing cement mixtures. The unifying theme of her many explorations is light and shadow. She was always playing with light.” -Laura Schulkind

In her artist’s statement, your mother said she contributed many works to public space initiatives. Why was that important to her?

That’s one of the things that — both directly and by example — I took away from my mother’s life: you express who you are and your good works through your livelihood. She was always very politically engaged and focused on community. She founded the first Head Start program in our area, she worked hard on school desegregation; I was raised going to anti-Vietnam War protests. So I think it was natural that, when she discovered art, she really felt a calling to what it meant politically to be an artist. What it meant to her was making art available to people beyond those who had the means to buy it. She brought interns and young students into her studio and encouraged them; she worked on a hotline for battered women; we both went to Nicaragua and worked for the Sandinistas in the 1980s and my mom brought supplies to artists.

There are several pieces here from other artists. Tell us about the art she collected herself.

As you can see, her taste was very eclectic. She and my father were married for almost 60 years and they collected that art together. It was one of the things they enjoyed. My mother always said “Artists support each other,” I think she knew or met most of the artists whose works she collected. When she started creating vessels, her first venues for showing her work were craft fairs. This was in the early 1970s, so there was batik and tie-dye, natural weaving, pottery. People would trade their work, and that’s how she started collecting.