Michele Pollock Art, Ideas, and Passion
~ story and photos by Chrissy Alspaugh
What does it mean to be human? For local artist and poet Michele Pollock, it means being led by passion rather than life’ s more predictable paths. It means helping others wherever she can. Embracing life’ s messiness. Smiling.
Michele’ s studio awakens the moment her bare feet patter in. Rainbows of paper scraps suddenly scatter across her desk. She’ s searching for the pieces that will breathe life into vellum sketches depicting whimsical animal musicians, dancing marionettes, and serene songbirds. Michele is in constant motion, flowing from workbench to sewing machine, as her hand-stitched journals and destined-for-frame pieces emerge.
Flipping through a stack of notebooks in search of a drawing, Michele smiles at the improbability of locating any particular thing inside the mix of to do lists— poem fragments, ideas for art fairs, and a wide array of other“ weird things,” as she calls them, with a laugh.
Unlike some artists who teem with creative genius but lack the skills to run an organized business, this Purdue University chemical engineer excels at both. Exiting her work space, Michele strides smoothly down a hallway grid of neatly framed applique collages. She lands momentarily at her computer, where Excel and PowerPoint keep her on top of Lost Lake Studio.
This is the side of Michele that hints at the life she lived for a decade as a scientist at 3M in Minnesota. She was researching asthma inhalers when she finally listened to her heart and began a Master of Fine Art program, studying among other things, poetry and book binding.
Michele returned to her home state of Indiana in 2007 and opened the studio in 2008. Today, her business has soared to a sales volume of about 2,000 pieces annually.
Just as she followed her heart into art, Michele’ s work remains driven by passion rather than dollars. Pieces depicting the flora and fauna of Brown County readily reach clients— and she creates plenty of those— but her love of marionettes means her studio walls and fair booths also boast things like frogs playing violins and clowns wearing tutus.
Personal passion also has kept Michele interested, for nearly a decade, in a project called“ What it Means to be Human,” a visual and poetic exploration of scientific and philosophical differences between
26 Our Brown County Sept./ Oct. 2016