In Her Words: Andi Ruhl, Shaping Lives & Building Community Through Art
Artist and founder of Thrown Elements Pottery shares the healing power of creative expression with her students and customers.
When I was in high school, I took one of those career aptitude tests and it said I should be a forest ranger or an art therapist. At the time, I thought that was weird. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be a forest ranger, and I’d never heard of art therapy. A few years later when I was in college, I fell in love with clay while taking a class to meet my “artistic expressions” requirement for graduation. I would go to class, and it would be over at 4:00 p.m., and I’d look up and it would be 10:00 at night and I had missed dinner. I remembered the art therapy thing and ended up going back to school for that, with an emphasis in communications, and an emphasis in clay.
When I got out of school, I went down a bunch of different life paths including working in geriatrics. Meanwhile, I was commuting over an hour to get into a studio where I could create. I looked around my community and thought “I cannot be the only person who wants to create but is not retired or independently wealthy enough to go to a class at 11:00 a.m. on a Tuesday.” As a mother, or as anyone who is employed, it was just not feasible. There were no evening classes available nearby at the time.
I was not independently wealthy (and I’m still not). So, I needed to get a Small Business Association loan to open a studio, which meant I had to go get the metrics and data to prove to the SBA that I was a gamble worth taking on. We did not have a lot of independent pottery studios at the time. What we had was paint your own pottery studios. The more that I learned about paint your own pottery, the more I realized how it fit in with the art therapy process.
Many paint your own pottery studios have added clay to their offering. Ours is unique in that while I started on day one with both, clay was my passion. I came from clay, so I had to learn about paint your own pottery. It was humbling to me to step down from my little art pedestal and get out of my own way, and ask “If you pick out a mug and you paint it, why is that any different than a canvas?” If that’s where you are in your creative process, for whatever reason, that’s where you are. Maybe it’s just a fun day out. Maybe you can’t afford to do ongoing classes.
When you’re in art school, there’s an attitude about what is and isn’t real art. There’s a little bit of a head warp that goes on. There’s this very competitive sort of thing that happens, especially in your bigger art schools. I want my studio to be a collaborative place where everyone can be seen, and has a safe space to explore their art, wherever that leads them, wherever their art takes them on their journey. I want people to come in and feel like they’re at home and they’re with family.
I believe the creative process is a healing process. My thesis in college was that the opposite of war is not peace. It’s creation, because war is destructive. War breaks us down. We all have our wars, whether it’s an actual war like in Ukraine, or it’s that your kid was late to school, and you got cut off in traffic. The electricity bill is bigger than you thought. You really need a new car and an oil change. You’re mad at your boss, and that thing didn’t turn out the way you wanted. You burned the cake. We all have these things. How do we deal with them? We create.
I had an adult student who had been coming in for probably two or three years. She came was throwing on the wheel, and nothing was working. She kept flopping them over and ripping them off. Finally, I said “Hey, what is going on?” She told me and I said “Well, none of that is happening right now. You’re not talking to that person. You’re not writing that report. You’re here. So go outside and yell, scream, stomp your feet, shake your fist at the sky, whatever you need to do, but leave it outside.” When she came back in, she threw beautifully. There are so many metaphors with clay. I think that’s why I really fell in love with it as a modality. You can rip it, you can shred it, you can pound it, you can be very angry and very physical with it. You also can be very gentle, and you can spend time really carving and finessing it and smoothing it out. It can be functional. It can be sculptural. You can smash it at the end, which can be a powerful thing, too. You spend all this time on something and smash it. Feel. What does that bring up? The practice of art helps people. Period, end of sentence.
We’ve all had bad days, and I had gone through a horrible thing with the studio where I was really wondering if I was doing the right thing or if I was just beating my head against a wall. Just then, a customer who I’d only seen a few times walked over to me and said “Look around. Look at this beautiful place you've built.” It brought me to tears.
I also work with differently abled populations. I’ve done workshops for drug rehab programs. I can’t go in as the therapist, but I facilitate with the therapist. I work with geriatrics and often yes, it’s art therapy, but we’re not really talking about things. For example, with memory care it’s about engagement. It’s about letting them play.
We opened Thrown Elements Pottery in August of 2008. At the grand opening, people kept saying “You're glowing! You’re radiant!” and I thought “That's kind of a weird thing to say, but yeah, I’m really happy and excited.” A week later, on 8/08/08, I found out I was pregnant. We weren’t supposed to be able to have children at all, but I had my daughter in 2001, and then we had a couple hits and misses. My husband, to this day, will tell you one of the best things that ever happened for the studio was my son, Greyson. If I had not been pregnant and physically had to take care of someone else who was inside me, I would have tried to do it all myself. Being pregnant forced me to have to hire and delegate. Still, I was working crazy hours, open to close. I got a parking ticket on Father’s Day at 2 a.m. because I was loading kilns, and I was parked on the street.
We have gone through engagements and weddings, births and deaths, heart transplants and serious diseases like cancer diagnoses within our collective pottery community. In June of 2020, I found a lump in my breast. Although I could feel it, my doctor couldn’t so it wasn’t treated as an emergency, and I couldn’t get in for a mammogram until September. By then, I had two growths. The biggest of the two was five inches long, had metastasized, and was growing on the outside of three different lymph nodes. It was stage four. I had a double mastectomy and they took out 17 lymph nodes just to be sure.
While I was going through chemo and radiation, my manager who had been with me for 10 years, went back to get his master’s degree in special education. I knew I was losing him, but now he was in school and trying to manage a studio and care for his wife and child and we had to close because of the pandemic. It was a lot to go through, but it was the right decision. I laid off all my staff with the very clear message that my intention was to provide a business and a job for them to come back to. It was killing me. I didn’t want to do it, but it was the best way I could protect them. I asked them to go get unemployment, stay home, stay safe, and said that as soon as it made sense, we would open again.
A couple of my customers said “What do you mean, you’re not essential and you have to close? This is my mental health. It’s a line item in my budget for my family.” Art therapy really is the basis of the studio. Most people don’t know that, but they feel it.
We closed in late March and re-opened in late June. With the increase in discretionary income and people looking for new hobbies and creative outlets, our business picked up significantly. We added more classes and more wheels till we couldn’t add any more. I don’t have any more room. I cannot add another wheel. Now we’re in a position where the studio cannot grow unless I have more space. That’s been a long time coming. I remember feeling like we needed to move back in 2010. And we’re still here, probably to our detriment at this point. We started to look for new space just before the pandemic. Now we’re actively looking.
For right now, we offer individual classes. If you want to paint your own pottery, it’s walk in, and then we have workshops. We’re trying to lean into fun workshop things like “Hocus Pocus Night” where we watch a movie and paint, because I can’t add more clay classes until I can get more space. I can do one off events, or I can go off site to work with groups. We’ll do fundraisers for schools and synagogues and churches. Sometimes people just want art enrichment; sometimes they want to build community; and sometimes they want a fundraiser. We did the mugs for Gerry’s Café. We silk screened their logo onto mugs, and then people from the community came in and finished them, which was really nice. Working with organizations in the community like that can be super rewarding and fun and I’d like to do more of it.
If you could go back in time and give advice to your 25 year old self, what would you tell her?
I would tell her to step into her power, step into her beliefs, and not be so scared. I would tell her that her life is not going to be anything like she thought it would be, but it will be beautiful.
When I was 26, I had surgery and bled out and I was in a coma for eight weeks. I had an 18 month old baby. I wasn’t who I am now. That changed my life. People say, “You’re so strong that you got through that and you got through cancer.” But it’s not strength. It’s perseverance. I had the choice to crawl into a ball and stay in the fetal position and retreat, or say “So what? Now what?” I chose to accept what was in front of me, be present, and find the next right thing.
Belle Curve Stories is about women navigating life with grit, grace, and growth. What do those three words mean to you?
Grit is pushing past what you feel are limitations and staying true to the path while navigating through whatever comes your way. Sometimes it takes grit to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Grace is knowing you’re not always right, admitting your mistakes, and realizing that other people may know more about something than you do or have a better solution. It’s having the willingness to apologize and make amends for the things you have not done correctly.
I have grown a lot since opening the studio and finding out I was pregnant with Greyson. Now I have a better work life balance, and I can be present for my kids. If I could go back, I would do things differently when my daughter was young. Growth is showing up for those people in your life who need you.
Sometimes you don’t see the growth but suddenly it’s there and you think, “Wow! I did get past that,” or “I did learn that!” It’s also working on yourself — working on who you are as an individual — to become a better version of you.
As told to and edited by Teresa Bellock and Sandra Ditore.
Andi Ruhl, 49, wife, mother, and artist, is the founder of Thrown Elements Pottery, in Arlington Heights, Illinois, a studio dedicated to art therapy and community. Established 16 years ago, Andi’s studio grew out of a personal love for clay, becoming a safe, welcoming space for individuals to explore artful expression.