Tammy Gentuso shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Hi Tammy, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to share your story, experiences and insights with our readers. Let’s jump right in with an interesting one: Have any recent moments made you laugh or feel proud?
My current collection (Story Time: A Collection of Kids’ Lit-Themed Sculptures) is on display at the gallery here on the Clay Lady’s Campus in Nashville where I have my studio.
As I was leaving one day last week, the artist who was manning the gallery that day stopped me to say that it had been a fun day as she watched children enter the exhibit of kids’ literature-themed sculptures, be drawn in by the bright colors, and then begin to recognize children’s book characters from books they had read. Then she said it was even more touching to see adults walk into the space and stop. She said she could watch them relive part of their childhood as they saw the sculptures.
THAT is part of why I am on the current voyage with this series of sculptures.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Hello! I’m Tammy Gentuso, and I have the incredible opportunity to work full-time as a clay artist/sculptor on the Clay Lady’s Campus in Nashville, TN, where I’ve been for over fifteen years. Trained as a registered nurse, I stepped away from nursing to raise our family, three sons of whom I am quite proud. As the kids got older, I began working as a photojournalist for a decade before coming to the Clay Campus.
My life story shapes my brand. By that I mean that many of the difficulties — and we all eventually face difficulties — my family and I have faced have shaped my responses to the world, and that response has shaped my brand. When faced with stubborn, difficult life obstacles or puzzles, I have found it essential to respond with a peaceful mind, kind actions, and a happy heart. I want my art to make you smile and recall that there IS good in the world! So there you have it: my happy, colorful, whimsical art.
Okay, so here’s a deep one: What was your earliest memory of feeling powerful?
I have several instances of feeling powerful as a child, but I want to share the one that still makes me pause. As a little one, I was more than a little stubborn and independent. Middle childhood was filled with lots of action — climbing trees, jumping from the rooftop, zipping along a homemade zipline from the neighbor’s third story down to a pile of leaves — my life was about tackling the next challenge. The most enjoyable of these was my bike. Scooting out the upstairs bathroom window, tiptoeing over the roof above mom and dad’s bedroom, climbing down the ham radio tower outside their bedroom windows, and then silently pedaling my bicycle off into the dark for a nighttime ride was the ultimate power trip for 12-13-14-year-old me. It was a different time, a small town, and I was probably dealing with some degree of ADHD, but it was that freedom from restraint that left me feeling deeply powerful.
What have been the defining wounds of your life—and how have you healed them?
My defining wounds are twofold: health and mental illness.
I was very athletic throughout my childhood and youth, and enjoyed league volleyball and softball as an adult well into my 40s; however, lupus (SLE) reared its ugly head in 1996 when the youngest of our three sons was a year old. With a husband who was a doctor, and with my training as a nurse, we simply pushed ourselves to tackle this obstacle with knowledge and determination — and eventually, acceptance of the limitations it demanded. I learned to slow down when my lupus flared. Our little family found a new norm, and all was well (if not a bit chaotic) with little boys running hither and yon!
Around that time, we spent almost a year in Québec and Belgium, learning to speak French and studying tropical medicine, and then moved to Côte d’Ivoire to work in a small mission hospital in the bush. We embraced the slower pace at home for me and the boys, the energy-zapping pace at work for hubby, and the kind, knowledgeable, and precious people of West Africa with our whole hearts… until civil unrest began to bubble up around us. Sensing a transition in our future, we set out to equip and staff our little bush hospital in the eventuality that we would be forced to leave. Sadly, this came to pass, and we found ourselves stateside, settling back in Nashville, where we had friends and a church home.
Fast-forward a decade, and I began experiencing symptoms while running the bases in softball. It took several provisional diagnoses, a battery of tests, a host of specialists, and a couple of years before we learned that my wacked out immune system was attacking my heart and I had heart failure. With a plethora of meds and appointments and cardiac-specific exercises, we found a new normal.
Now enters the second challenge: the mental health challenges of one of our sons. Our middle son — likely on the autism spectrum with his number, artistic, and language abilities, though that wasn’t really acknowledged in those days — developed severe schizophrenia.
This tried our family in ways I find hard to share, though if you drop by the studio one day, maybe we can talk over a cuppa tea?
Anyway, we learned to cope with the difficulties that come with such a diagnosis, and when he and his then wife had a baby, we realized that it was very likely that we’d be “grandparenting” that sweet, little bundle of joy should her parents falter. By the time she was a year and a half old, she was in our permanent custody, and I was once again chasing a toddler and giggling over rainbows and Peppa Pig! So much joy and happiness and fun, and though we were utterly exhausted by day’s end, what a wonder to experience early childhood with the wisdom of having been there before, and the understanding of how quickly each phase passes. I wouldn’t trade this for all the money in the world.
Let me take a moment here to share my biggest secret to success: my hubby. To say that he is a supportive spouse would be like saying the Taj Mahal is cute. At every intersection of our lives, he has seen the needs and has stepped in to help. The ebb and flow of autoimmune disease means there are times when he does all the laundry, dishes and sweeping as well as his outside work around the home; and there are other times when I shoo him out of the kitchen! All this and without bitterness or anger or grumbling. My heart is filled with thankfulness.
So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. What truths are so foundational in your life that you rarely articulate them?
Oh this is a fun question! What truths are so foundational…
1. I can do (almost) anything — given time and energy, I can figure out how to do ALMOST anything I set my mind to do.
2. God is.
God is good. God is kind. God is love.
God is not the church. God is not one specific theology or religion.
God is so much more than my human mind can describe, understand or even imagine.
3. You reap what you sow (well, I did articulate this one a fair number of times when our kids were younger haha).
4. Stay faithful to what you are called to do — even when you’ve lost your excitement. With continued efforts, that passion returns, be it a project or a relationship.
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. What do you understand deeply that most people don’t?
I hesitate to speak of age as younger generations do exactly what I did when I was young — give a hard pass, swipe right, keep on going when it comes to hearing older people share their experiences or insights; however, I will do so this one time.
In my early sixties, I am struck anew by how fleeting life is. It may seem like you have eternity to accomplish all of those things, but you turn around and decades have gone by while you were distracted.
That is it. Time flies, don’t get caught still in your PJs. Simple as that!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://studiogentuso.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tammygentuso/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tsgentuso
Image Credits
All images taken by me, Tamara Gentuso
