Did you know that AMCAW is managed and run by a large team of volunteers? All metal clay artists, they share their professional skills and energy to help AMCAW create and bring you more programs, tutorials, and fun. We thought you’d enjoy meeting some of these fabulous volunteers – and perhaps become a volunteer yourself!
Cindy Faulk believes she was born to become an artist. As a child, she was always drawing and painting. In fact, her parents dissuaded her from pursuing art as a career, as they thought it would be unprofitable.
During the pandemic Cindy started dabbling with metal clay. Before that, she was a metalsmithing hobbyist for about 15 years. As a result of the pandemic, the metalsmithing studio at which she had been taking classes closed in 2020, and she began focusing on metal clay exclusively, which she could work on at home at her kitchen table.
While in lockdown, she became a regular viewer of the free livestreams presented by Pam East during that time. One thing led to another, and now she has a dedicated studio at home for both metalsmithing and metal clay, along with what seems, she says, like more tools than any one person should ever own! Â
Cindy lives in a very small rural community in southwest Washington state in the Columbia River Gorge where opportunities for in-person metal clay classes are few and far between, so virtual and on-demand classes have been the source of much of her metal clay education. She has taken mostly project-based classes, incrementally increasing her skillset of techniques. Currently, she is focused on advanced jewelry design and is active in a six-month design workshop with Loretta Lam. Cindy has also just started learning to work with both polymer clay and introductory lapidary techniques in hopes of incorporating those skills with metal clay.
Since her parents discouraged art as a career, Cindy had an unusual career path, trying on several careers to find a substitute for art: first working as a radio announcer, then becoming a paralegal, then a court clerk, then moving on to become a court reporter which lasted for about 10 years before going back to school to earn a computer science degree. She then worked in various areas of Enterprise IT and program management until she retired in 2019. After retiring, she was finally free to pursue art.
It seems that each new class is Cindy’s new favorite class. She has only taken one in-person class, a PMC certification course with Michael Marx. However, she has also been fortunate enough to take virtual classes from other brilliant and accomplished artists such as Holly Gage, Pam East, Stephanie Chavez, Arlene Mornick, Jennifer Dins, Kris Kramer. Cindy has also taken many on-demand classes from Craftcast, and learns from the tutorials and virtual guild meetings at AMCAW.
Cindy joined AMCAW in 2019 and began volunteering shortly thereafter, with a break during a time when she left to care for her husband who had cancer, then returning a year or two later. She was initially inspired to volunteer by a friend she’d met online in different virtual metal clay classes, Laura Roehl, who was an AMCAW volunteer and had encouraged her to volunteer also.
The knowledge and education Cindy has received as a result of volunteering is what she believes is the best thing about being a volunteer. As a volunteer on the education committee, she is a contributing content creator, which involves research and interviewing other artists. She gets to speak with artists one-on-one that she would not ordinarily have had the opportunity to speak with. She also expands her own knowledge base by pushing herself to do the research to fill in the gaps of content she is creating, which she might not have done otherwise. As an added bonus, she gets to work alongside a very inspiring, talented, and accomplished group of artists on the education committee.
Cindy’s website is currently under construction. She sells work on consignment and at local and regional craft shows under the name Smilestone Jewelry.
