Liz Sibley Fletcher’s story of becoming an artist isn’t all that uncommon. She wanted to go to art school. Her parents wanted her to take a more traditional college route, so she could have a good job and a better future.
“My father thought art was frivolous,” Fletcher said.
So she did it her parents’ way. Fletcher went to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and completed her freshman year. She never went back.
“It wasn’t my life to go that way,” she said.
Growing up in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Fletcher was immersed in the arts. Her grandmother rented to artists who wanted to live in the seaside town for the summer months. Everywhere she looked the arts were inspiring her creativity and fostering a passion that had to be explored.
“It was just in the air,” Fletcher said of the warmest months of the year. “The place was swarming with artists.”
Fletcher didn’t know exactly what kind of artist she wanted to be, but that urge for creativity was too strong to ignore.
“I just knew I wanted to be an artist,” she said.
It led to Massachusetts College of Art, where she got involved with the clay program.
“It was really experimental at the time,” Fletcher said. “It was just the right time to go into it.”
And go into it she did. There was no question when she felt that clay between her hands that she had found her calling. She spent a lot of time in the studio during her $200-a-semester art school education, but upon graduation in 1970, Fletcher and her husband Garth knew it was time to find some land, find a place to settle down.
The coast was too expensive, so they set their sights on north of Boston, leading to places like Shirley and Pepperell. Then a realtor said they should look at Hollis. That led to a 65-acre property in Mason that had no house, three cellar holes and a logging road that led to the perfect spot to build a life.
Fletcher said they put a $5,000 down payment for the mortgage on the land and spent three years building the house. It’s been 47 years since they moved in.
Very soon after moving in, they built a brick kiln just steps from where Fletcher has her studio, and if that thing could tell stories it would share moments from a career that has produced works that people from the world over have seen.
The thing about clay was that Fletcher “could make functional things and make enough to earn a living.” So she made mugs, goblets and jars, and “people really loved the mugs I made.”
But as Fletcher puts it “I also wanted to make weird things.”
She began putting two creatures together to make one and her creativity just went from there. Her work is unique and needs to be seen to be truly appreciated. There’s a sculpture garden on her property, centered around an out building that is known as The Pilot House, which houses the steering wheel from her father’s fishing boat. An old trailer near by and her home-based studio are filled with her works, too many to have a permanent home of their own on their Mason land.
“I want to make things I hadn’t seen before, that could express my thoughts,” Fletcher said.
She has shown in sculpture gardens all over the New England area and has been a juried member of the League of NH Craftsmen since 1975.
She’s made two bear heads known as Passaconaway and Wonalancet, named after father and son sachems with the Penacook People, both vastly different to showcase their different historical accounts. There’s “Gathering Handbasket”, showing a multitude of hands in different gestures and shades of skin – gentle hands, grasping hands, fists. It’s Fletcher’s look at how so many humans are involved in shaping this world, each one taking up to 45 minutes because “I knew I wanted to make them in different ways,” she said. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of the art she’s created in the comforts of her home for close to 50 years.
What gives Fletcher a sense of excitement is the reaction that comes from one of her pieces – knowing full well that she won’t see but a mere fraction of them.
“You never know what people are going to think about it,” Fletcher said.
But Fletcher is also the kind of artist that likes to share her knowledge, which is why she got into teaching. She taught her craft at the Sharon Arts Center and the Peterborough Art Academy. She’s saddened by the closing of Sharon Arts, as she found a true value in its presence, providing a place for people of all ages to foster their creativity.
“It’s such a loss,” she said.
The creative process is still something that gets Fletcher up at her table just about every day. What starts as a lump of clay could turn into anything. Some of her bigger pieces take a couple of weeks of slowly working the clay in just such a way, all the while with a vision of the final product in her head. She only fires up the propane kiln once or twice a year. She doesn’t work at the pace she used to, but “I feel more free now. It’s like what do I want to do?” she said.
The earlier years on their Mason property were not the easiest when it came to luxuries. They used USDA pamphlets on house building to first construct a shed and then slowly built the house over three years. They didn’t have electricity or a phone line, using propane for lights and the refrigerator, wood for heat and a phone booth in Greenville to make calls.
But she and Garth loved the woods and the privacy it gave them.
“The forest was a magical thing to us,” she said.
Fletcher always loved the natural world and the role conservation played in it. That’s why she joined the Mason Conservation Commission is 1984. She’s proud of the work she’s been a part of, helping to keep her adopted hometown in line with the historic and rural nature that has made it a wonderful place to live over the last four-plus decades.
She could have left the volunteer post at any point over the years, but never saw a reason to.
“I think of it as a lifelong job,” she said. And judging by the fact she’s the longest standing member, it appears she means it. She has a masters in resource management from Antioch and helped found the Mason Energy Commission in 2018 and held a part time job with the Nashua River Watershed.
“I wanted to know more about the environment,” she said.
Now while her time at Swarthmore didn’t quite go as her parents had hoped, it wasn’t a total loss – Fletcher did after all meet Garth there, while the two worked in the school cafeteria. They were married in 1966 and have two children. Their daughter Naomi and only grandchild live in Gloucester, so she spends a fair amount of time going there. She even got to do an artist residency this summer in the place where her creative spirit first emerged and started a project of a local quarry that is still finding its shape. Their son Devan lives in Mason, deciding to stay close to home.
Fletcher knew that Mason property would be the perfect spot to combine her love of nature and art. It’s totally different than where she grew up, but that was the point. If she wanted that feel of an artist community, she could go back to Gloucester anytime. But being able to immerse herself in her work, surrounded by nothing but the sounds of the forests as interruption, it’s been a pretty amazing place to let those creative juices flow.