A Creative Environment, Grandmothers, Alone Time, and Aging:

Interview with Jeanne Steiner

Photo credit Heather Oelklaus

This week you get to hear from my favorite fellow creator, my mom Jeanne Steiner. In addition to being a deeply involved and caring mother, grandmother, wife, and sister, she has been a dedicated artist for over 50 years, producing exquisite and labor-intensive handwoven work. She taught fiber art at Colorado College for 36 years, including directing its Arts & Crafts program. Her students loved her program so much they lined up in the wee morning hours to sign up for classes.  

I interviewed my mom on her 73^rd birthday and had the special joy of learning things I never knew before about someone I know so well.

Q.   Happy birthday today! Do you mind if I share your age?

Of course. I love it that I’m 73, I do. I don’t think I was ever really chagrined over my age. I never said, “Oh no, I’m 60.”

Q.   Why is that?

Because I love getting freer and freer in myself. I feel freer now to say things that are a little outrageous. I feel freer to question things I don’t know rather than pretend that I know because it’s so stupid not to know. I’m better at that and don’t beat myself up over not knowing stuff.

Q.   Ack, I still beat myself up way too often for what I don’t know.

That’s something that has come with age, not at 40.

Q.   Why has age helped?

Because of societal expectations. As an old person, there are none. I’m pretty invisible. The more invisible I get to society, the better. My younger friend Heather [a close artist friend from Colorado College] would rail against it because I’m a grey-haired lady, and the students would let doors close behind them and slam in my face. And I just always thought, I don’t care that they don’t hold the door open for me. I’m in no hurry, and they seem to be in a big one!

Oh, and then age made me less self-conscious. I didn’t have to wear certain clothes to be professional. The older I got, I remember saying to myself getting dressed, “Nobody is looking at me, so I’m just going to wear what’s comfortable.” It’s so freeing because I have a sister who is a clothes person. Clothes were always really important to my mother and my sister. They weren’t so important to me, but I thought maybe they should be. Then I got to give that all up, and that’s so nice.

And it was nice to work with younger people, college aged, because they seriously didn’t look at me. They wanted to come in my office and spill out their problems, and I was a listening ear. They weren’t looking at me as a physical being. They could come in and confide in me, and I would listen to them. I didn’t really have advice. They just needed someone to listen and cry with. They’d close the door, you know, and just cry. And I felt for them. They were darling people. And it’s hard to go through all that. At that age, they were all sort of looking for a life partner, especially as they got a little closer to graduation. There was a sort of expectation that you find your partner in college; they grew up with that kind of idea. If it wasn’t happening for them, that could be very distressing.

Q.   Why do you think they came to you?

I was an accepting character. I never yelled or had a whole bunch of rules. I was accommodating to their needs. Anyone who came with a craft idea, I worked hard to get that going for them. I was calm. And I had a good office. They could come in and perch on my little stool and close the doors. They knew they could trust me. I wasn’t going to be judgmental or tell them at all what to do. People appreciate that. They just want to talk and figure it out themselves and express emotion.

I think I did that somewhat with you. But it helped that I wasn’t their mother. I could just listen. With you, I was embroiled. I wanted so much to help. With my students, I could stand back and listen and know that was enough help. Then they’d go away.

And I remember when I became, instead of a mother figure, a grandma figure to them. That was a big shift, and those are most of the students I’m remembering. You know, this was in my later 50s and 60s. I worked there until I was 69. They started seeing me as a grandparent, and it really worked well for me.

Being a grandma is really great. I hope you get to be one.

Q.   Tell me more about that.

Well, you know how I liked them to come in and bare their souls and then leave? Well, that’s a grandmother. I get to enjoy and not make the big decisions. The responsibility of all that weighed heavy on me. You know that. I felt very responsible, and I wanted to do a good job. And with this, oh, I just get to enjoy. I’m not going to wreck her. Especially as she gets older, oh my God the interaction is just delightful. And she can entertain herself some, and I get to watch her do it.

Q.   Being that listening ear, where you always that way?

Yes. I was not the talker or the entertainer. I sit back and listen. Now I’m more comfortable with myself in that. I don’t feel like I have to be a certain way anymore.

Q.   Do you think the world embraces your way more in older age?

Yes the world does, but plus I do in my own self. I am me, and I really like that, actually, I really like that. I can create my own work, and I can treat it the way I want to treat it. And I can live with your dad the way I want to live with him.

Q.   How so?

Well, in harmony. You know, when we did that enneagram test, it said basically, I’m a peace-loving person, and it shows in how I like to live. Your dad and I have that in common.

Q.   What are the most significant relationships you’ve had with people older than you?

My two grandmothers were just it for me. And it’s interesting, I never remember them teaching. I just remember that they went about their days in their homes with peace and calm and good cheer. Just lovely beings who didn’t force anything, both of them. I just absorbed all of that and loved it.

Sometimes you read a book and are like, Holy crap, the ways family interact and the things that can happen in a family can be so violent and terrible. And I never had to experience that. Wow, what a privilege I had.

It’s not like either one of my grandmas hugged us so much or said I love you. They were just happy in their lives.

Q.   What did you take away from those relationships?  

I parented more like my Grandma Logan, I think. She liked to do for others, like cooking all the time. That was her way of showing love.

Grandma Schenk was a real creative being. She always tried to get Ann [my older sister] to do creative projects, and Ann was miserable. She didn’t try with me because she was discouraged by Ann, which is too bad because I would have loved it. She was a woman who smiled big all the time. She had a workshop on the back porch with her sewing machine. She gardened flowers and vegetables.  

They both made a really nice home environment. And there was a way about them that was temperate; it had a calming influence on the whole household.

Q.   My relationship with both my grandmas too was so entangled with my relationships with the places they lived. I loved those environments.

Yes, you have to really reflect on that. Because we make our environments; they don’t just happen. Your dad and I, we are both homebodies; we value home. And our parents and grandparents did that. People grow up without that value instilled in them. I wasn’t told to do it or how. It just seeps into you, the desire for that.

I really worked hard at school on the environment. I wanted the environment in [the Colorado College] Arts & Crafts Program to be calm, accepting, a place where there were things you got to do with your own two hands.

Q.   Did it become what you wanted?

Oh yes. I loved it, and the students loved it.

Q.   Circling back a bit, I love your focus on your grandmas’ ways of being rather than anything they said or did.

Yes, you absorb atmosphere as a kid. They didn’t focus on me; I just always felt very accepted. Of course, I had an older sister too who took a lot of the focus. And that was fine with me. That was really good for me actually.

Q.   How so?

I don’t think I ever felt I needed more attention. It’s the same way I feel now: Leave me alone! I need a lot of time.

I read a quote once, I was probably in my 40s, that said, “You have to have a calm environment to really be creative.” You know, it can’t be chaos to get to your creativity. And I thought that was so true. It was like a revelation to me. I always wanted that. And in my family, it was hard to be alone with four siblings. Mom and dad were really calm, but my two brothers weren’t. I remember so well when I got a room of my own; it was in fifth grade after we moved to Colorado. Oh, I was over the moon. I could close the door!

Q.   What did you like to do back then?

I was fascinated with art history books. I always loved art in school. And when I got my own room, I had a place that I could draw. It was very important for me to be private with my work. It still is.

Q.   Say more about the importance of that.

Interruption startles me. I’m easily startled. A lot of people aren’t, but I really am.

Q.   I am too. I often jump totally out of my chair.

Yes! And make some kind of awful sound.

Q.   And then there’s the privacy around what you are making.

Yes, I am very sensitive to comments. That’s why I had a hard time weaving anything at [Colorado College]. Either the students would walk by and not pay any attention, or they would walk by and make a comment about what they saw. I didn’t want either one of those. Especially when I’m in the middle of my work, or any time really. It’s hard. And then it flavors it for me. Their opinion flavors how I see it.

Q.   Did that change over time, or was it always the same?

It was consistent, but I get more privacy now because I’m not teaching anymore. I love weaving at home. And now I get that every day.

I think creativity is a fascinating thing, to even understand it in your own self, and then what you can improve on to let it flow better.

I think it’s so much environment. You set yourself up for it to be promoted in you. So I would say I have spent most of my life creating a studio where I can do my best work. I remember this idea of A Room of One’s Own. A Virginia Woolf idea, I think, and boy I just wanted that. You can’t flow with a whole bunch of activity all around you. At least I can’t.

When your dad and I got married, I was hell-bent to get a house, because I wanted an art studio. That’s all I wanted. I had to give it up when I left college. I didn’t see that coming. You need a studio as an artist.

Isabel Allende has a whole house that is her writing studio. She goes out there, now for a half day at a time. She used to do a full day of no interruptions, of no phones, no nothing. Nobody came out there; it was not allowed. I love that idea.

Now not every artist is going to think the same thing, but I think many of us do.

Q.   I’ve had that desire for a long time. A room of my own to write in—just small and clean and mine, with a long view out.

In your 40s, you are going to get it.

Q.   So what’s in the background really matters?

I feel like I’ve worked towards it my whole life. Since I’ve learned to weave, I’ve had a loom, but it’s been in the living room, or crammed somewhere. But to have that space that is really mine. This studio I have now is really the best I’ve had.

Q.   How does that affect your work?

Oh, I’m just so happy with it. It affects my work in that I don’t feel the urgency anymore. I can let that go and just be. Heather and I read something about puttering in the studio. It’s so rewarding. And it’s so necessary to creative effort to be able to putter in your space so there’s no pressure. The pressure does not help me.

Q.   Me neither. It’s like, what can I do to relieve it?

I’ve found this: All I have to do is start. I don’t have to have all the plans for what this piece is going to be. In fact, it’s more conducive to my creative self to just start. I don’t have to decide much of anything except the size. I can start on it, and it just flows from there. And that’s surprising for me. Before, I always had pieces all planned out.

Q.   Until when?

I think until I retired. When I retired and had so much time in here, I felt differently about planning. I might start off with an idea, but then I get to respond to what I’m seeing. If there’s such a firm plan, you can’t really do that so much. And I think my work has gotten better because of that. I feel like it’s a privilege. Because I don’t have to weave to sell it. I get to just create it in my own time. What a privilege, no one gets to do that until you are 73.

There’s a different impetus when you are young, and I love this so much more. To not have the expectations of what it will become or be. I don’t have to have that.

Of course, I have your dad taking care of my every need. He shops; he cooks. On my own, I would never eat this well. It’s absolutely wonderful. I don’t take that for granted. Well, I probably do take it for granted more than I think.

It's such a privilege to be able to choose what we eat, isn’t it? We lose sight of that, but many people in the world don’t get that choice. I love reading to be able to expand my world view about things like that.

Q.   Oh, me too. Tell me more about your relationship with creativity. How did it start if you remember, and how did it change over time?

In elementary school, I have this distinct memory from second or third grade, do you want to hear? Our neighbor Sara McElrath had four of us siblings do a contest writing our names in cursive, and she was going to jury it. I remember squirreling away. I traced those letters around in really solid crayon colors. So a gold stripe was around the whole thing and a blue stripe, all the way out to the edge. Oh, I loved it, and I got the prize. And I guess I just enjoyed that. I don’t even remember what my brothers and sisters did. What a strange idea she had!

Q.   It sounds like an invitation.

Yes, it was my first invitation I can remember to create.

Then in high school, I remember I decided it was either art or math. And I didn’t know which one because I was very good at math, if you could believe that. And I loved art. I read The Agony and the Ecstasy about Michelangelo in fifth or sixth grade. Mom and dad got me that big book, and I pored over it, I loved it so much. I still have it. That creative energy, I just related to it.

So when I got to college, my freshman year, I took a calculus class and flunked it. Seriously, I had no idea what calculus was about. So I said, I guess it’s going to be art.

Another art project in elementary school, I just remembered. It was so instrumental to me. We got to make those death masks.

Q.   What’s a death mask?

They call it that I think because you can die if the nose holes aren’t right. They put Vaseline all over your face, then plaster of Paris that you wet like a cast. Then you pull it off when it is somewhat dry. You sand and sand and then get to paint. I think I sanded my mask for two full days. Oh, it was the best week of my life. I loved working on that thing.  

Q.   So it’s the working you remember, not the finished product?

Yes, oh yes, I don’t even remember what it looked like. That’s how I am with weaving too. It’s not the finished project. That’s not why I do it.

Q.   If your elementary school self could tell you something today, what would it be?

Just go with it, go with what you like. Look at me, I love this death mask! Oh, I just thought our teacher was marvelous that she let us do that.

Q.   Do you feel like you ever strayed too far from that realization?

No, I think I built on it. That was my first realization of how to be in a way that was engrossing to me. Books are like that to me too. You are in it; you are engrossed. And it’s a solitary endeavor. I like solitary endeavors.

Do you want to know what I would say to my 40-year-old self?

Q.   Yes, I do!

Slow down and enjoy these days, because look and they are gone. Now I don’t have you and Ben at home; I don’t have your voices here.

And nothing needs to be done so quickly. It just doesn’t need to. And if something doesn’t get done, alright, it will probably be there tomorrow.

Q.   The universe seems to be delivering that message to me in droves these days.

It’s so remarkable to me that I keep having to learn the same damn things. Like how important the quality of food that I put in my mouth is. What? I have to keep relearning that? Good God. How many times? I don’t know, I guess continual relearning is part of life.

Q.   Do you feel like your 40-year-old self was too busy?

I feel like my 40-year-old self was always looking forward to next day, the next time. I mean I did my fair share of enjoying too. But I was anxious for the next.

But then again, at that point, you don’t know how much life you have. Now I know that I have at least 73 years.

Q.   In what ways are you becoming the person your younger self needed, if that resonates with you? 

Yes, it does. By being more accepting of myself and exactly who I am. And not just accepting, but really liking it. I really like to be me. And I don’t think I knew that I would.

It’s hard when you have so many outside influences. And see, mine have shrunk, and I like that. I like to have them shrink. The outside influences pulled me into comparing.

Q.   Your younger self needed more boundaries?

Yes, I could have benefitted from this sort of attitude. But I don’t know if I could have had it back then. Maybe you can’t. There’s something about living that shows you things. You can’t just intellectually know them and have them. You have to live it.

That’s what I think about with my grandmothers. There wasn’t anything intellectual they bestowed. You could just see it in them, this satisfaction in them being them.

Q.   That’s so beautiful. I see that in you too.

Yeah, don’t you think it is becoming more and more?

Q.   Yes.

Oh good. I feel it—but you never know what is coming out.