The Roanoker - February 2014 - 35

give me a platform. Even Pure Barre is about inspiring
people to be what they can be."
And she knows about that.

THE ART OF ADJUSTMENT
When Paul Clements and Bea Gutierrez-Clements
were married nearly two years ago, they had been living in their combined downtown studio - a building
not quite Home-Tour quality - for a while. They wanted
something new, something that would make a statement and require love and care. They settled on a 1790s
log cabin in Bedford county that was structurally sound
and would offer the challenges of an old house - a very
old house.
Their challenges were many and were more than just
the new/old house. Clements was building a strong and
diverse business based upon his blown glass and wood
sculptures and lighting fixtures and Gutierrez-Clements, trained as an agricultural engineer in her native
Canary Islands, had met Paul at Penland in Western
North Carolina. Each was involved in art there: she as
a student, he as a teacher's assistant. She was refining
her pottery technique, and he was both learning and
helping a veteran teacher at the school.
Theirs was an instant attraction between two international travelers who loved art and felt the strength
of spiritual convictions. Clements is a native of Lynchburg who attended Virginia Episcopal School, but had
no interest in traditional college (he had three semesters at the Appalachian Center for Crafts and some
individual instruction). He pursued his art. Meanwhile,
Gutierrez-Clements re-discovered her interest in pottery (and learned to teach yoga).
"I had it in me," she says. At 28 (she's 35 now; he's
37), she was an apprentice potter. Today, her work is
often considered high-end, as is Paul's.
Because Gutierrez-Clements only recently received
her green card, her sales are fairly new. Clements, however, has a history and it is impressive: Centra Health,
the University of Tennessee, among the large institutions where he has done installations, and a list of individual clients who love his work.
The cabin represented both a challenge and a relief.
"Living and working in one place has both benefits
and a down side," says Clements. "You can't leave work
and go home. We have come to enjoy the transition.
You have to know when to cut each off." They also represented two different types of intense work, one for
earning a living, the other for simply living.
Gutierrez-Clements is interested, she says, "In
making an impact" with her "hand-made objects."
She wants to find galleries to carry her pots and to sell
them online.
It's a matter of slow build, but the big steps - the big
adjustments - seem to be passing quickly.
THE

R OANOKER.COM

JUST VISITING
The kids are all off to college, the career and the marriage are stable and here comes opportunity knocking
- no, pounding - on the front door. To go or to stay?
Going means uprooting, jettisoning a stable job and
learning a whole new routine, adjusting work habits,
making friends. All that. The reward? Doing it.
So, here was Carrie Brown, working on her sixth
novel for an upscale publisher, teaching kids to write
at Sweet Briar College in Lynchburg (where her husband for all these decades also teaches and also writes
fiction), with a life full of predictability, friends, a
good home, kids who make her happy.
Now going 70 miles away to become a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing (she can't help
but laugh and comment about the "distinguished"
part), to live full-time by herself in a small cottage at
another women's college. And she's feeling mightily
fortunate for the opportunity, adjustments and the
lack of guarantees she can be re-hired at Sweet Briar
be damned.
Brown left a 12-year newspaper career in Maryland when her husband (John Gregory Brown) published his first novel and landed a gig at Sweet Briar
nearly 20 years ago. A series of circumstances led her
to a creative writing master's degree at UVa and her
own teaching spot at Sweet Briar. She'd never written a word of fiction before auditing the legendary
George Garrett's class at Virginia, then deciding to
really study, with his prompting. She was a natural.
"It changed my life," she says.
She has six novels with her name on the cover (including the latest, "The Last First Day," and another
she's finishing, "The Stargazer's Sister"). That equates
to one full academic year and a few at months at Hollins and two novels. It would appear to be a good
career move.
Except that she gets lonely occasionally. College
campuses, for all the busy-ness and interactivity, are
not always great places for single teachers to land and
during the week, Brown lives the single life. She goes
back to her other life in Lynchburg most weekends. "I
miss [her husband] more than he misses me, I think,"
she says, smiling.
The isolation and solitude, however, have their own
advantage: productivity of the novel writer. "I have no
trouble keeping occupied," says Brown, "but I don't
want to live apart forever. I am having a wonderful
time, I love the students, and I've written a ton here.
My production level had declined at Sweet Briar."
That's the fat-and-happy part (though "fat" would
hardly be a descriptor for Brown).
"I really admire the [writing] program at Hollins.
The MFA program [in which she teaches] has a storied
reputation." And hers is growing, as well. I
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

http://www.THEROANOKER.COM

The Roanoker - February 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Roanoker - February 2014