Rose Tomaszewska, my indefatigable editor at riverrun, for her love and enthusiasm for this project, and the rest of the riverrun team for their tireless labor on behalf of my work.

My agent Victoria Sanders, and her right-hand women Bernadette Baker-Baughman and Jessica Spivey.

As an amateur artist (I can only claim an undergraduate minor in drawing, and even then, my own hand is drawn to the banal architecture of banks, hotels, and office buildings, and my years in ceramics have yet to result in the perfect bowl) but a professional-grade enthusiast, my work on this book has benefited from many hours of conversations with my husband, Ian, and our beautiful friends, especially David Brooks, Fabienne Lasserre, and Christine Manganaro.

This book, a love letter to the labor of artmaking, also owes a deep debt to all of the artists whose studios I have had the privilege of seeing in past years, either through friendship, the Maryland Institute College of Art, the Penland School of Crafts, or the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, New York, where I completed a bulk of the edits for the manuscript and acquired a great deal of priceless verisimilitude. In no good order, that especially includes: Eve Biddle, for speaking so openly about the development of TWP and her line about being young and stubborn. Denise Markonish of MassMoCA for her observations about the qualities that make up the difference between art and entertainment. Leya Evelyn for her remarks about the gesso. Wim Botha for showing us his “hot knife.” Ryan Ketchum for all of the conversations about his work in the old days. Nicole Dyer for the wonderful drawing on page 59 of this book. Lena Schmid for showing me the “Wild Hearts” video and telling me that “a third of American women watch this every day.” Katy McCarthy, August Thompson, Eman Alshawaf, Lucinda Dayhew, Will Hutnick, Allie Hankins for our excellent talks and for their friendship, and all of our fellow residents during the winter of 2017–18 at the Wassaic Project, founders Bowie Zunino and Jeff Barnett-Winsby, and staffers Jenny Morse, Paloma Hutton, and Jordan Hutton for their support and dedication to TWP. Special thanks to MICA for bringing us to Baltimore and all that you gave us, including the wonderful Ruth Toulson, the original blond Wednesday Addams, all of the faculty who so generously allowed me into their classrooms, including Sarah Barnes, Joshua Hebbert, and Robert Tillman, and those I have met through MICA and MICAZA, including Ledelle Moe, Jared Thorne, and David Southwood.