Mary Shaffer talks about identifying herself as a sculptor. Oral history interview with Mary Shaffer by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, March 21, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:04.

Mary Shaffer: I think of myself as a sculptor. I didn’t grow up through the craft. I wasn’t taught a craft. I wasn’t taught how to blow glass or work with glass. I was a painter—a painting student, and studied with different painters in my early life, and that’s what I studied at RISD was painting and illustration. So I’ve always thought of myself as an artist, not a craftsperson, and so I think of myself as a sculptor and people say, ‘Oh, you’re a glass sculptor,’ which is fine with me, because I’m known for developing midair slumping, and the thing is that I—it was my only tangible work because I worked in conceptual art, my work would be put up, put in a box and it would not be visible. So the only tangible work I made was the glass work. That’s why a lot of people think of me as a glass artist, because that was the tangible work.