As independent artists, it's always difficult to find enough funding to keep your work going. For Lisa Blayton, the generous grant she got from the South Carolina Arts Commission and the John and Susan Bennett Memorial Arts Fund was about more than the dollars.

“What was really important was that someone thought my art was special enough to support it,” she said.

Lisa Blayton studied under artists in Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Germany, and the United States under different grants she's received in the past. This grant she would use to travel to Nashville, Tennessee for a three-day confernece with 120 other artists. The four presenting artists all talked about and demonstrated thier skills in pottery and porcelain making. Blayton herself is a painter uses porcelain as her medium, making her own porcelain first. The confernece was called Altered Approach to Clay, and she would have not been able to attend had she not received the grant. 

Lisa's work is featured at Art & Soul, an artisan gallery in North Myrtle Beach. 

Photo Credit: Ettie Newlands, Carolina Forest Chronicle