(In this video Art Access Assistant Director Sheryl Gillilan discusses the pleasures and philosophies of her work at the non-profit.)

Most would-be artists face it: the fork in the road, one path leading to the pursuit of artistic passion (and likely financial turmoil and various renunciations), the other to a (not always) less-demanding but certainly more respectable and stable occupation. A very small minority of those that take the first path are lucky enough to stay on it. In the second group, the lucky ones are those, like Sheryl Gillilan, for whom the forked paths eventually merge.

Gillilan is the Assistant Director of Art Access/VSA Utah, the Salt Lake-headquartered non-profit that “provides equal opportunities to inclusive arts programs for Utahns with disabilities and those with limited access to the arts.” Stop in the offices/gallery while she’s there and you’ll quickly learn she has a sharp mind, quick with both an incisive comment and convivial laugh. Her life-long interest in fiber arts is evidenced by one of her hand-made art quilts that hangs on the wall behind her desk. But listen to her discuss her work at Art Access and it is obvious that what she does to serve the underserved in Utah is as much a passion as anything she creates in her home studio.

Gillilan grew up in Salt Lake with her two brothers under the “Leave-It-To-Beaver” gaze of their Midwestern parents. The first experience that opened her eyes to a world where all is not perfect came when she went abroad as a foreign exchange student in her senior year in high school. She went to the Philippines, “back when Ferdinand Marcos was the dictator and military guys walked around freely with machine guns.” The Philippines taught her two important things about Americans. “I really figured out that most Americans have relatively cushy lives. I’m eternally grateful that I have food in my fridge, can get hot water on demand, and am able to voice my opinion about our government without fear of deadly retribution. I also figured out that a lot of Americans aren’t really as generous as we would like to believe. Filipinos share everything with you, even when they don’t have that much themselves.”

Gillilan wasn’t home from the Philippines long before she left again — for Lewis and Clark College in Portland. Here she following a long-time passion for art by taking a number of art classes. But she majored in psychology, and her first job after graduation was working for a residential facility for severely emotionally disturbed children. “They were great kids who managed to land at the bottom of the heap because their parents and their lives were so unstable,” she says. Compared to her own upbringing it was “shocking to me to see how damaged kids could be at such a young age.”

As she pondered graduate school she was torn between following her continuing interest in textiles — her junior year at Lewis and Clark she spent five months living in Ireland and researching Aran knitting — and her desire to commit herself to community service. The offer of a scholarship to Bryn Mawr College’s School of Social Work and Social Service outside of Philadelphia decided which fork she would take.

In graduate school Gillilan came to realize that community service is also about political activism. She interned with a non-profit and started a task force to deal with elder abuse. She remembers hearing Angela Davis speak on political activism: “She said she was not any different from anyone listening to her in the audience, but that she had chosen to act on her passions and that had set her apart from others. Her example has encouraged me many times to speak up about circumstances I believe can be better and to offer to work on improving them.” Because she came to understand that policy plays a critical role in determining the quality of lives of the underserved, Gillilan earned a second master’s degree in law and social policy.

When she returned to Salt Lake her political training was put to good use: she worked for Salt Lake Mayor Palmer DePaulis as a budget and policy analyst. “It was a bird’s eye position that allowed me to see the inner workings of a city and to witness the schizophrenic actions of citizens who thought they deserved certain services but shouldn’t have to pay for them – a contradiction I still don’t understand.” While working with different community groups she became convinced that Margaret Mead was right when she said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

With three degrees under her belt and plenty of experience in community service Gillilan found herself facing a new fork in the road: family. She put her career on hold for a decade while she raised her children, a time which had the added benefit of allowing her to rediscover her artistic path. “I was somewhat interested in bed quilts, but my eyes really got opened when I saw what other artists were doing with quilts on walls.” She began making quilts, exhibiting them, and even winning awards for her work.

In 2004 Gillilan decided to reenter the workforce. A friend had told her that the person doing the finances at Art Access had just left and there was a full-time position available. “I walked in the door to say hello and started working for Art Access a couple of weeks later. Over the last 6 ½ years my job has morphed multiple times and I’ve been able to embrace lots of new opportunities.” Those opportunities bring her into contact with a variety of Utah artists, working with them to further their skills and put on exhibitions.

Her return to work hasn’t dulled her artistic ambitions, and she continues to quilt, working in two south-facing rooms in the upstairs of her home. “One room has piles of fabrics I’ve collected over the years and the other has my sewing machine, a design wall, and a big cutting table.”

Gillilan says it took her a long time to consider herself an artist, “not because I work with fabric and that’s considered ‘crafty,’ but because I don’t have an art degree. It always seemed kind of pretentious to compare myself with classically trained painters or sculptors.” She thought degreed artists knew exactly what they were doing, executing their works with little effort. “Now that I’ve seen behind the curtain, however, I understand that being an artist is about exploring new ideas, pushing a medium to ever expanding limits, and having a deep passion for creation. It’s also an incredible amount of hard work.”

“A quilt has to live for a long time in my head before it ever gets made,” she says. “And then, of course, it takes on a life of its own when it’s being created and I’m never quite sure what I’ll end up with.” For bed quilts she uses a sewing machine, but her art quilts are made “almost” entirely by hand. “The design process and choosing the right fabrics is intense and sometimes frustrating, but the hand stitching is quite Zen-like. My day-to-day life is really fast paced, so sitting down by the fire in my living room and working with just a needle and thread is the perfect antidote.”

The fast pace of Gillilan’s work load keeps her busy but she’s eager to take on even more challenges. Since Art Access Executive Director Ruth Lubbers is planning on retiring this year Gillilan has let the organization’s board know that heading the organization is a path she’d like to pursue. “Art Access is really the ideal place for me to work because it melds my community service passion with my art passion. I mean, really, if you had told me years ago that I wouldn’t have to choose between my two life-long interests and could pursue them both at the same time, I never would have believed it. How lucky can one person get?”

Shawn Rossiter

The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.