(soft music) - Well, you just lose yourself.

My husband has to yell at me and say, it's time for coffee now, or come on for lunch.

I live in this little area and I'm so happy here, I'm happy.

It makes you happy.

That's what it's all about.

My name is Mary Williams and I live in Clitherall, Minnesota on Stewart Lake, and I'm a sculptor.

I work in clay and stone and cement.

Well, I probably have been doing this my whole life, but I went to the University of Kansas for two years.

I was going to be an interior designer because my father said you had to make money.

So I went up to the Art Institute in Chicago, and when you take classes up there, you take a little bit of everything and I took a sculpture class and I was gone.

(soft music) I work every day, practically every day in my studio from about nine in the morning till about three in the afternoon.

And then I have fun, I just have fun.

Stone sculpture came very, very easy.

I just went for it.

I did a little studying, but I think, you know, you just have to love a stone and it just blossoms.

Clay worked hard on, I had taken many classes in clay and I enjoyed it and I learned a lot just anatomy classes and all that.

Cement, I got a grant from the Lake Region Arts Council.

Few people were asking me to do outdoor work and I did the Ladies in the Garden.

I've worked hard on that.

It's not as easy as it looks.

When people drive over the little hill there and see the ladies in the Huster garden, I'm always surprised that they're so, oh, like that.

And it still, to me, to this day, it's really nice to see that.

My stone, I use pneumatic tools, so I have a air compressor and I carve with that.

I've taught so long and I've done this so long that I've got every tool that you can have.

So I just pick and choose as I do that, it's a little abstract, it's a little figurative, whatever the stone kind of dictates.

Right now I'm working on a flower, which I've never done before, so I'm just a little bit of everything.

Whatever the stone kind of tells me.

I think the female form is one of the most perfect forms.

It's got beautiful line and curves.

It's graceful, it's soft.

I think you need to have that in art rather than harsh and cruel lines.

So I just have always gone to the female figure because it's a representative of all the grace that I can think of.

Well, one of my favorites is called The Hug, and it's a stone.

My son gives me great hugs, and that's where that came from.

I just love the stone.

It's just rewarding to work on it.

A few years ago, I was contacted by the Historical Society in Fergus Falls to do Ojibwe women, and I did three mock-ups.

One was a tall lady holding a baby on the back, and then I did a very modern one, and then I did the woman holding the basket full of fruit and that's the one they picked.

It took me about six weeks and I worked every day.

It was cold and rainy and awful, but it was fun to do it.

I sold one piece out of the yard and my family got so upset with me that they won't let me sell anymore out of the yard.

So the pieces that are in the yard now stay.

I'm just blessed.

It's kept my sanity, moving around as much as we have and just a daily living.

I think I would've been really a depressed person, but this has kept me joyful.

I'll never stop, It's ingrained.

I'm like other ladies that I know are 90 years old and they're still doing it and I hope to do it to 102.

- [Narrator] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.