Making ends meet while their creations build a following is a dilemma many artists face. Ceramic sculptor Mark Kuzio found his personal solution in birdhouses.

“My situation now is what most artists find themselves in,” said the Belfast resident. “But I don’t feel down about that. What I’m doing with the bird feeder business is very exciting to me.”

Kuzio had earned a living by selling decorated ceramic pots at craft galleries and national trade shows from 1980 to 1986.

He went back to school in 1986, to finish a master’s degree in sculpture at New York University. After that, his work changed, becoming more cylindrical and elaborately decorated. This also meant a new kind of market for him.

“What I found is that when I went to market this work, it was more difficult to wholesale because of the price and style,” Kuzio said. “It had a more limited market. It belonged in an art gallery instead of a crafts gallery. I had to find something else to pay my bills.”

Kuzio saw a ceramic birdhouse at a crafts show in Portland one day in 1989.

“I thought to myself, `I can do better than that and I could do it for less,’ ” he said.

He started with a vase-shaped birdhouse, which comes in three different opening sizes for various birds. Since then, his line has expanded to include open and gravity bird feeders, a bird bath and a suet keeper. They can be found in gift shops, craft stores, agricultural and garden centers, crafts fairs and even through mail order magazines.

“The marketing of it is interesting to me,” Kuzio said. “The art market was specialized and self-contained. Now this is more like the real world.”

Previously, he had thrown his bird items on a potter’s wheel. He would then paint them with slips of dyed clay and decorate each one differently.

Kuzio is now changing his production method, because of a hand condition. One day a couple of weeks ago, he woke up to find his right thumb was numb, the result, he believes, of carpal tunnel syndrome. The symptoms of this condition can include soreness, tenderness and weakness of the thumb’s muscles.

“I hope I’ve caught it before it becomes serious enough to affect other parts of my work and art,” Kuzio said.

To save wear on his hands, he is switching to a new mode of production, the slipcasting method. This approach uses a casting machine from which the liquid clay is pumped into a mold. After the excess clay is drained off, the pot can be popped out of the two-piece mold. Kuzio said each piece will still be unique because of the individual slip-painting and decorating steps.

“Also, this is a process I can hire someone to help me with,” he said. “In order for this business to grow, I’m going to have to get some help, and there are very few people with the necessary throwing skills.”

Unlike being in the fickle field of art, Kuzio doesn’t feel he has to be concerned with tastes and fads when it comes to his bird products.

“People don’t see them as a novelty,” he said. “They see them as an improvement.”

Kuzio has been unable to work on his art for the past 1 1/2 years, while he’s been establishing his business. Many of his artist friends don’t understand how he copes with being away from his sculpting, but he says he is not worried.

“When I went back to school, I worked with metal for 1 1/2 years,” he said. “My new work developed when I went back to clay. It was that rest in between that generated that new work.”