This one has a little personality.

(Laughs) But it's kind of cool, though, because each fish -- every single fish -- is different.

Marilyn Lysohir adds some fin-esse as she sculpts a fish that will be part of an upcoming exhibition.

I am working on making a hundred fish, so that we can try to sell them to raise money for scholarships and also the museum.

I believe art shouldn't just be pretty or upsetting or, you know, or intriguing.

It needs to do something.

The longtime ceramicist, who lives in Moscow, Idaho, also doesn't like to do things in a small way.

She's known for her large-scale installations, like “The Dark Side of Dazzle,” a 24-foot-long, nine-foot-high battleship.

It took me two years.

That was like two tons of clay to do that.

Then there's “Bad Manners,” a 10½-foot-long table covered with 300 pieces of food, each handcrafted out of clay.

I thought, “What's greed?” Like, what -- what is greed about?

So “Bad Manners” is a piece about greed.

That “Go Big or Go Home” philosophy has been part of her psyche since she was a child.

I loved making big things.

So if I had a piece of paper, I filled the whole paper.

This is the underglaze, and it's really a good color.

And so we're going to do blue.

This will be a two-tone.

It'll have blue and turquoise.

Lysohir originally studied painting.

But a comment from a teacher helped change the course of her life.

The instructor came up to me and looked at me and said, “You're not a two-dimensional artist.” He said, “You're a three-dimensional artist,” which I never thought of.

But he was right.

I was a three-dimensional thinker.

She took to ceramics immediately.

But it wasn't the popular path.

It wasn't cool to do ceramics.

It was kind of bullied by the art community.

And because of that, I wasn't going to give up.

I just, “Nope, I'm going to do ceramics.” And now it is so popular.

Everybody loves ceramics.

Lysohir’s pieces often stem from a desire to remember family... like her mother, who was a sergeant in the Marines.

I wanted to give memory to their lives, that they existed, and they were important.

“The Dark Side of Dazzle” honors her father and other World War II vets.

She struggled with how to do that, though, until one day she had an epiphany.

I had a cabinet in the bedroom and on top of the cabinet was this battleship that was brightly colored.

That's a clue.

So one day I went, “Oh, I'll make a 20, And I said, 24-foot battleship!” Why I said it, I don't know.

I said “24-foot battleship.” The idea was one thing -- the engineering, another.

It's not an easy medium to work with.

I mean, it's very difficult.

I broke my hand.

My back went out for 13 years.

Part of the ship fell over and broke.

It's very hard work.

By the end of construction, a piece can have multiple meanings.

For instance, the battleship played with the idea of “dazzle,” a colorful form of camouflage on the side of some ships.

Dazzle is beautiful.

I mean, when you see a battleship with the colors and the patterns, it's, it's breathtaking.

But why is it there?

Like, why do we need battleships that kill people, like, ruin cities?

That's, you know, the dark side.

Despite the difficulties of doing large projects, Lysohir persevered.

One of her most celebrated works, “Good Girls,” has over 160 pieces.

Each head represents a woman from her high school class in Sharon, Pennsylvania, based on their yearbook photo.

It got to go to one of our reunions.

So the real girls got to see them.

And they were just so excited and they thanked me, because now their name is in a memory now of art.

It was in Pennsylvania that Lysohir got her start in three-dimensional art, although she didn't realize it at the time.

She was working at a candy store in Sharon when the owner asked her to make some four-foot rabbits for his “Chocolate Kingdom.” It got away from me, and I came back and I said, “Pete, how big is the door?” He said, “What do you mean, how big is the door?” I said, “Well, they’re not four feet; they’re eight feet.” And thousands of people would come to see this “Chocolate Kingdom.” I realized how important those sculptures were to my work, that they were literally like a turning point on me as an artist in an odd way.

Her love of chocolate would also inspire her in another way.

In 1995, she took a break from art to make her own line of spicy chocolate truffles, a business with a tongue-in-cheek name.

I ended up doing Cowgirl Chocolates-- “Chocolates with a Kick.” It was like an art performance piece.

And we ended up being picked to be on the Food Network.

And millions of people found out about it.

Thousands of orders came in, to where it literally broke our printing machine.

(Laughs) You have to be an adventurous person to try them.

She sold Cowgirl Chocolates in 2018, but couldn't stay away from the sweet stuff for long, reopening the store as Moscow Candy.

One thing about chocolate -- it’s joyful.

Everybody that comes into the shop, everyone that orders, they’re happy, they’re joyful about it.

All right.

There we go.

That's how it's done.

That same joy infuses the multicolored fish she’s making, including the inspirational words that Lysohir embosses on them.

I like to have happy words, like words that are empowering and make you feel good.

Here's a “hope” and a “good hope.” (Laughs) The fish will be auctioned off in September 2027 during a retrospective of Lysohir’s work at Washington State University that will include “The Dark Side of Dazzle” and “Good Girls.” I’m just excited and honored to be able to show my work.

I didn't give up, (Laughs) when everybody was pooh-poohing ceramics.

And that's important, I think.