slow ceramics

It's been an unusual holiday season for me, in that it has been remarkably slow. This has been by design. Of course I love the holiday bump and the attendant swelling of my bank account. What I don't love is the pressure cooker of holiday shopping, the timeline of trying to get handmade items to people by Christmas or Santa will explode and ruin every one's day.

I decided not to do any shows at all this year, with the exception of my own Open Studio and a pop-up I'm doing with friends. And I also decided that I would not participate in any Black Friday or Cyber Monday promotions by offering free shipping or other discounts. All those things do is create a bunch of extra work for myself, at a discount. One could argue that the value of these promotions is reaching new customers, and even though you are not making as much money per item, you are making it in bulk, which disguises the net loss.

But I oppose it on a philosophical level. Black Friday is nothing more than a media invention designed to panic people into spending money, and it has always disgusted me. I don't see why artists and makers should be participating in it when what we are offering is the very opposite of that kind of mindset. I just can't handle the dissonance of it anymore, and this is the year where I checked out. Cyber Monday, while not as gross on the face of it since it doesn't involve people getting squished to death in a Wal-Mart toy aisle, is still of the same ilk, designed to concentrate purchases on a single day to measure consumer spending.

I did have a sale on my own website, which I figured would reach my current customers and fans who keep an eye on what I do. Those are the people I want to reach, give a discount to. My customers are the ones who keep my business going all year. I don't have a business that needs bulk holiday sales to see me through the year, and I don't see why I should be selling discounted work to what usually amounts to a bunch of one-time customers.

All of this high-minded thinking has created the slowest holiday season I've ever had, which has given me moments of pause, but I feel like it's totally worth it. I've not worked any weekends, broken down into stress tears, or had unpleasant email exchanges with people who don't understand the term "made-to-order." I've been able to create an oasis of calm in my studio, to actually enjoy the season as we head toward the darkest day of the year.

And I'm creating a whole new body of work right now, and I'm completely immersed in it. The holidays are a side note to me compared to what I'm doing in the studio. The work is crazy labor intensive, taking hours and even days to produce a piece, which is the polar opposite of what I've been doing for years with running a production pottery.  It's slow ceramics, slow making, and I am loving it. The pleasure is so deep, and it's a pleasure I have not experienced in years. Because I also love selling my work-- a lot of it--I will probably figure out how to put some of these pieces into production and make them more widely available, but for now, I just want to ride this wave.

dispatch from holidaylandia

The holiday season is like entering a different country.  A country where your phone doesn't work because you're too busy to take calls and so are all of your friends, who are also buried under piles of orders.  The food is terrible, and the natives are anxious, if not downright hostile.  It's the most magical time of the year!

Aside from the terrible food-- I mean, whhhhhhy are there crappy, store-bought cookies EVERYwhere right now?-- I'm actually feeling pretty damn good.  I've got this holiday thing down. I've only lost one order so far and I found it again before the customer knew I lost it.  I had a plague of broken stuff,  all the same item, going to different people, broken in the exact same way.  Why why why?  I have no idea.  I just made it all again, packed it in big boxes, and moved on.  I crank my Duran Duran station and I feel ever so slightly pleased.

Then, I made an amazing discovery.  My red glaze has been cursed for a while now.  I started having this problem where it was coming out with nasty dark spots that looked like bruises.  So annoying.  Someone ordered a set of nesting lotus bowls in red and they came out so bad, with bruises all over, that I immediately hid them away from myself so I wouldn't have to look at them, and cancelled the order with the customer.  Then I pulled them out a couple of weeks ago and decided they weren't so bad, but there was some glaze crawling that needed to be fixed up so I ran them through the kiln again.  The kiln overfired by a bit, and the bowls came out SHINY PERFECT RED.  Bruises, gone.  I discovered the cure, which is the red needs to get just a teeny tiny bit hotter than a perfect cone 5.  I got so excited I added it as a color option to my new website.  Yes, I will charge you more because I'm still nervous, but look at this gorgeous baby:

And really, that's all I want for Christmas: glaze that behaves.

oh yeah, it's black friday

First thing this morning my sister, who is visiting from Los Angeles for the holiday, read the reports of squashings, pepper sprayings, and shootings at Wal-Marts and malls across the country as people shopped for black friday. I must say, she had an edge of glee to her voice as she read the various incidents aloud to me. Black friday mayhem is kind of like reading about weird, freak accidents that happen across the globe: you feel completely disconnected from the event as you try to imagine it, because something like this will never happen to you, or anyone you know.

I rarely shop in public, and certainly not in groups or crowds.  I'm a huge fan of online shopping and have no fear of ordering jeans, shoes, or even underwear online.  Anything that can protect me from milling around with the barbarian hordes at retail environments is what I refer to as salvation.

That brings us to the heart of this post, which is announcing that my long labored over redesigned website is finally up and open for business.  I love it and I hope you go check it out and love on it too.  It's all set up for free domestic shipping through November 30, and you can pretty much order whatever you want in whatever color or style you want.  And no one will try to snatch a cupcake stand out of your little paws, and then push you to the floor and trample you.  Click on over and let me know what you think!

simple sell

Last week, I visited a local tech company to sell my stuff at their private holiday fair which takes place during the week at their campus. I won't name this company but it's probably the most famous tech company in the world. I know better than to do stuff like this but I was beguiled by the chance to check out this company up close and also to have a captured, employed audience. So I pack up some bins and haul them into the heart of Silicon Valley.

We've all heard tale of these fabled tech companies with their ping-pong tables, their arcade video games, their on-site massage therapists, their sprawling hang-out areas with comfy couches and bean bags, their bicycles and skateboards to get from place to place, their workers dressed in t-shirts, flip-flops, and jeans. Okay, it's all true. I was particularly impressed with the open cafe that had every form of caffeine you could possibly want, for free. Also, the bathroom, which had fancy Japanese-style toilets-- which I have a fetish for--and a pile of tampons. An employer who supplies its female workforce with tampons... interesting.

So, I'm all jazzed up, ready to sell. My table is adorable, and the other vendors are coming over and feeling up my stuff. The employees start streaming in, and... and... and... I get totally ignored. I stand there, look expectant and friendly-- not my natural look, it's an effort-- and people are passing me by. They are, in fact, going straight to the chocolate guy who is giving away free samples. I gradually deflate, get sad, then angry, followed by bitterness. I give up trying to look friendly. I sell a couple of things to other vendors, and finally beat it out of there.

I've been thinking about why what should have been a golden selling opportunity was just a total bust. I realized that I gave no forethought to the event, I just went in with my usual shtick and totally failed. Unfortunately I see this happen all the time to other people at shows and other selling venues. Here are a few things to think about as you think about selling at events, especially during the crazy holiday season:

• Think ahead of time about what environment you will be selling in: I was in a super high tech environment where people work 18 hour days, which is why this place serves up free food and caffeine all day, and provides beds disguised as couches. Many employees were carrying their open computers as they walked around, because they were literally working and shopping. These people are not going to stop working on a project for some leisurely shopping time, they have deadlines. They are the very essence of the distracted, short attention span audience. I'm used to selling to people who go out of their way to buy handmade items and are taking their time to browse and ask questions. These people didn't have time for that, and in that sense I was caught completely short.

• Think about the audience the environment creates: These were techie people, not arty types. And they were totally puzzled about what I was offering up, they couldn't make sense of what I had. They didn't understand that my nesting bowls are separate bowls and not one sculpture; they couldn't see that my poppy plates are functional for serving food; and they really couldn't figure out what the fuck a cupcake stand was for, (though I do display it with a cupcake.) And they weren't interested in figuring it out, they just "clicked" on to the next vendor. I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do by offering lots of choices, but I just confused people. They were less confused by the chocolate, the artisan olive oil, the knitted scarves, and the baby onesies, and they went and bought that stuff, leaving me in the dust.

• Then, spoon-feed: Do not make your audience think, that only gives them a chance to think of reasons why they don't need to buy what you have. This does not mean your product shouldn't be intelligent or you can only sell to stupid people. It means your customer needs to understand within about 2 seconds that they want what you have, and the transaction between wanting and having should be as easy and painless as possible. For example, price should always be front and center; people hate asking. The function of the item should be obvious, and if not obvious, demonstrated. Display should be orderly with like items together, people shouldn't have to hunt for that thing you're selling in a different color. I was asking my potential customers to engage with me, to really go through the work I had to offer and find something that they wanted, and that was asking way too much.

My own diagnosis: I was waiting for these people to come to me, when the only way to succeed with this crowd was to go to them, and hand over something that they could immediately hand over to someone else as a gift. I needed a very simple offering that was an immediately recognizable object, like a bowl or a vase. I needed a lot of these one or two items in a few different colors so these poor, overworked, distracted people wouldn't have to process a lot of visual information. And I needed a big sign that had the price, which should be around $38 for the kids who are still paying off student loans, and then $75 for the people who wanted to splash out a bit more. Then, I should have been giving away something, like M & M's or mini donuts, these people need sugar. And, an example of how this item would be packaged: a box, some tissue, a bow, a cute bag. I could have done gangbusters if I knew what I was getting into!

head above water

My resolution to post on my blog at least once a week went straight out the window once the holiday season swept in. If the holiday season were a person, it would be dressed as a terrorist or maybe a special forces black ops dude, who kicked in the studio door while I was trying to take a nap, and started sweeping all the stuff I stockpiled into shipping boxes, all the while screaming that he needs more cupcake stands and bird vases now now now! Just take a look at my sold items for the past week if you want to get a sense of the situation. I thought I had a good stockpile of stuff going, but I was wrong, again. That pile was exhausted a week ago.

The weird thing is, though, I feel totally good. I've been working 10 hour days which is, like, against my religion of laziness, but I've been keeping this very tight schedule of exercise, no drinking alcohol-- during the week anyway-- taking my vitamins, going to bed early, and eating lots of salad and vegetables and stuff. No burrito eating for lunch. And I've been sleeping like a baby night after night which is really weird. And when I say sleeping like a baby I don't mean crapping my diaper and waking up crying every 2 hours. I mean I'm falling asleep immediately and waking up at 6 am.

Then I did this other crazy thing which was totally skip out on doing any shows except for Renegade the weekend before Christmas. I'm not even doing an Open Studio. Usually I'd be dashing here, dashing there, doing trunk shows, pop-up shops, holidays fairs, cleaning the studio for customers, blah blah blah. I just decided to skip this year. So, even though I'm totally busy, I'm also pretty relaxed. And I have my December weekends open for doing other things, which has not happened in years.

potter's seventh circle of hell: redux

I know this is totally cheating, but I'm so busy my brain cannot focus on a blog post, so I'm doing rerun of one of my favorite holiday posts from last around this time. I think it bears repeating!

A quick perusal around some of my favorite pottery blogs confirmed what I suspected: few are writing, including myself. If I know ceramic types—and I do-- I suspect everyone is holed up in their studios, and going through something like this:

1)“I don’t have enough work, I don’t have enough work!” (repeat 500 times a day)
2)“I need to make more work, I need to make more work!” (Repeat in head at least once every 60 seconds and yell this phrase at spouse/significant other at least once a day, especially when they try to get you to relax.)
3) Feverishly make work while repeating above mantras, first one, then the other.
4) Have repeated breakdowns and self-loathing sessions as work you so feverishly made cracks, sticks to the kiln shelf, or just kind of sucks.
5) Repeat.

I’ll call this the potter’s Seventh Circle of Hell. I know it well. I’ve slept by the Lake of Fire for weeks on end trying to keep ahead of Christmas orders. I’ve been fielding a few panicked phone calls from my potter friends as they feel the flames licking at their little heels. I’m really a good person to call when a potter is ready to jump because I have been there so many times, I can talk anybody off the ledge.

I’m going to give a tiny little lecture here that I’ve given to more than one artist this season: Hire some goddamn help. If you can’t sleep at night as you consider all you have to make the next day, you need some help. If your stomach or spine is burning as you contemplate your order sheet, you need some help. If you are at the studio, missing dinner, ignoring your boyfriend’s cell phone calls, you need some help. Don’t tell me that you can’t afford it. A half-decent assistant pays for themselves. Don’t tell me you don’t have time to train somebody. You’ll get all that time back and then some when you send that assistant on their own. Don’t tell me you are a lone wolf who creates alone. Hire someone who doesn’t talk too much. There are so many people out there dying to work for you, in your dusty little studio. Go and find them!

lessons from the land of panic

It's usually about this time of year that I start to wonder how the fuck I'm supposed to pull off this holiday thing. I will usually have a stack of orders that are half-done, open studios and shows to prepare for, emails and postcards to send out, studio appointments to keep with people, and stores screaming their heads off for more stuff. All of this activity is usually squeezed down into two or three weeks of frantic activity where I sleep little, eat even less, and make up for that by drinking endless cups of coffee all day and try to wind down at night with endless glasses of wine. I'm a wrung-out mess by the 24th and my husband is ready to have me locked up. Ho ho ho.

I get myself into this situation because I have a tendency to be a procrastinator when I have a lot of activity coming up. I put things off. I've noticed this about myself for years, and this tendency becomes especially troublesome when one is trying to run a successful business. I always manage to pull it off: the orders all ship on time, the studio gets cleaned up and made presentable for customers, the postcards go out, and no one gets disappointed. But it all comes at a cost to myself as I scramble.

I realize that I like to be pushed to the wall. No, I don't like it, I need it. The situation doesn't feel real until my heart is pounding with panic and my head is spinning. I love to make a long list of shit that needs to get done and then freak out as I see how much I have to do and how little time I have to do it. No one can jump into action the way I do.

I'm trying to change this, if for no other reason than I'm sick of having to spend extra money on rush shipping of supplies. This year I sat down in early November and made my list with a target date for each item. I was already running behind, I should have made this list in September, but it was better than waiting for the weekend after Thanksgiving as I usually like to do. I didn't make all of my target dates, but I came close. It helped to remind me that panic doesn't make things more real, it just things more difficult to deal with. I know a lot of artist types are procrastinators in the same way I am, and it's easy to get away with because we are artists, dammit, and we do things artistically. Sometimes chaotically. But I'm getting older, and I hope a bit smarter. I don't have energy to waste on freaking, I want to put it into my art. And I'm happy to report I haven't had a single meltdown this whole season. Now that is a Christmas miracle!

Potter's Seventh Circle of Hell

A quick perusal around some of my favorite pottery blogs confirmed what I suspected: few are writing, including myself. If I know ceramic types—and I do-- I suspect everyone is holed up in their studios, and going through something like this:

1)“I don’t have enough work, I don’t have enough work!” (repeat 500 times a day)
2)“I need to make more work, I need to make more work!” (Repeat in head at least once every 60 seconds and yell at spouse/significant other at least once a day, especially when they try to get you to relax.)
3) Feverishly make work while repeating above mantras, first one, then the other.
4) Have repeated breakdowns and self-loathing sessions as work you so feverishly made cracks, sticks to the kiln shelf, or just kind of sucks.
5) Repeat.

I’ll call this the potter’s Seventh Circle of Hell. I know it well. I’ve slept by the Lake of Fire for weeks on end trying to keep ahead of Christmas orders. I’ve been fielding a few panicked phone calls from my potter friends as they feel the flames licking at their little heels. I’m really a good person to call when a potter is ready to jump because I have been there so many times, I can talk anybody off the ledge.

I’m going to give a tiny little lecture here that I’ve given to more than one artist this season: Hire some goddamn help. If you can’t sleep at night as you consider all you have to make the next day, you need some help. If your stomach or spine is burning as you contemplate your order sheet, you need some help. If you are at the studio, missing dinner, ignoring your boyfriend’s cell phone calls, you need some help. Don’t tell me that you can’t afford it. A half-decent assistant pays for themselves. Don’t tell me you don’t have time to train somebody. You’ll get all that time back and then some when you send that assistant on their own. Don’t tell me you are a lone wolf who creates alone. Hire someone who doesn’t talk too much. There are so many people out there dying to work for you, in your dusty little studio. Go and find them!

freakishly calm

Just where have I been lately? Everyone has been saying to me, “I know you must be so crazybusy right now!” Yes, crazybusy is oneword. As a matter of fact, things have been freakishly calm at my studio. I’m not doing any of my usual holiday shows this year, and let me tell you, it’s been great. I don’t mind doing shows, I kind of like it in a way, but all of the retail craft shows in California have been going downhill sales-wise for a while now. Everyone has their theory on why, including me, but the bottom line is it’s just not worth it for me to show up at these things anymore. Standing around… looking cute… acting nice… and not making any damn money.

I think after the trial by fire last spring with the five-figure-order I’m simply incapable of getting too hyped up and stressed out over what is happening at the studio right now. I’ve worked really hard at getting a system of steady sales in place, and while I look forward to a bump in Christmas sales, I’m not going to lose my head over it. My mind is really on next year: refining my system even more, adding a few more great pieces to my wholesale collection, and giving my assistant more hours at the studio so I can concentrate on what I’m really meant to do in this life, which is drinking really amazing wine by night while making really incredible art by day…

That being said, I’ve loaded up my etsy site with lots of goods, and I’m adding more things all the time. Help me help my local wine shop by getting on over there and buying something beautiful for yourself AND for a friend!