one piece, one glaze

Yesterday I put this pot up on my etsy site. It's a really old piece, I think I made it in 2003. Back then, one of my main muses was the lily pad and lotus flower, and I made a lot of raised relief designs with slip trailing, emulating the veins of a lily pad. Very labor-intensive, but the results were lovely. The shape of this pot was also very standard for me. I wanted a continuous and unbroken line where the lid met the pot. There was something about a typical pot where the shoulder has a little rise where the lid can rest that I just did not like. The shape seemed too conventional and brought down my design. I always had to fire the lids separate from the pot, which is kind of a no-no, but it worked for me.

This pot was glazed during a period of time when my matte green glaze was not firing out at all, it was coming out a grayish-green, like on this piece here, and it was making me completely insane. I could not appreciate it the way it was, all I saw was the way it should be. Man, the pots I marked down because the color did not satisfy me! It's kinda sad the way I tossed my children into the cold when they didn't please me, but good for the people who found them all covered in dust at my studio sales. That matte green glaze has made me insane several times over the years; it is an utterly beautiful and completely undependable glaze. I have referred to it in the past as my bad boyfriend glaze.

One time I wholesaled this matte green for a season, and I sold the hell out of it. When I started firing off orders, the glaze started bubbling. All over, really bad. The galleries get it, they love the wabi-sabi of bubbles, but the retail home accessories store in Dallas, Texas does not get it. I could not get a single piece out of the kiln without a bubble on it. Nowadays I only use it for my own customers, and I don't worry if there is a bubble or two on it. It's a picky glaze that likes to be treated like it's a superstar and doesn't want to be part of a production line. Hey, I get it. I don't call it my bad boyfriend glaze anymore, it's my special baby.

what's next

My poor neglected blog. I don't want anyone to think I've given up on blogging-- far from it-- but there is so much happening right now I'm having a difficult time figuring out what to write about. I don't want to be tedious or boring about the cascade of details I'm having to cope with at the moment.

Basically, I'm getting ready for the Buyer's Market of America trade show in Philadelphia. This is the show I was wavering about going to last fall, but after speaking with the director of the show I realized I've simply invested too much money in my wholesale business in the past two years to just drop it. I've been working to adjust my attitude about... everything. Meditation and yoga have been helping me to cope with my usual demons of fear, anxiety, and sleeplessness.

The biggest obstacle I'm facing at the moment is new items for wholesale. I made the pledge to myself to only wholesale items that have been made into molds. That way I can avoid being chained to my wheel throwing batches of 100 pods, 100 vases, etc etc. Did I ever tell the story about the first time I went to the New York Gift show, took all my orders, went home and threw everything on the wheel? I had blood blisters on the tips of my fingers from throwing so much. I'm willing to suffer for my art as much as the next artist but I draw the line at literally putting my blood into the work.

Getting back to new items: I want to add my poppy bowl, poppy plate, and three sizes of cake plates. Those cake plates... I feel like that's all I've been throwing for the past 6 months. The poppy bowl, everyone just loves them but I don't really make them anymore. And the poppy plate is another crowd favorite, but for the past two years I can't make one without it cracking. This used to never be a problem, I made them for years, but I had to stop making them because they never come out anymore.

Talking to Hector about the cost of making these molds was a little scary. A well-made mold is so dang expensive. I could possibly train Sara to throw some of it, i.e. the cake stands, but then I'd have to buy another wheel... I could just commit one day a week to making wholesale items... but I know that's not what I want to do with my time... Trying to balance everything is difficult. I'm optimistic about the growth of my business but I also have to be realistic about how much debt I want to carry. It's hard to feel successful when all your profits go straight to the bank! But I'm grateful to be wrestling with my business rather than dreading getting up and going to work for someone else tomorrow morning

no resolution

Hello, where have I been? The Christmas season is finally done, over, gone. I was in Palm Springs (where my husband is originally from) over the holiday, and sometime in the afternoon of Christmas day I had this intense vision of this huge, round boulder rolling over and of all this energy being released. There is so much built up into Christmas-- all the gifts, meals, traveling, family stuff-- I think the nation goes into a low-grade mass psychosis for the entire month of December.

This rolls me right into the New Year, another crazy party. I have been developing a theory over the past few days, and that is that New Year's day comes at exactly the wrong time of year for the Northern Hemisphere. There is all this pressure to make your New Year resolutions, gear up for making plans, changes, and do something to make your life better. But really, we are in the deep of winter, and biologically we should be... sleeping a lot. And eating a lot to build up some fat! We should be snuggled up, chatting over warm cups of tea. Not getting all prepared for making changes or running around doing a bunch of stuff.

If you go with my theory, is it any wonder that we fail at our resolutions? My resolution is to put off the resolution thing until the first day of Spring. We could do a combination Spring Cleaning with our Yearly Resolutions. It makes so much more sense to me. What do you think?

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!

be brave. make art.

That last post sure gave me a lot to chew on. I really appreciate how many people commented on their obsessions. Worry and fear seem to dominate the theme. I’m always struck by how so many people out there want to be artists but instead choose to work jobs they don’t really like because they think they can’t make it as an artist.

I had a conversation with a long-time client the other day whose whole family loves and collects pottery. His daughter is probably about my age and has been making pottery for a while now and really wants to make it her job. He was relating this story to me and his reaction to her, which was, “Don’t do it! You have a good job, benefits, stay where you are!” While I tried to control my severe annoyance that he would imply my job is not worth pursuing, I very gently told him that working a job his daughter doesn’t like is no life at all, no matter how secure it may make her feel. I always call that kind of comfort as wearing the golden handcuffs.

I contrasted his reaction with my own parents, who have never once discouraged me in becoming an artist or suggested I may want to go after a more conventional line of work for the sake of having a steady paycheck. Partly because they know it’s useless trying to reason with me, but mostly because they have always believed I can do whatever I want to. My mother was telling me about a friend whose son wanted to be a photographer, and her friend was telling his son that he should get educated in something that he could, “fall back on”. My mom basically told him that was bad advice and if his son failed as photographer, that would be the time to find something else.

I don’t have any real answers for people who have put themselves in jobs they dislike when they really want to be artists. I would only say that fear is an uncomfortable emotion, but fear moves people. It can spur one one to be better, try something new, ignite the desire to create a different kind of life. I have all kinds of fears, and I have always forced myself to confront the stuff that scares me because I hate cowards, and I hate myself the most when I am not being brave. I would never tell someone to just quit their day job and become an artist, because being an artist is a job like any other and it takes some time to create that position. But I would tell them to make a plan to quit their job and start working on being an artist. Today.

obsession

It’s not a secret that I’m an obsessive type of person; when I’m into something, I’m really into it. When I was a kid, it was gymnastics. That’s all I talked about, thought about, and wanted to do. When I was a teenager, it was boys… and we can all imagine where that went. And now, as an adult, it’s pottery.

Last night at the mediation class I attend once a week, it suddenly occurred to me that thinking about pottery all the time is not a good, healthy activity. I estimate that I spend about 70% of my waking thoughts on pottery: what I’m going to make, how I’m going to make it, and how to sell it. Those are the main thoughts. The follow-up thoughts can range from obsessing about how I’m going to obtain more free packing peanuts to ship my work to what I’m going to do to design a better catalogue. And on and on and on.

I was noticing this because when I go to my meditation class it is really hard to stop thinking about pottery and clear my mind. Once I do manage to clear it and focus on meditating I inevitably fall asleep. Every week I’m amazed that I have such a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep in a bed, but in meditation class I can fall asleep sitting up. The problem is that I’m chronically sleep-deprived because when I go to bed at night I’m still thinking about pottery. Who can sleep when in their mind they are on the wheel? When I was relaxing in the hot tub after class I noticed that I wanted to start thinking about pottery right away, and again I thought, “This is crazy”. It’s like, ignore everything else and just wear a groove let in your brain where you feel happy. By the time I’m 50 I’m only going to be able to squawk about clay, because I won’t know anything about anything else.

I know that artists have a reputation for being weird and crazy like this, but I don’t want to be like that. I would really like to know from everybody who read this blog—not just artists—what they think about the most and what percentage of the time they think about it. Don’t be a chicken, it’s so easy to post comments on my blog, you can even do it anonymously.