challenges on the customer service front

Remember how I wrote a post not too long ago saying how much I love my customers? Then I gave the caveat that sometimes you really have to tell a customer to fuck off when they are being a total pain. It's a fine line. This is an email I received from a customer recently. The person ordered a replacement plate after breaking one out a set of three. It took me a while to make it because it's a discontinued design, but I finally shipped it:

Hi Whitney, I received the new plate today and I do appreciate you going to the trouble to replicate the plate that I broke. However, the new plate doesn't really match it's partners. Not only is the deeper color wrong, which I know you did me warn me about, but the veining detail on the edges is so light that it is obscured by the glaze which appears much heavier and glossier than the original. The wonderful delicacy of the original set was one of it's most admirable qualities. I do wish I had known that you couldn't reproduce that look because if I had, I wouldn't have pressed you for a replacement. I know you tried and I do thank you for your effort.

When I read this at my vacation office in Tahoe I was instantly inflamed. My face turned red, my heart started pounding, and I immediately typed a curt return message : Send back the plate. I hit the "send" button despite years of my husband trying to train me to not respond to emails when I'm angry. He's always telling me to give myself time to manage the situation, not just react. Strangely enough, my email was not connecting and the message wouldn't send. I whacked the send button a few more times before I realized I was totally in reaction mode and I would be lot better off just deleting this email. Which I did.

I had to think about this message for a few days. The email seemed totally passive-aggressive to me. I had warned the customer that the glaze would be totally different, and now it seemed that's exactly what he was complaining about. Doesn't he realize I'm and ARTIST, not a ROBOT? It's not my job to replicate things, I whined to myself. Everyone should just shop at POTTERY BARN, I railed at my friends, people think you can just order up an exact copy and they can't deal if everything is not all matchy-match. In the end, I decided this customer needed to be sent to re-education camp along with fellow offenders. Doesn't this ASSHOLE understand that my work is unique and that's what makes it precious and valuable?

I finally composed, in my head, the perfect response. I pulled his message out if the trash and read it again, and suddenly realized it wasn't that bad. Annoying, yes. But worthy of my reaction, no. I had to laugh at myself. I can be completely nuts when I feel like my work isn't appreciated, and so defensive. I am so glad I didn't send that email, and I had a second chance to respond. This is what I wrote in return:

I can understand that you are disappointed, and I'm sorry if you thought I could reproduce something exactly. I thought you understood the new plate would look different from its partners. As you know, the plates were discontinued and I haven't made them in several years, and the glaze is the same formulation but something has changed to make it fire out differently. I can't reproduce my handmade things exactly, especially part of a set that was made together and then fired together a while ago. I hope that you can just enjoy it for what it is, and now you also have a great story to go with it. If not, you can send it back to me because I want people to love my work and be happy with it.

And of course the customer wrote back and said, no no no, they love it and want to keep it. Figures!

the slowdown

I haven’t been in the studio much since Palo Alto in mid-July. Every once I a while I’ll run in and bust out a round of orders, and then I turn around and run back out again. I’ve had a lot of people visiting from out of town and I don’t want to squeeze their visits in around my studio hours, I’ve been devoting my time to them, and to myself. Right now I’m in Tahoe again with my pal Terrill, who is visiting from Maine.

There’s that little voice, telling you what to do and trying to make you feel guilty for not being better than you are. I’m waiting for that little voice right now telling me I need to get back to work and I have no right to relax so much when Christmas is around the corner, but I just don’t hear it. Maybe it’s because I feel perfectly entitled to take off right now, and I’m not putting up with any lies and bullshit from that little voice.

I helped Terrill with the ACC show in San Francisco over the weekend, helping her sell her beautiful glass, and it seemed terribly slow for a lot of people. Everyone keeps moaning about the economy going into the crapper, for real this time. Whether or not that’s true-- and I don’t bother myself with worrying about it either way—I wonder if an economic slowdown has to be the worst thing in the world. Maybe it will give everyone a lot more time to just be with themselves, friends, family, and pursue other goals in life.

Being completely out of work is stressful, and I know most people can’t enjoy being unemployed. But perhaps being underemployed for a while is not so bad. I know I can get by with less stuff, spending less on useless things. By the way, pottery does not qualify as a useless thing. I hate for people to be suffering if they are being laid off or their paychecks cut. At the same time, with the amount of excess many of us live with, I feel like I might be in the mood to cut a few things right down to the bone.

from here to there

I was thinking the other day about the painful and long process of getting from here to there. Here is where we are right now, and one is usually in the process of trying to get there. Where is there? There is where the idea has come to fruition: the art is made, the money is in the bank, and one is happy. I was actually having a dream about this the other night, and in the dream I was having the fully actualized experience of realizing there is actually here, right now. It was very intense, as dreams can be, and when I woke up I thought how I could be a happier person if I could keep this idea with me. The concept is always there, floating around me. But, I have a tendency to forget about it, and go on to being very upset that I'm not there yet. I know you do too.
Meanwhile, I'm still goofing around, not in the studio much and out of town a lot. So, posting is slow but back-to-school September is almost here, so don't give up on me yet.

yes, i'm brilliant

When I said I was taking a vacation, I meant it. I actually went away without taking my computer with me for four whole days. I did sneak my computer up to Lake Tahoe with me while we were visiting Josie, which made me feel slightly ridiculous. I only got teased a little bit.

First things first. Amy Rehnae nominated me for a Brilliant Blog Award. Thank you Amy! With these blog awards you are supposed to pass them on by nominating others, and in this case seven blogs. I guess as a blog writer I should also be a blog reader, but I'm not. I pop in and read my friend's blogs because that's how I keep up with some of them. Every once in a while I'll follow a link a friend sent and find something hilarious. And when Project Runway is on and I'm waiting for the water to boil for my endless cups of coffee, I'll read these guys. I know I probably will not be sent to Blog Internment Camp for not following the rules of this award, but I definitely want to acknowledge it, because I really love writing this blog, and it makes me very happy to know people actually read it.

Back to my vacation now...

the problem with pretty

There's this issue I've been struggling with for a while now in my work. Basically, making beautiful, pretty things in clay is one of the easiest things in the world for me. If I really opened the taps, there would be no end to it. There is no end to it. And one of the reasons why I put myself in the ranks of tortured artist is because I actually don't value pretty things all that much.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a girly-girl who looooves beautiful things in the world. I need cute shoes, lip gloss, and pretty dresses to function properly on this planet. But when it comes to making my own work, pretty ain't worth much. It's too easy, and I don't value my work unless it's hard-- it must challenge me on some level. I'm like that with a lot of things in my life- I'm notorious with learning lessons the hard way, which was really wore down my poor mom when I was growing up. When I first started with my work, it was all hard, but I've been working at it long enough now where the only hard part is dealing with bad firings. And annoying wholesale customers.

I've been thinking about this for a while, trying to come to some sort of settlement on the issue. Sometimes I go with full acceptance: I am blessed with this ability to make beautiful things, and I should simply receive this gift and make beautiful things. But I can't fool myself; I feel as though I'm not seeing the real gift right in front of me, but I don't know what it is. I'm blind. Then, I received an email two days ago from one of my friends, who I will call EL-ZIE. I dread Elzie's emails sometimes because I know she loves me and my work, but she also sees right through my bullshit:

Your work is so much tamer than you are. You are a wild woman. Push past the pretty girl. Please, put some of the bad words in. The intellectual and biting humor part of you that comes through in your writing. Art is all code for who we really are, presented in a way that we are ready to expose to others. I think that you have laid the ground work, and I can say that I am ready for more of you.

I immediately closed this email and tried to act like I hadn't read it, but of course thought about it all day. I can't pretend that this is all there is to my work, as easy and lovely as that would be. If I'm going to continue to call myself an artist, I have to let go of the pretty as my driving force... but how? And am I making this too hard too, this process of evolution, or is struggling so much a part of my DNA that I have no choice but to do it this way? And did I just manage to say "I, me, mine" 15 times in one paragraph?

People, I'm going on vacation now. I obviously need it!

we'll let the pictures do the talking

Where have I been? I have been locked up in the studio, preparing for my favorite retail show of the year, the Palo Alto Clay and Glass Festival. You know how I complain about my wholesale shows? Well, the Palo Alto Festival is, like, the opposite side of the spectrum. I've been doing this show for 10 years, and I have a solid fan base there of people who wait all year to see me, check out my new stuff, and then buy it all. Plus, I get to see all of my pottery and glass pals, and Saturday night we have a huge party and get loaded. Hey, it's fun! AAAAANNNDD one of my partners in crime from Japan last summer, Nick, is driving in to be my booth slave during the show. These are all pots that have come out of the kiln in the past 2 days, and this a lot of this collection is about my new obsession, bell jars. I have one more load coming out tomorrow, I hope to have time to shoot them and post later. Palo Alto is one of the places where I debut new work and ideas, so let's just let the pictures do the talking. :











Hello, am I not the cutest goddamn thing? (That's the bell jar above talking)

california burning

I thought I would share this apocalyptic and gloomy picture from last week, when the air was so thick with smoke we Northern California citizens were advised to stay inside. No problem. Some gear in my brain finally got some oil and I have been so inspired and fearless with the clay that I really have no interest in doing anything else but being at the studio, getting ready for my big retail show of the year, the Palo Alto Clay and Glass Festival. I am so excited about some new designs and work I've been making, here is a sneak peek, pre-fire: