getting centered

Learning how to center clay on the wheel is the most challenging part of learning how to throw. I was taught by a master teacher, and my whole class learned how to center and throw within a very short time because of his skillful teaching. I think right about now is a good time to think about the metaphor of centering clay and getting centered in life. I bring this up because of the drums of fear and panic that are beating in all corners right now. Apparently we are in the depths major financial crisis, and unless you are living under a rock, we all know the words that are getting repeated over and over again.

There is something about chaos of panic that can set you free from the daily monotony. We are coming up on the 19 year anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake, which I experienced in full effect in Santa Cruz. It was the single most terrifying event of my life, but it was also one of the most meaningful. It totally released me from my own daily insecurities and problems that I was experiencing at the time, and put front and center exactly what was important: being alive along with your friends and family. It was an extremely valuable lesson to learn in my late teens, and I still can't think about that time without having an overwhelming emotional response of gratitude that I was able to experience it.

Change is happening; it's going to happen and it's out of our control, much like an earthquake. When I start feeling scared about what's happening and how it may impact me, I think about how much more important it is that I stay centered with my work, my husband, and my friends. For me that means staying calm and focused, and not spending to much time letting my imagination run wild, and not indulging in a lot of conversation about "the markets" or "the economy". I don't really understand any of that shit, and the majority of my friends don't either. Most of us are repeating what we hear in the news, which is pretty useless. I would really love it if we could all think about how major change can bring so many blessings to our lives rather than darkness, and how essential change is to make life worth living in the first place. In the short-term, change can be very uncomfortable and scary. But no matter what happens, we are still all going to be on this planet, alive, and together. How great is that?

time to create

If you read my blog, you already know one of my biggest complaints is not having time to be creative and make new work. I spend most of my studio time managing my wholesale accounts and online orders. This fall I was determined to build in more creative time and stop the flow of complaining. If I really couldn't do it, then maybe it was time to reconsider how I was doing business, period. My business depends on creating new work, and so does my mental well-being. The one thing you hear over and over from customers at trade shows is, "What's new?" I can get away with "I have this in new colors!" for only a little while. For my own retail customers, especially the ones who have been buying from me a while, they also want to see what's next.

After an initial scramble a couple of weeks ago, we have production at the studio on a nice, even keel and I have been happily surprised by the fact that my little plan worked, and I do indeed have time to make new stuff. It was funny to see how my brain was resisting this open creative time at first. Frankly, it's so much easier to just crank out work without thinking, and when you've been doing that month in and month out, your creative edge gets dulled. This is a conversation I had with myself a few times:
"Hey, let's make some new pots!"
"Ummm... don't we need some more small cake stands?"
"Yeah, I guess it wouldn't hurt to have some in backstock." (Sounds of making ten small cake stands.)
1 hour later:
"Okay, how 'bout it? What should we make? I have this nice porcelain here!"
"Hmmm, that is nice porcelain. But don't you think it would be good to have some more dogwood flowers on hand? We're going to need a lot of them for orders."
"Dogwood flowers? We have plenty of those! Let's make some fun stuff!"
"I have a better idea. Let's see how many dessert plates we can make in 3 hours."
"What's your problem? You said you wanted to make some new stuff. Now all you want to make is easy stuff!"
"I don't have a problem! I just want to make sure we don't get behind, that's all."
"Well, we're ahead right now, so let's make the most of it!"
"Okay okay. Let's wedge up some of that porcelain"
(One hour later, staring into space.)
"What do you want to make?"
"I don't know, what do you want to make?"

I've been able to devote some time everyday this week to working on new things, and after I was done arguing with myself, this is one of the things I made:

what the negative weighs

The first thing I do when I get out of bed every morning is get the water boiling for coffee, and then read whatever email came in during the night. Last week I woke up to a lovely email from a customer who was so happy with the pottery she bought from me that she wrote me an email to tell me how talented and wonderful I am. Never get tired of those emails. Then I opened an email from my blog that contained a comment from an anonymous source, and this is what the comment said:

"Your pottery is starting to look like old lady slip cast ware."

My first reaction was to laugh, then hit the "trash" button. I've had some hard comments on my blog from people in the past, but I always let them stand because I think they are valuable and interesting, even if I don't agree. This one was just obnoxious so I deleted it from the blog, made my coffee, and got on with my day.

Except... I realized about halfway through the day that the comment was haunting me. Was I wallowing in happiness that someone took time from their day to tell me how awesome I am? No. I kept hearing the old lady cast ware comment, over and over. And I was having a variety of negative feelings and responses. For instance, anger: "Fuck you!" Defensiveness: "You don't even know my work." Condescension: "Keep your negative comments to the other students in your grad school classroom." Fear: "Shit, I'm turning into an old lady." Sneering, "You can't even stand behind your opinion, you have to comment anonymously, you miserable person." And then a combination of all of the above, "Screw you, twerp-- at least I have a body of work, and here in the real world where I live, it sells! What are you selling, besides coffee?"

Finally, about halfway through the day, I had to stop and contemplate how was managing this comment and allowing it to ruin my day. I was also interested in how I was letting this comment play out against an equally positive comment, and the irony that I read both within 2 minutes of each other. I love it when lessons really smack you in the face like that. Unfortunately, I'm me, and more inclined to let negative feedback make me feel bad than let positive feedback make me feel good. I think a lot of people would feel the same way-- but why?

Negativity taps in our most basic fears about ourselves, fears that are even hard to talk about sometimes. I live with my own voice telling me I need to do better work than I'm doing, and when another voice comes along and says the same thing in such a negative way, some of my worst fears are realized: I suck. For whatever reason, the negative carries weight, it's powerful-- or rather, we allow it to be more powerful than the positive.

It's a loop, and I knew I was running on a squirrel cage and I still have some work to do before I can keep myself from jumping on on the first place. I also knew it would take a day-- or maybe two-- to shake that shit off, but I did!

the scramble

Has anyone else noticed that summer is, like, over? I used to dread this time of year because it meant I had to go back to school. I hated school from kindergarten on, which made my childhood seem extremely long. I also hated being a kid, so you can't blame me for doing nothing the first fall I didn't have to go back to school but lay on the beach and smoke cigarettes. Man, talk about freedom! I didn't get over the fall dread until about 5 years ago.

Nowadays fall means getting ready for the Christmas slam. Smart people start doing this in August. I was goofing around and vacationing in August. My assistant, Sara, was also off for most of the month. Orders have been trickling in from stores, and I've been printing them out and filing them away. Last Monday was the first real day back to work in almost 4 weeks for both me and Sara, and we had a little meeting to schedule ship dates. I was not in the least panicked about it, I was anticipating a totally organized and mellow production schedule in our future.

That feeling disappeared after about 10 minutes as we both realized our production schedule is totally full, right up the very edge. We slammed the rest of our coffee, ran back to the studio, and took stock of what we had on the shelves. I chained myself to my wheel and started throwing, and Sara started glazing. It's not quite like going back to school; for starters, I'm getting paid. But it's pretty dang close!

open studio this weekend

Look at me, all busy, working. No, not really. I haven't been working steadily in the studio for 6 weeks, but vacation is over! It's time to get back to work! Now! I'm mean it young lady, you need to make some money!

I'm having an Open Studio this weekend so I can empty out the studio and get to work on new stuff. That does not mean I won't have new work at this sale, 'cause I will. I have my new bell jar pieces, some one-of-a-kind platters, and a few of my new lotus flower necklaces. I haven't had these necklaces photographed yet, but they are amazing, 3-d, hand built beauties. My friend, Leah Rivers, will also be there selling her jewelry.

Here are the details:
Open Studio, Saturday, September 13
11 am to 5 pm
539 Athol Ave Oakland, CA 94606

Hope to see you there!

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.