hope & despair

Pottery is all about letting go. My hopes and expectations are constantly mocked as my favorite matte green glaze comes out a different shade each firing, hairline cracks appear in pots that cooled too quickly, stuff blows up during bisque firings, glazes run over a beautifully rendered design, pots stick to the kiln shelf, other cracks come out of nowhere. Hope soars when I turn on the kiln for a firing, despair crashes in as I pull the pots out and I am forced --once again-- to reckon with my shortfalls as an artist and human being. All elements of my personality are expressed in my pots, the good and the bad, and I see it all.

Not to mention the fact that all pottery is breakable, and most of it breaks eventually. When I think of the balancing act I have to enact each day as I make my pottery, the futility of it all can sometimes be overwhelming. I will literally lay down on the floor of my studio, stare at the ceiling, and wonder why I bother spending my life making beautiful stuff that is obviously useless to the world.

After I'm done feeling very sorry for myself and the sad life I lead, I make more pots. I feel I owe it to my pots to never cry or get drunk when I'm making them, and to never lose faith that they will continue to be made. Potters are a hardy group of people-- we have to be. No matter how good you are, you are still subject to a vast landscape of imperfection. Beatrice Wood, an internationally known potter who lived near Santa Barbara and who died in 1998, wrote in her autobiography that there were times, even late in her career, where she would open the kiln and just want to give up. I think about Beatrice and all the other potters I know who keep making their pots despite their despair, and I quietly chant to myself, "Let it go, let it go, let it go".

a good, solid, soul-baring rut

Being in a rut totally sucks, and something that every human being will work themselves into eventually, more than once. While ruts are depressing and even debilitating, they are also a signal from the soul that a change is needed. I've started thinking about this because I have many artists in my life right now who are experiencing creative ruts and even depression. They all do very different things, but the symptoms are all the same: The feeling that your work is dull and going nowhere, fear that you will never be as good as you once were, and the wish to do something completely different and yet the complete inability to imagine what that may be.

I was in a serious rut about three years ago with my own work. I had chronic pain in my neck and shoulders from production throwing, I worked 40 hours a week in my studio yet I had no money in my savings account, and as I marched to my studio every day, I was tired and grumpy before I even walked through the door. It was while in this weakened state that I was approached by a California company that owned several ceramic factories in China, and they had a fistful of cash and a proposed contract to license my designs and produce them in Asia. In the face of many reservations and even my own personal pledge to never go to China to have my stuff made, I signed off on the deal. I was sold on the dream that I could move to Italy with my husband, fax in designs, and live off the royalties.

As the collection came in from the factories, I slowly woke up to the fact that China was not going to save me. While my factory collection had superficial appeal, it lacked magic and much of the detail work was sloppy. It was exciting to see "Whitney Smith Pottery" stamped on the bottom of each item, but right underneath my name were the words, "Made in China". In the end, I was forced to admit to myself that I sold out.

Despite this, I have no regrets designing a collection for this company. All of these images to the right are items from my China collection, and the bottom one was an ad for Neiman Marcus. The experience taught me some valuable lessons and techniques, and also gave me some breathing room financially to start firguring out a new plan for myself. The rut I was in, while deeply unpleasant, paved a path for me to move forward. The rut presented me with a set of choices I would otherwise have not considered, and took me places I could not have predicted. In retrospect, I am grateful for the opportunities my rut provided me.

So while I watch my friends work out their own ruts, I at once feel their anxiety and fear, and my own excitement for them as they grapple with what's next. All of my friends are so smart, so creative and visionary, I know they will come out of their ruts and move on to a better life, just like I did.

season to season

When you think a season or two in front of the one that you are actually living in, time goes by at a turbospeed. Here we are, right at the beginning of November, and in my mind I'm already in Spring. I'm preparing for the New York Gift Show in late January and planning my spring collection that I will be showing there; themes, colors, ideas. There are also other shows to apply and plan for, most of which take place well into 2007. While the mad Christmas season descends upon us, I'm also forced to live in the ever-present now while I pack and ship orders for my wholesale accounts and try to make enough pots for my retail customers. It's enough to make a sane human being want to book a one-way ticket to Hawaii.


Probably the thing that I find most distressing about this lifestyle is watching the seasons whipping by me and feeling as if I'm missing out on enjoying each season as it comes. I know that many people-- no matter what their occupation-- are too busy to enjoy the changing seasons. This last week has been especially hard for me. As summer finally slowly slipped away from the Bay Area and day temperatures dropped from the 70's into the low 60's, I was stuck in the studio for 9 straight days trying to catch up on the orders that were running late due to a variety of circumstances. I kept looking out my windows at the last of the sunny days and thinking, "I'll be out there soon! Just hang on!" The most I can manage on these days is a walk around the neighborhood, trying to enjoy what the season has to offer at that moment, and take a breath.

working art

One of the most frequent questions I get asked is how I got into doing what I do, what art school I went to, and how I manage to make a living at being an artist. I get emails from art students all over the country who ask me this. In our culture and many others, artists hold a special place in society and are worshipped as almost supernatural beings. As an artist, I am constantly admired for what I do. At the same time, the idea that you have to be someone really special to be an artist has the effect of discouraging many people from making art a career. Creating art is generally looked upon as a hobby, or something one does on the side when not working at a "real" job. People are fascinated and intrigued when they meet someone who is a full-time artist, and always want to know what my secret is.

I don't have a secret, but I really wish I had supernatural powers. I always wanted to be an artist when I grew up, and I thought I would be a painter. I started painting when I was still in diapers, and that seemed to be where my talent lay. I went to a high school on the east coast that had an excellent art program for students who were planning on going to art school. At the time, I thought art school was the only place that could show me the way to an artist's life. As I approached my senior year though, it was becoming clear that I had little motivation to apply to any schools-- I was barely attending high school by this point-- much less do the work to get the scholarships and grants I would need to pay for the expensive art schools I was interested in.

In the end, after moving myself to California and spending a few years hanging out on the beaches of Santa Cruz, I skipped art school in favor of a degree in another subject that fascinates me, Anthropology. I went to UCSC where I learned to think critically, sharpen my writing skills, and acquire knowledge in many different fields I don't think I would have had the opportunity to delve into had I been ensconced in an art school. I took my first clay throwing classes at Cabrillo, a junior college (where I also met my husband, Andrew; that was a fabulous semester), and got my first job with ceramicist Sandi Dihl as a clay assistant within the year. That was my version of art school, and that's where I learned how to be an artist for a living. I can say without reservation that working for Sandi was the single most valuable experience I had in learning how to make art a business. Eeeew! Two words that should not go together? That will be a subject for another day...

Okay, I do have a secret, and this is it: If you want to be an artist for a living, work for another artist who is doing what you want to do. There is not an artist that I know that doesn't need some kind of help in their studio. If you know how to work and show up when you say you're going to show up, call up a professional artist right now and get yourself hired. You might not get paid very much, or anything at all, but to my mind, it's better than paying that $35,000 a year tuition at art school!

good days, bad days

There are good days in the studio, and there are bad days in the studio. A lot of people think that because I get to play with clay all day, every day must be a good day, and that is generally true. There are even some days that are amazing. Today was an amazing day, and it was doubly amazing because I was rebounding from a very bad yesterday.

The bad yesterday started out normally: a big dose of coffee and an early start in the studio to finish glazing a big round of orders. The studio was toasty warm because of a firing the day before. When the kiln was cool enough to start cracking, I peeked in as I always do. I'm usually so excited to see what comes out of the kiln, but today my heart started thumping hard and I felt sick to my stomache. On the top shelf I had 5 of my cake stands with the little sculpted birds perched on them. From what I could see the little birds were... missing. They had fallen off during the firing. Insert your choice of expletives here as I paced around my studio, taking this in. The kiln was full of these cake stands, and I had made them all at the same time, probably making the same mistake in attaching the birds over and over. It was a fair assumption that all of them had fallen off. And these were for orders that were already a few days behind!

The rest of the afternoon was spent stressing out, calling accounts to let them know their orders would be late, and stressing out some more. I finally left the studio around 7, dreading the next day; I would have to ditch my plans to make new work in preparation for a show and re-make all the cake stands. When I woke up this morning though, I felt fine. I knew I had a full day of work ahead of me and probably no time to go to the gym or enjoy the beautiful sunny day outside, but I still felt good. I went to the studio and threw all day long, 75 pounds of clay total. The clay was at the ideal firmness that I like to work with, the texture perfect. The clay and I were one: all I had to do was think about what I wanted it to do and it did it. I amazed myself by throwing all the cake plates in under an hour, they just flew off my fingers. I didn't want to stop-- I threw cake stands, lidded vessels, vases, bowls. Finally, around 4:30, the clay started wobbling. The magic was over. I've learned that when the magic is over, don't push it. I turned off the wheel and went for a walk, thanking the clay gods-- or whoever it was-- for an amazing day in the studio.

the joys of trade

I spent the weekend working in Los Angeles, and had a chance to go visit my clothing designer friend, Carol Young, at her newly relocated boutique in the Los Feliz district of Los Angeles. Her boutique carries her own seasonal clothing line as well as other unusual handcrafted personal and home accessories. It was a mostly pleasure and partly business visit, since I got to hang with Carol at her cool boutique and also stock up her store with some pottery.


Carol and I met years ago when we both had our work in ACCI Gallery in Berkeley. Carol made the best purses and shoulder bags, beautiful things that I could not afford back then. I really needed one of her shoulder bags to honeymoon in Italy with. I could see this bag with every outfit I was planning to bring with me, and I knew if I had this bag I would blend right in with the chic Italian women. I called her up to see if she wanted to trade some of my pottery for that bag, and a beautiful relationship based on trading our work was born. I still have the bag, and a few others from her collection. After almost 5 years, I continue to use them all the time, and people always ask me where they can get one too.

Carol is one of those people where you wonder if she has an extra twelve hours in the day that you don't have. Not only does she run her boutique by herself, she does all the design, cutting, and sewing of her work, with only sporadic help. Not to mention a patient & loving husband, a dog, and a house! Carol is a member of my tribe: still young, driven, ambitious, and talented. We always talk about how to continue to follow our artistic visions, yet still make money and be organized in our business. This is a never-ending conversation with all of my artist friends who make a living off their art. Here she is on a Sunday in her production area located in the back of the boutique, talking to a customer and laying out patterns.

Carol's hard work pays off though. I whirled around her boutique, trying on every item, while she went through bins of my pottery to sell at her store. Since Carol moved from the Bay Area to Los Angeles back in 2003, I don't get to see her very often, and it's been a while since I've had an opportunity to see her clothes in person and put them on. Her clothing is so wearable, so comfortable and stylish. Carol also makes it a priority to work with sustainable and recycled fabrics, very satisfying to my tree hugging self. I walked away with two new pairs of pants and three tops to add to my collection of Carol Young wear. If you live in the L.A. area, stop by to see Carol, and buy some of my pottery from her so I can get more clothes!
Store: Carol Young
Address:1953 1/2 Hillhurst Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90027
323-663-0088
Website: undesigned.com

art takes time

Fall is always the busiest time of year for me. The year is divided into three seasons: "busy", "really busy", and "busiest". This year I am especially occupied with creating pottery because I’m filling the wholesale orders I took at the New York Gift Show in August, and everyone wants their pottery order in the store before the end of October. I also have retail shows for the holiday season to prepare for, not to mention putting together a fresh new collection for New York Gift in January.

I used to spend this time of year in a constant state of low-level panic, always trying to catch up, always feeling like I didn’t have enough work made, never satisfied with what I did accomplish. Actually, it wasn't just this time of year, but all year 'round. A typical work week was 10 hour days Monday through Friday, then sneaking in to my studio over the weekend to make more pots. "Vacations" were my own private hell where I would obsess over what I should be doing in the studio, what I wasn't doing, and precisely what I was going to do the second I stepped foot back in my dusty little chamber. My husband, Andrew, still refers to my studio as the "clay mines". Lovingly, of course. Everything else in life was sacrificed—relaxing evenings with Andrew, weekend outings with friends, my personal health and well-being--so I could see to my goals at the studio.

After years of reflecting on this problem, and gentle yet persistent prodding from Andrew to stop being an insane obsessive person about my pottery, I now understand that no matter what level of success I achieve, I’ll always be striving to be better than yesterday. I do not claim to have found “balance” between my work and my life outside my work. Yet, I’ve learned that stressing out trying to make pottery contradicts my basic values and keeps me from enjoying the things that are most important to me, including the very process of creating pottery. I now know that I will never have the perfect collection of work all at one time. There are always going to be weak spots that only I can see. Perfection isn’t even the point anyway.

Any artist will tell you that their best work seemingly comes out of nowhere. It actually comes from many hours or error, many days of thinking, months and years of imagining. Art takes time. True beauty--aesthetic, spiritual and beyond-- is born of trial and error. I believe this is true for all things that we encounter as human beings. It is the effort in achieving what is in my imagination and the experiments that are born from that process that make up the work that I do. As an artist that's all I can do, and I'm damn lucky to get paid for it.