remain open

Suddenly, my mood has lifted and I am feeling hopeful again. Don't worry, it's temporary. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the very cool weather we've been having in the Bay Area the past few weeks has suddenly shifted back to spring, where it belongs! And by cool weather I mean in the high 50's and low 60's, which being the spoiled Californian I am proud to be means downright chilly. I had a good Thursday this week, mostly by accepting every thing I had to do, doing it with with focus and enjoyment, and not hoping for more:
--glazing --loading a kiln --packing orders for stores and individuals --uploading images to esty
--answering email --trimming plates and bowls --popping bird and flower molds--

And then finally, in the last two hours of the day, playing with my porcelain and continuing to experiment with some ideas. And even then I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't making something for the Met, I was making something for myself and just enjoy the process, don't worry about the end result. And then I did.

I was answering questions for a small magazine yesterday and I thought I'd share with you one answer since it is so appropriate to the subject:

Where do you look for design inspiration?
Looking for inspiration never works for me, unfortunately. I have to remain open to inspiration wherever it may come to me, whether that is going to the contemporary art galleries, doing the dishes, or eating dinner with my friends and realizing I need a better salad bowl than the one I’m eating out of!

Notice I didn't say, "I schedule the perfect day for myself and sit at my wheel all day and ideas just flows from me". I decided I will never again set up the "perfect" day for "making new work" again. It's just such a set-up for disappointment, and as someone commented, the Muse does not take to being scheduled, she shows up when she damn well pleases. And that folks, is all I have to say about that!

but enough about me

Andrew and I were cruising etsy the other evening looking for something he could wear, when we stumbled on this guy's etsy shop. We were both taken with this graphic image of this obviously disturbed ice cream cone.

I have a pretty dark sense of humor, and I love anthropomorphication . I could understand this ice cream cone immediately. Ice Cream wonders, "Why are these people eating me? I am pink and pretty with a crunchy bottom, and I apparently make people happy! Do they not realize that once they eat me I will be gone, and therefore no longer able to give them pleasure? Why must I be destroyed?"

As Ice Cream begins to melt, a gob of ice cream lands on his hand, and he instinctively licks himself. Hey, he tastes pretty good! And there's more of him up there! He grabs handful of himself and eats some more. He's more than pretty good, he's delicious! He stuffs his face, lost in the pleasure of gorging on ice cream when he is suddenly hit with an existential crisis: Yes, he is delicious, and if he continues to eat this way, he will be gone. But he can hardly stop himself, because he tastes so good! The realization that he will destroy himself is clear in his demented and crazed eyes, glassy and pink, swimming in sugar.

I love this t-shirt so much I immediately emailed the guy to ask if he would make the shirt in white, because I simply cannot wear that shade of blue. I'm still waiting...

why we suffer

I had a terribly unfulfilled day at the studio today. Sara had the day off, and it was a Thursday, my favorite day of the week. I love Thursdays, because it holds all the promise of my next favorite days: Friday and Saturday. There is something very cool and swingy about a Thursday, and I try to not schedule anything on Thursdays so I can enjoy it to the max without interruption. So I was mentally rubbing my hands together, thinking, "A day to make new work and have some fun!" And my husband is out of town at the moment, so I could drink a gallon of coffee for breakfast without anyone nattering to me about my unhealthy level of caffeine intake, which makes me extra extra happy.

This has been my assignment for months: Let Sara take care of production orders so me can work on art. Say that in a robotic voice: Me make aaaaarrrrtttt. The system is in place to make that happen, and we've worked so hard to create a system that works. And yet. And yet...

Nothing is happening. I bounced, literally bounced, into the studio. I started to trim up a bunch of cake plates, (thankyouthankyou etsy for featuring me this week and pouring a ton of orders into my pay pal account) and then I thought, "Wait! I'm not gonna trim plates today! This is my day! I'm gonna make what I wanna make!" I immediately covered up my plates and wedged up some porcelain. I started throwing with no ideas in mind, and unfortunately, no ideas came. Throw throw. Crap. Crap. Suffer.

I called up Rae and complained. She snorted and said, "Join the club". She was not unsympathetic, but merely voicing the truth: to be an artist means you are going to suffer. Why? Because to create takes time, and we want it now. Pulling those ideas down out of the ether or out of the universe or wherever the hell they come from is so damn time-consuming. And we want-- no we expect the idea now.

When an artist is not yet in the flow of creation, it's like waiting in a long line, pushing and shoving your way to the front. And what we can't see is that the pushing and shoving is getting us closer to the front of the line; all we can see are the annoying people in front of us, not the distance we traveled.

And so. We suffer. I suffered. I thought about it for a while, and I thought about what I would say to a friend about my predicament, assuming this friend was not as annoying and deserving of punishment as I am. And I thought, "You should not be in the studio, you should be out in the world and looking at some real art". Then I took out the "real" part, because I would never say that to a friend and I would never even think it. Thank god it's almost Friday, my real favorite day, cause I'm taking the day off to go and look at some art.

one day

Today was another typical day at the studio. My assistant, Sara, showed up promptly at 9 AM and we sat down for a short meditation session to set our intention for the day. Our intention is the same every day: Experience the joy of clay!

Sara then immediately opened the kilns to unload a glaze firing. It really makes my heart sing to watch her unload a kiln of perfectly fired pots. As she unloads each piece, I wrap it in beautifully colored tissue paper and tie it off with a silk ribbon blessed by the Dalai Lama. We then attach the order to it for afternoon shipping to the happy new owner!

The mailman usually stops by around this time to drop off checks from my various clients. I take them to the bank on my afternoon walk. Today there were so many it actually required two trips. Sigh. Running errands are probably my least favorite thing to do but necessary to keep the studio running!

Fortunately my intern Philip was here today to help relieve the tension I was feeling after two trips to the bank to make deposits. Philip is studying to be a ceramicist AND a massage therapist. He has to practice his massage technique a certain number of hours every week, so when he is finished with his studio duties every day he gives me a 60 minute massage. I must say he is getting quite good at the massage thing!

After I woke up from my massage-induced nap, Sara and I sat down to afternoon tea. Of course we drink only out of cups made by Christa Assad. It just makes tea taste better! While we drink tea and relax we chat about various ways she can improve her performance in the studio and increase overall efficiency. I like to push my employees to be the best workers they can be! When they slack off I make a sad face at them and that usually puts them back on track. They hate to disappoint me.

After tea we brainstormed ideas for my next collection. I will usually close my eyes and go into a deep meditative state. I then toss out words that inspire me, like “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” or “dendrobium” or “bacon”. Bacon is a word that always inspires me. Sara, who is very good with her hands, will interpret my words into a drawing of a ceramic piece. Today I dreamed up the entire collection in one sitting! Then Sara sat down at the wheel and threw samples of each piece for my approval. I usually have her make at least ten of each piece so I can pick out the very best one. Really, that is our slogan around here, "Only the best!" I have everybody repeat that phrase at least 100 times a day so they don't forget it.

Since Sara obviously had a long evening ahead of her I decided to let her have the studio to herself so she could concentrate. And it was cocktail hour back at home anyway! The husband likes to start drinking the second I walk through the door, and today was no exception. I hope you all had as great and April Fool's Day as I did!

more shameless self-promotion

Check me out on Etsy, I'm the featured seller and they wrote up a little interview too!

the rules of wholesale: part 1

Many ceramic artists face the dilemma or whether or not to wholesale. In some ways, it seems that getting your goods into a store is the goal. It's exposure, it's validation. When I did my first ACC wholesale show in Baltimore back in 2001, I couldn't imagine anything more exciting than having a store carry my work. But I didn't have a clue what I was getting myself into. My work back then was incredibly labor intensive and unique. I knew how to throw in a production schedule, but the finishing work was impossible to fit into a production mode without losing my mind from the repetition. But I didn't know this yet. I went to the show, was happy to come home with $5,000 worth of orders, and promptly burned myself down to a tiny little crisp in the following months as I filled the orders. I quickly realized my precious pots, priced to move, weren't going to begin to compensate me for the amount of time I was putting into creating them, nor would they cover my costs at the loony bin where my husband was threatening to send me.

First rule of wholesale: never wholesale anything you can't reproduce quickly and consistently. If you love making your labored artworks, believe me: the joy will be sapped right out of it when you are forced to make them over and over again at the rate of about $3 an hour. Consistency is also very important. If you are making work in a production mode, your studio will get overwhelmed with seconds if you cannot make a consistent product. I'm sorry to call your artwork a product, but if you are wholesaling, that's what it is.

So, where do you start with the fast and the easy when your work is neither? My hang up for a long time is that I did not want to work with molds or any other kind of reproduction method. I thought it zapped the magic out of my work. And there is some truth to that idea; the hand infuses an energy into your work that simply cannot be replicated by anything other than a human. At the same time, your idea also contains magic, and challenging your brain to figure out how to get that idea onto 200 pots in one week-- as opposed to 6 months-- also creates its own magic.

To answer the question for myself I created my Seed & Pod line alongside my more intense Flower line. It was simple to throw, easy to finish. And I loved giving myself something else to work on that reflected a different style. When I jumped back into serious wholesale again in 2006, I only took my Seed & Pod line. Simple, easy. In time the orders jumped over what I could realistically make by hand, and that's where Hector came in. Hector makes molds from all of my the work I want to wholesale. Over the past two years I've even been able to add my best-selling items from the Flower line and have them molded to expand my line and keep it interesting.

So if you are thinking about wholesale, you really have to answer "yes" to these two questions of efficiency and consistency. If you're saying "yeeeees", kind of slowly, or "most of the time", or "I don't mind working 60 hours a week!" then you are not ready for wholesale on a large scale yet. And by large scale I mean 50% or more of your income.

How you get to efficiency and consistency is up to you. I say listen to everyone, and listen to no one. The way I do it works for me, but it's not the answer. I've cobbled together my solution over the years by following only what I am comfortable with. I look at some people's work who want to wholesale and I think, "You make a mold of that bowl, a decal of that design, and you are good to go". But that person may not like decals. Or molds. They may need to come up with a new design that echoes the original idea so they don't feel they have to sacrifice some aspect of originality. Or they may just have to totally burn themselves out to realize molds and decals ain't so bad.

I am going to continue to write on this subject of wholesale, so if there is a particular aspect that you would like to have addressed, please email me or post a comment.

some eye candy