Let's Get Real Creative

Prefer to read instead of listen? Here’s the longer version of what we talked about:

Beth is a mom of two littles with a passion for pottery.

Ceramics refers to a process – work made with clay. Pottery is a type of work made with clay. Sculpture of a human head vs. a mug you drink coffee from – both are ceramics but only the mug is pottery (functional wares like serving bowls, plates, etc.). Beth focuses on pottery, but would like to branch out into more sculptural work as well, which she has dabbled in.

Before her newborn Max, she worked on pottery and worked a lot in the studio in her basement. She also works at a gallery that has a studio as a part of it, where she fires all of the things she makes at home too (she doesn’t have a kiln at home). Loves going to see what other people are doing, too!

How big is the world of ceramics? A traditional museum has sculpture made out of wood, fiber, glass, etc. (ceramics is a subset), so it makes up a very small part of what is shown. Functional works are not often the focus – you won’t see these in the MFA, you’ll see it if you dip your toe in small shops and studios locally.

She did ceramics as a kid. Lucky enough to have parents who wanted them to be exploring the arts. Tried piano, didn’t like it.

Family friend is an artistic mentor and ceramic artist (large-scale artist). She played with clay at her studio.

She went to school for art, where painting was her primary focus but she took ceramics electives. Gravitated towards painting because it was easier to get the color she wanted and then put it where she wanted. In ceramics, there’s chemistry involved and dry times (it takes about a month to make one piece!), and maybe the glaze had a reaction and therefore a color that you didn’t expect.

It wasn’t until she left a job in the arts where her position got cut that she suddenly had free time after 5:00 to do something. Took a class at a local gallery with a master potter. Took it again, and then she showed up to an event the woman was running and helped teach some of the people attending. Had a conversation after and she started working there. Beth respected the way this woman taught and was excited to get into teaching there.

Making large-scale abstract landscapes as a painter, but would’ve had to get entrenched in an art scene in Boston that wasn’t the way she wanted to balance her life. But, “everyone has room for one more mug.” She felt that pottery actually had a place to go and wouldn’t just build up in her basement, so it could be a viable career.

Both painting and ceramics involve large set-ups with specific (sometimes dangerous) materials, so has to do one or the other at a time. Hard to pursue both with everything else in life going on.

The classes she was taking – was bringing her finished products into the office, and the people there knew the hard work that went into them. People were really supportive and excited, and offered to buy them. She was surprised it happened earlier than expected but of course she said yes! She kept working out more of the kinks, and then the woman running the gallery made a space there for the work of emerging artists, work that isn’t exactly perfect but the owner could still stand behind as solid work. Beth put her work there and put it out on social media and if anyone expressed interest she’d close the sale by directing them right to where they could buy it.

She was also working shifts at the gallery so she was used to closing sales there, easier to do it for your own work. She likes helping people get work home that they love. It’s easier to pretend like someone else made it and talk about your work objectively.

Hard for some people to recognize the value of her work sometimes.

“I really do understand how people might not get why a mug is $45, but sometimes that mug has 22 karat gold on it, and they don’t really understand that. This is real gold on this piece, and oh, by the way, I had to use a gas mask, and oh, by the way, it took me a month. So I really view it as a teachable moment, as an educational opportunity. This person was interested enough to come and pick this piece up or express interest online in some way, so clearly there’s some way I already have my foot in the door, so why not use this moment to let them know how exciting the world of ceramics is, and what actually goes into making pottery? And by the time you are interested in letting them know how this work is made, they usually come around.”

“There’s something special about having a piece of art that you’re using every day in your life. Why not bring art into your home? It’s a little tiny piece of joy.”

Discovering her style… mixed a green glaze and white glaze together, and it gave her a bright blue, and that was really excited. So she got interested in making as much as she could using just these two glazes, wax resists, and finding different combinations and variety. Worked on this project for a year. Then started thinking about different types of designs she could do with wax resists and imagery, so that’s what her current body of work is this year. One thing led into and informed the next.

Naturally making all the time. Always has sketchbooks and pens around, and a touchscreen computer to do digital drawings.

“Whatever I can do, I’m always doing.”

Her daughter draws in them, too. Beth draws pottery ideas right next to her drawings, and gets ideas from the way her daughter layers things and builds little pieces of art. Sometimes Beth goes in and does a drawing on top of hers, and they build on top of each other.

She always tries to buy her daughter safe but good art materials she would buy for herself.

“As an educator, I do find that children are drawn to making more interesting work and work for longer periods of time when it’s good materials. They can tell.”

The expense of arts and crafts materials is something to think about, but worth it to let your kids use good materials and experiment.

“As far as my mom self and my creative self, it’s sort of in chapters.”

In this current chapter, she’s not getting as much creativity in her life as she wants but she knows it’s just a season. Considers her art her third child. There’ll be more time to circle back in a little while.

She’d love to have her own kiln, because of the ease of just going downstairs to finish making her work with kids in the house. Wants to sell more of her work online and continue selling in the gallery. Would also like to teach classes at art centers around and access different points of the community.

“A good place to start is journaling or sketching every single day for three minutes in the morning.”

Got this idea from “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron and her suggestion for writing “morning pages” every day. There’s some continuity about ideas building into other ideas, keeping the flow going, just practicing and moving the work through.

“Every so often something’s gonna stick where it’s a good idea, or something you want to pursue more specifically. But until you get to that, you have to just sort of keep the faucet on any way you can.”

I talk about how I write essays while feeding my daughter a bottle in the middle of the night.

Beth has her son in the carrier strapped on to her and goes down into the basement to move some mugs along to the next part of the process.

Even two minutes to get your idea ready is a good step!