Show Notes – The Potters Cast

Paul Blais | Episode 1256

I am a new teacher of clay. A little over a year ago Jennifer and I opened a new community studio here in Vancouver, Washington called Clay Works of Vancouver. Because I wasn’t a teacher, I went a good chunk of the year watching others teach all the classes. I started doing our one-off classes, Take It For A Spin, and Clay for Two classes. These are basic one-time events that are there just to dip the toe in the water and have fun. But then I was asked by a person if I would be willing to teach a beginner class. I said with total confidence that I would totally do it for her. And then I actually had to do it. So I asked for some advice from y’all. This episode is some of the advice I received.

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Below are the people who reached out to me through the Clay Call link above.

“Just teach what you know.” Caryn Newman

“I don’t use the word wrong.” Babs Stone

“Let your students have fun.” Darren Jackson

“Have a goal with each class” Frank Korb

Amy Noel | Episode 1255

Amy Noel is the owner and potter behind Wabi Scotia Pottery in Nova Scotia. After years of working part-time with young children, she turned her passion for clay into a full-time business. Today, she creates functional pottery, teaches classes, and has expanded her studio to include kiln rentals, helping others discover the joy and confidence that come from working with clay.

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What was the big idea that you were trying to tackle? What was the big idea that you were seeing there was a need for?

It was more of the admin stuff like the automations and the bookings and taking payments and everything. Just saving yourself time so that renting your kiln out doesn’t become basically a time suck that makes it not profitable.

When you start looking at building something like this out, do you have a very specific person in my mind, like an avatar?

Yeah, me. I was the avatar because I made it first and foremost for me to use. But to expound on that, it’s like what we were talking about before where a potter or maybe a small community studio with just one kiln who wants to make a little bit of side income or maybe they have a few people who are approaching them in their community who want to rent their kiln but they don’t want to lose all of that time emailing back and forth.

You mentioned in our conversation on The Potters Cast that your husband was doing vibe programming and I’m wondering… Did you need to be a programmer to be able to make the actual app that useful for launching?

No, the beautiful thing about it was he is a little technically savvy, but he. It’s like talking to an assistant, but you have to be really good at describing what you want and explaining what you want. Like you have to have those really good communication skills because yeah, it’s basically like you’re talking to, it’s AI, but you’re talking to a programmer who’s doing the work for you. So you have to be very descriptive.

When you are looking at putting it out there to the world, how do you get the message out that you’ve got an app that would be useful for them?

I just today started my Instagram page for it with some posters. I haven’t posted anything yet, but I have a total of eight followers, so that’s very exciting. I thought I’d have zero followers when I was talking to you. But yeah, so Instagram, I think I’ll contact people directly who I know are renting their kilns and then advertising it on my own personal pottery page as well. Because I have a I do have a good amount of followers on there who are other potters.

When you were writing the app, what kind of costs are involved in coming up with the actual finished product?

That’s a great question. So you have to pay for Replit for a monthly fee. So I think it’s like $31. And then if you go over your allotted time, because everything you get it to do, it records the minutes that it takes. making that page or working on that page. So you have to pay extra. So let’s say $9 one week, $15 the next week, depending on how much you’re working on it. And then we have a huge emailing system as well, which is a different provider, but we’ve hooked that up. So it’s all the automated emails. So we have to pay for that monthly. I think that’s like a 30 or $35 monthly fee Canadian as well. And then all of your blood, sweat and tears on top of that, your time, which is the biggest thing. But I will say it’s amazing because I know a friend who tried to make an app just three years ago, not a pottery app, and he spent his life savings to develop this app with a developer before Vibe coding was a thing. So to say that I’ve put maybe $2,000 into this is ridiculous to actually have an amazing app.

One last question for you. Has it been worth it?

It has for me. I, oh my goodness. Like, so I’ve met so many great potters in the community, mostly beginners, but one really cool potter who like she’s doing all of these sculptural things and it’s so cool to see her work. And also on the revenue side. So like you get that community kind of built up and they come back again and again. And I’m kind of. I wouldn’t say I’m mentoring them now, but I’m giving them advice about how much to put in a kiln shelf and all of that. I think we discussed that before. And I think I’ve made enough, I’d say once I take away my fees for, you know, like kiln repairs and electricity, I think I’ve made enough to almost cover one month of income for the year. Not quite, but almost. And so It’s August now and I’m making for the fall, but I’m not teaching. I’m not doing any website updates in August. And that’s made possible because I’ve had this little bit of extra income coming in for a year.

Book

Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell

Contact

wabiscotiapottery.ca

Instagram: @amyscotiapottery

Kim Johnston | Episode 1254

Kim Johnston is a South Australian graphic designer and part-time ceramicist. Drawn to clay as a way to step away from the screen and reconnect with a more hands-on creative process, Kim creates functional ceramics that celebrate everyday rituals. Through her work, Kim is exploring her artistic voice while building her ceramics practice.

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Somebody said that a great pottery booth doesn’t just display pots, it tells a story of your pottery. Do you take the approach to try to communicate your story through your booth?

I don’t know if it tells my story, but I guess I take that opportunity to tell my story to people. Like I find people are always fascinated when they come up and, oh, did you make this? So I always take that opportunity to educate people about ceramics and what is involved. And I’ll answer any question anyone throws at me about the process. So I guess the booth does tell my story because it’s my work. But like I said, it’s more than just how it’s displayed. It’s how I interact with people.

Do you feel that you’ve set your booth up in a way that becomes an invitation to enter?

I think so. I always have mine front facing so people don’t have to step in. And that’s maybe just the types of markets I do do that just seems to work the best. Yeah.

Something as simple as shelving can make or break the aesthetics of a booth. What do you use to be able to set your pots on for display?

I have a bit of a wooden A-frame style system for my table. So to start with, that stands out from everybody else because it’s quite different. And then I use a series of wooden shelves that all go together. So everything’s easily accessible. And you can see each individual piece, nothing sort of hidden by something else.

Do you try to set up your booth so you have a mug collection and a dinnerware collection, or a blue collection?

Yeah, I have very distinctive setup where all the colored mugs are together. My colored range I pretty much just do in mugs, but then my other pieces I do white or black and white. They’re all sort of grouped together. So, and it’s funny, you can see a group, you’ll see a husband and a wife. The husband will go to the color, the husband will go to the black and white. And so you’re kind of drawn to what you naturally like, I think. Makes it easier.

Do you try to put a “wow” piece into your booth so that it kind of stops people to come in?

Yeah, I will always have some pieces that I don’t often expect to sell very often. It might be a large, really large platter or a big vessel or something, but I think it’s really nice to have something that’s a bit of a conversation piece. A bit like we spoke about earlier about the black and white doesn’t sell as often, but it’s a conversation starter. Yeah.

Are you an encourager of touching pots?

Absolutely. Maybe not the little children, but I definitely encourage people to pick it up, especially with mugs. It’s all about how the handle feels. Yeah.

You set up a booth every weekend or not every weekend, but every month. That booth has to be transported and stored. So how do you handle the storage of your booth?

It packs down fairly simply. And like I said, my husband who moves it all for me, it just all sort of squeezes in the garage. So it’s not too bad. It all folds pretty flat, fits in one car load, but quite a big car load. So it’s not too hard to store. It’s all about having Smart things that fall down and lots of storage boxes.

Book

Earth & Fire: Modern Ceramicists, Their Tools, Techniques, and Practices by Kylie Johnson and Tiffany Johnson

Contact

kimjohnstonceramics.com.au

Instagram: @kim_johnston_ceramics

Jeffery Liang | Episode 1253

Jeffery Liang is a Taiwanese American based in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a background in fine arts and industrial design, Jeffery’s passion for creating has always been at the heart of everything he does. Handmade pottery became the perfect medium for him because it beautifully combines these two passions. Jeffery’s journey into ceramics began in 2018 when he became a student at City College of San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center. Jeffery quickly realized that ceramics was something he wanted to pursue seriously. A few months later, Jeffery began working at several pottery studios in both San Francisco and his hometown of Taipei, where he continued to refine his skills and deepen his understanding of the craft. Initially, The Spiffy Studio began as an after-work project about making and selling handmade functional ceramic pieces. However, working as a full-time designer during the week and selling pottery on weekends soon became unfulfilling. Jeffery has always been fascinated by the idea of being a business owner and entrepreneur. Jeffery began to consider opening his own pottery studio. After a few years of refining the idea and months of hard work, Spiffy Pottery Studio officially opened for business in February 2025 —a welcoming creative space where people of all backgrounds can discover the joy of working with clay, learn new skills, and build meaningful connections through ceramics.

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What was your biggest expense that you didn’t anticipate that caught you off guard?

Yes, I can tell you now is the attorney fee. This was the first time I rented or acquired a commercial space and you need a realtor for commercial property. Realty is different from residential and I learned the hard way because you need an agent that represents yourself. I’m sure many people know that, but I did not know that. And I just look for this face value and looked for their agent. He was representing both of us, which is not a good idea. So when they send their contract for the building, it’s over 30 pages in a language I don’t understand. And since English is my second language already, that feels like some language from our outer planet. And so I have to hire a realtor to look through the message and to Just help me out because I can’t understand anything. So that snowball into a big amount of amount of money and I really regret paying that. So for those for those wondering, if you want to do the same thing, you should find your own agent first.

When you looked at the very beginning about all the avenues of income, there would be classes and memberships and workshops and so on and so forth. Which do you feel now is the strongest part of running the studio that gives you the most stability.

Oh, it’s definitely memberships. But to be more detailed on these questions, I think when we give out inspirational spark for people, it’s hard to explain. When they, that’s to say, when they get addicted to clay, I think it all happens in the students’ space. And once they realize this is what they need, they turn it into membership. So membership is really stable for us. But I think the magic happens is when they’re students.

Someone told me that that you need to look at memberships the same way that a gym does memberships in that you over book your memberships because a lot of them won’t actually follow through, but they’ll stay members. Do you find that’s the case that you can have “too many” members?

I think it depends on where you’re at because some studio do that. We call a wait list. in terms of membership because people wants to get in. But in our region, in Menlo Park, I will say is seasonal because, for example, during the summer, like right now, we do have fewer members because people are out of town. They tend to not want to come to the studio. So I think it’s partially correct. So I would say I’m not 100% agree on that because that does not happen in our case.

Now that you’ve built out the studio and you are open and you’ve been going for a little over a year and a half or right about there, what’s a piece of equipment that you would buy differently?

Let’s see. I would say instead of a specific equipment, I would rather rethink my electrical layout for the wheels because that matters a lot. And some studios just plug into the wall outlets, but a little bit of electrical system in the building, it might overpower the breaker box, whatever it’s connected to. So we did a hard conduit from the ceiling and drop down, a hard line to each wheel. But that’s a really big commitment for the position of the wheels. Because nowadays I would really like to be more playful with the placement of the wheels. But with the hard conduits sitting like as this is right now, it’s a little bit hard to adjust.

What’s one thing administratively, like as a business owner, that takes up more time that you didn’t expect?

That is definitely answering people’s e-mail with all kinds of questions, especially when people want to set up their own private events and classes schedule rescheduling or setting up a makeup class. That’s, we didn’t think of, takes a lot of effort every day.

What do you do or how do you go about creating a welcoming culture amongst your members?

Good questions I think I think a lot of an atmosphere or welcoming culture is a byproduct of you doing the right thing. Because just like what people say, if you have a passion for a certain thing you do and it becomes your own business, you have more leverage and motivate yourself. I do have a certain passion for ceramics when we teach, when we build up the studio in many shows, a lot of effort that we’re willing to spill out. And that really triggers people such as student and members dedicate more time or talk to us more about their questions. It’s like a good cycle in a way. For example, last year, and this is exactly how we met through the video that you built your sink. That’s right. That makes me want to build my sink in the same certain ways. So I started building that and makes people think, yep, we really do care about the studio space because our old sink sucks. I think that effort shows we really want to build a community and we want to show the people that this is a space that we are further developing and always want to get better at it. So they’re willing to spend more time and effort to explore their inspiration on their work.

Book

Contact

thespiffystudio.info

Instagram: @spiffypotterystudio

Hunter Vargo | Episode 1252

Hunter Vargo started Hucks Pottery shortly after a life changing crash while speed flying his parachute. As Hunter went through recovery tea had become a huge part of his daily routine. As it became apparent that Hunter’s physical body wouldn’t allow him to return to flying professionally it was time for him to pursue another interest. Teaware!

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Hunter, do you still remember what moment you realized that clay was something that you were going to totally pursue.

Yeah. I think it was when my first piece came to completion. When the delayed gratification of getting that piece out of the kiln after learning to glaze and the function and the form, that bit is what drew me in.

What surprised you most about working with pottery?

The depth, certainly the depth. It’s also what captivated me the most. But you can grab any Ave. in any direction and dive in.

This really came out of the result of a flying accident. And perhaps if you had never been in that accident, you may not have gotten into ceramics. I’m curious about that idea about taking trauma and turning it into something positive. Do you feel like ceramics has been the thing that’s helped to bring healing to the psychology and the healing of the accident?

I think being present brings healing and pottery, ceramics, clay, have an incredible way of doing that. It’s the time that you’re off your phone, it’s the time that you’re there with your thoughts. And that absolutely, no doubt, along with this, anything for me that I can pursue heavily brings a great ease to the mind. So I needed a thing and that was it.

You said that you’ve landed at a clay studio where there’s lots of involvement. I’m wondering for you, how important is that influence of the community there, the clay community for helping you grow?

Yeah, the clay hole has been incredible. The people there are awesome. I love the owner. With that being said, Instagram as well has been an incredible resource. The tea community, the tea wear and pottery in general, if you reach out, I’ve had these types of phone calls with random people willing to give me information that are much farther along than me. And I couldn’t be more appreciative for that.

When you start looking at making your pots, h ow has that desire changed from wanting to just get that pot successful to wanting to be a way of expressing your creativity?

With teapots, it started as just wanting to get something completed. The intricacy comes later following obsession. I just want to get better. Finding different ways to communicate with the teaware and the ceremony. Do you want it to be easy? Do you want it to demand your attention? Do you want a specific type of pour? What do you want it to feel like? Are you brewing for other people? There’s just a vast amount of questions that need to be answered and then your intent comes into play.

Do you feel like you’re making the work you love or you’re making the work you can?

Full honesty, I think right now I’m making the work I can. I have a tendency to always be looking one step ahead. It’s something that I’m constantly checking myself on, setting a moment of presence, working through it with my partner Brooke who’s incredible with this stuff. And taking appreciation for what I can make. But I guarantee you, my eyes are always looking forward.

Book

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Contact

huckspottery.myshopify.com

Instagram: @hunter_hucks

Nate Miller | Episode 1251

Nathaniel “Nate” Miller went full-time as a potter in 2026 after twenty years of filmmaking and video editing. Nate’s Burbank, CA studio makes handcrafted functional ceramic housewares with a playful taste of science fiction and futurism.

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Nate, I know that you have been involved in helping to grow social media for the entertainment industry, but also it’s been something you’ve been doing for yourself. And when I asked you, has it been working, and you said 1000%! You’ve really been using it to grow your own following, so to speak. And so I’m curious about a couple things. How important is the first three seconds of any reel or any type of video on social media?

I think those first three seconds are really important. I think people on social media is gonna, I think people on social media are gonna drop off pretty quickly if you don’t have anything to hook them in.

On your Instagram feed you’ve got catchy comments that are put in emboldened letters right before you even click on it. In using a visual hook like that, what do you feel that does for engagement?

I think it’s important to, if you give some, sorry, let me try and think of this in as concise a way as possible. I think you want to give the audience exactly what they’re expecting you to give them. So if you’re going to offer something, you need to deliver on that.

How important is planning and organizing beforehand?

I plan and organize everything down. Yeah, I plan and organize everything definitely. It’s very important.

Do you have a short storyline that you bring to the table for each video?

Yeah, I write everything out beforehand and I’ll record my voiceovers 1st and then I will structure everything to that.

You said in The Potters Cast that you use and have all the pro tools. Is that totally necessary?

No, I don’t think that’s necessary. I already know how to use all that stuff, so it’s just easier for me. I mean, you can make reels on your phone, but I have all, I got the Adobe Creative Cloud, and so I do everything in there. That’s just what I’m used to.

How important is actual movement for a reel to be getting traction?

I think it’s pretty important to keep it flowing and keep it punchy. I keep, I don’t, I try to make soothing content, but even though it’s soothing and I still have rapid edits and I don’t linger on any shot very long.

In your bio you say “A place for ceramics and ceramic adjacent thoughts”. Is it important to have like a theme of things that you talk about?

I like to have a theme and I like to keep it consistent in that you at least somewhat know what you’re going to expect. I mean, I guess I don’t like using market speak too much, but I try to have a brand at least a little bit. I think if you watch my videos, there’s a certain cadence that you can expect in my voice. There’s a certain kind of music you can expect, and you can expect me to be talking about pottery or something related to my pottery work or my family life or something at least lightly philosophical in that way.

Book

Designa: Technical Secrets of the Traditional Visual Arts by Adam Tetlow

Contact

nathanielmiller.me

Instagram: @nate_miller

Naomi Peterson | Episode 1250

Naomi Peterson is a full-time ceramic artist based in Kansas City, Missouri. Naomi received her MFA in ceramics from the University of North Texas (2021) and her BFA in ceramics at the University of Wyoming (2017). Naomi has been an artist-in-residence at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, participated in the Neltje artist-in-residence program in 2018, and recently participated in the Winter 2025 Pentaculum at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts; currently Naomi is an artist-in-residence at KC Clay Guild. In 2024, Ceramics Monthly selected Naomi as a 2024 Emerging Artist. Naomi has taught at various institutions nationally such as the Glassell School of Art and Art League Houston in addition to teaching workshops online and in person.

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Do you ever use Procreate to design the body of the work, also like the body of your pottery?

You know, very, very rarely. will often sketch in my sketchbook because I do love physically sketching. But more often recently, I’ve been sketching in 3D, making my objects out of clay and kind of just running with it, making multiple pieces and kind of creating iterations from those repeated forms.

It sounds like what you said was in the interview in The Potters Cast before we hit the Mud Meets The Bat Round that you like to take a photograph of a bisque piece and that’s when you start doing your design work for your surface design. When it comes to surface, with all the colors you do, has this allowed you to become even more bold because you can pre-plan it?

Definitely, yeah. I will use many, many, many layers of, on just one form. And I’ll catch myself not using the first or the second or the third iteration in Procreate, but usually, maybe the 6th or the 7th. It takes a few times to feel like the piece is actually feeling good color-wise and like there’s a good transition between the layers.

So are you using Procreate also to be able to test out those color combinations for the complementary and contrasting colors? Is that kind of part of the big idea there?

Yeah, it kind of really is just whatever I’m feeling. It’s not really trying to make them complementary or contrasting or even monochrome, but if it feels good, if I’m liking what’s happening visually, I’ll kind of run with it. But it’s I’m never trying to make it fit within a set palette, although that would make it probably a lot easier in some cases.

Does doing this work with Procreate help you to understand a flow for a collection that you’re trying to make?

Oh, yes. I find that it’s easiest when I’m making a bunch of cups. I really want all of my cups to be a little bit different, have their own personalities. It’s kind of like having a variety cupcake box in my mind. So I’ll take a sketch or a picture of my cup base and then I’ll superimpose attachments or colors, patterns, so that I’m collecting and creating a bunch of different ideas around, say, the cup. But I don’t usually do that for other forms, like, say, jars or more sculptural forms.

SAMSUNG CSC

Is there ever a time when Procreate falls short because it doesn’t quite do the 3D as well as you’d hope to?

Yeah, and I do feel like it really depends on the form. So I’ll often feel like, oh, shoot, I’m not capturing what this kind of looks like on the interior, and that’s needing to relate to the exterior in some way. And so in that case, I’ll have to go back and take a couple different shots of the, say, not just the profile, but maybe the three quarter view and maybe some other views just to be able to try to capture the 3D-ness, like the dimensionality of the form. But it is a 2D medium. I don’t foresee trying to paint with like an Oculus, those.

Do you feel as Procreate has made you a better potter or has it made you a better designer?

That’s a good question. You know, I kind of feel like both. And I say that because there have been instances where I’ve collaborated with other artists and it’s such a great tool to help me figure out how am I going to approach these forms that are not fully my own. Or if I’m making a piece that is for a specific purpose, like I had a commission that was recreating a cake from a bakery that no longer exists. And so it’s like, how am I going to get kind of these details and also these colors, but in my own style, which is what they requested. And it’s been such a great tool for that to not only plan, but also to give me the plan as far as design, but also give me the confidence to be like, okay, I’m going to draw it out and then I’m going to make it.

Book

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

Contact

naomipeterson.com

Instagram: @n.ceramic

Nicole Kluba | Episode 1249

Nicole Kluba is the owner of Kluba Ceramics and lives in the town of Seagrove, North Carolina. Seagrove is a small, rural town which also happens to be the pottery capital of the US. Nicole has grown up in Seagrove and has been exposed to pottery not only in the community, but in her family as well. Before Nicole began creating pottery full time in March 2024, she worked in emergency services for four and a half years until she left at age 23 to pursue pottery as a career.

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Do you feel like that pottery became a real job on the day that you started to treat it like it was a real job?

I think so, absolutely. I think it definitely took me some time to, like I said, I feel like I was raised not really having that as an option to be a business owner. Like it never really was presented to me. So I feel like I kind of had to not really talk myself into it, but kind of train my brain to think like, okay, I can do this, you know, as a real job, so to speak. And so I definitely think it took me some time. But, you know, obviously, I mean, like you said, I mean, it is a real job. I mean, I’m doing it full time. I’m putting in my hours. I have a shop, we have customers come out. I mean, it’s definitely a real job. Like I said, I think it definitely just kind of took me some time to change my mindset on it, if that makes sense. I think I kind of didn’t really, I don’t want to say that I didn’t believe it, but I kind of didn’t believe it. I didn’t think that it was possible. And so when it actually became real, I think I just had to see it to believe it.

Would it be safe to say that the commitment defines it as a job? 

I think so. I think it was all the mindset. I definitely don’t think it was the the paycheck side of it. Um, I definitely think it was, I mean, like you said, treating it as a real job. And, you know, I feel like going from, you know, having like a, so to speak, a normal job and having to transition, um, cause it was a very big transition into being a business owner, into being an artist. And so I feel like I really, I mean, like I said before, I had to train my brain. and figure out that transition and really figure out, for one was, I guess, since there wasn’t anybody to make me do things, I did have a problem at first, I guess, holding myself accountable for like, what I needed to get done if that makes sense. And so I feel like once I got past that and, I started planning my days and I guess actually seeing the progress being made, Then it really started to click like, okay, you know, this is a full-time job. This is what I’m doing. This is working And we went from there, but I think it definitely was all I guess the mental aspect of it.

There are some that say that a professional doesn’t doesn’t wait for inspiration, they clock in. It sounds like that’s what you kind of did. Did you have to ask yourself, would you hire yourself based on how your work ethic was?

I would say, well, I mean, I would say yes and no, if that makes sense. Because, you know, like I said, when I was in the workforce, I had people telling me where to be, when to be there and what to do. And absolutely I would hire myself then because I would show up and do what I was told and then go home. But when I, guess had to start listening to myself, obviously that is a very, very big change. At the beginning when I was first starting my business, I don’t think I would hire myself then. Like I said, I had such a very hard time with that transition. I guess just staying, not really staying motivated, but figuring out how to get things done, I guess, and keep myself from getting distracted. Because that was, I mean, that was my biggest problem for months was just getting things done. And I don’t really know what it was, but I guess because I didn’t have anybody there to tell me what I needed to be doing and when I needed to be doing it. I had a really, really hard time with that for some reason.

Some people say if you want to be a working artist, that you have to stop thinking like an artist. Not all the time, because obviously you have to create like an artist. But there’s times when you have to think more like an entrepreneur, which means asking questions like, Who’s my customer? Who buys the work? Why do they buy it? Is it hard for you to do that transition from turning off the artist think and turning on the entrepreneur think?

Now, I do not think so at all. I actually, I mean, I really enjoy the entrepreneur side of it. I love like trying to figure out, you know, because I feel like my pottery is very niche in a way. And so I love thinking like, okay, what is the next thing that I could do that this very specific group of people would like. I love thinking like that. I love planning the business parts of it. I love thinking about what events I should plan that, you know, the community that I’ve created would enjoy. I love that aspect of it. I love running the business. I love all of that. And I feel like it’s gotten very easy for me, especially, I would say, I would say probably the last six months. to where it doesn’t really feel like switching back and forth between being an artist and I guess a business owner, it kind of feels like they kind of coexist together, if that makes sense. It feels very, very normal for some reason, which is good. But yeah, I haven’t really had a problem with it. Thank goodness.

There is that idea also is that at some point as a business, you have to make pots people want. And if you’re not making pots people want, that’s okay too, but you won’t have a business. So how much do you have to compromise your creativity to be able to make the pots that people want?

Oh, well, surprisingly, I really don’t feel like I’m having to compromise at all, which has been amazing because my first year when I was making pottery full time, I kind of made a little bit of everything because I really wasn’t sure, I guess what I wanted to stick with, like what my style was, what I wanted to do. And things sold, but I felt like I really didn’t have like a set customer base, if that makes sense. Like I kind of feel like I was just making whatever. And I mean, I feel like I always hear people say like, people will buy, you know, what you love or like what you enjoy making. And I feel like when I actually started making what I wanted, which is more of the alternative style, like scraffito pieces, I mean, that’s what I love to do. And I feel like when I did start going that direction, I feel like people could definitely see that that was what I enjoyed. Because ever since I started doing this graffito, I mean, that’s really when I felt like my business did start to take off. And I felt like I have found a very niche community that really enjoys it and really loves it. And it’s what I enjoy making and what I love to make. And so I feel like people can see that. And that definitely helps A lot. So I really don’t feel like I’m having to compromise, which is amazing.

Somebody said that that in order to become an overnight success, all you need is 10 years of effort. And I kind of really love that perspective because it really means it takes patience. How much does patience come into play for your building a successful job, real job?

Oh, yeah. I have definitely had to learn how to be patient. because I am unfortunately not a very patient person. And so I’ve definitely had to learn patience because obviously, you can’t start a business and it just blow up overnight. I already made for some people, but it definitely has not for me. Obviously, it takes a very long time. And like I said before, with being able to make a clay body of 100% wild clay, I mean, it’s two years in the making. almost two years and I’m still working on it. So I mean, I definitely have to be patient in a lot of ways. I mean, the same thing for getting my forever shop built. We started off selling pots out of a little shed in our backyard. So that whole year we’re working on fixing this place up. So I had to have patience then with resting the process and getting everything situated just how we needed it. fixing this place up and now we are in the forever home of my business and so I definitely I’ve had to learn patience and I think it comes in pretty much all aspects of pottery you know pottery the whole process of everything but then also the business side of it so I feel like it’s definitely definitely been a very big part I’ve definitely had to learn how to deal with, I think.

Book

Jugtown Pottery by Stephen C Compton

Contact

klubaceramics.com

Instagram: @klubaceramics

Joe & Emilie Bott | Episode 1248

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Have you all developed a team to help to pull this event together and pull it off?

Joe: Yes, we have.

Emilie: Yeah, we, yes, we’ve we’ve brought in some of our friends that we’ve known from NCCA that are supporting us and some of the local artists here through like the college university that help us volunteer wise to be able to do what we do. We have a lot of family that helps volunteer too.

How do you build a budget for something like this?

Joe: We take what we did last year and the previous year or so and try to structure that out of how much can we pay the artists coming in next year? How many can we bring in? What do we have to do as far as space wise with the convention center, do we have to get another room or two and just try to lay it all out in a quick outline?

Emilie: Mostly, again, the convention center side, trying to make sure what’s best for us. We’ve actually looked at having tourism help us a little bit too, because our conference has grown. So tourism likes to help people come to the area. Looking to get outside resources.

When do you start the actual advertising process? Like how far in advance?

Joe: I don’t know if we really advertise a whole lot. So we do our Facebook and Instagram posts about who the artists are and when applications and submissions and things open up for everyone to submit. But I don’t do any advertising, radio, TV, flyers, mailings, any of that kind of stuff. It’s just all social media. And it starts pretty much when the one conference is over, we jump back in and start getting it going to promote the next year coming up.

Do you guys do paid advertisements like through Instagram or Facebook?

Emilie: We haven’t done a whole lot. Honestly, I think it’s a lot of word of mouth and experience from the attendees, other artists and the vendors who have attended. We’ve luckily gotten enough out there that way that we’ve just not really had to look into it.

What are your expectations for your presenters and your keynote speakers in terms of getting the word out? Do you expect them to do anything?

Joe: To be honest, no. I mean, if I’m being really raw honest with you, no. They just have. I think the experience that they’ve had in the smaller community and the experience being here and having that one-on-one has spoke volumes for all artists and the speakers, attendees and the vendors, because it’s just, it feels more like family, like a friendship. So I feel like people naturally want to talk about that instead of it just being so grandiose and A lot. So I honestly, that’s, we don’t ask them the two, they just do.

Emilie: We do send them, you know, copies of the, or like files of like the logo, some of the the dates and things, and also give them privilege to take any of our information and put it on their websites and things and promote it that way if they want to. But we don’t require it by any means.

Contact

clayconwest.com

Instagram: @clayconwest

Esther Drone | Episode 1247

Esther Drone is a potter and ceramic artist based in Langford on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Esther has facilitated a variety of groups as a pottery instructor. Esther’s work is predominately functional and is currently available in a variety of shops in the Greater Victoria area.

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Esther, I asked you on the podcast about wholesaling, that you are a little bit of fulfilling a niche for the tourist community, but also you are a wholesaler on an island. Does that make it easier for you to be wholesaling when you know that bringing it in from the mainland is more difficult than it is for you to be the provider out on the island.

Oh, interesting question. I don’t think it does, because I know one of the places that only buys my work now, prior to that, they were just buying work from people on some of the other islands. So, Yeah, I don’t think that gives me an advantage because yeah, some of the in one of the other places I deal with, Side Street Studio in Oak Bay, they carry like a lot of different potters and they’re from all over the place. So like, yeah, I think I don’t I think honest, quite honestly, I think the advantage that I’ve built up over time, I have a lot of local customers. And there are, you know, the tourists and whatever. But still, I think what it is, basically, my work has kind of got its own look, its own style. It’s really based on being functional. Like, I’ve been set up at a Christmas show with maybe three or four with three or four other potters there and, and, you know, had somebody come around and they had looked at everybody’s booth and they came back to mine and said, yours is the most functional work. Unfortunately, that person also went and told that to the other potters, which did not make me very liked by the end of the show.

Do you feel like, wholesaling chose you or that you chose wholesaling?

It was it was very intentional. A year ago I had I had to have heart surgery. So it was I really it was time to slow down. And, you know, prior to that, I be working equivalent to two plus full time jobs. So it’s like it was time to cut back, cut back, cut back. And this this is like so much less stress just to be in my studio working away and and doing that and doing the wholesaling a lot less stressful.

As a production potter, so to speak, and wholesaling. What systems do you have in place in your studio to make things run smoothly?

Basically, I have basically just just the workflow pattern that I have, you know, where the clay is, where you start out, where you wedge, come around, like I just have a good flow, you know, and basically, it’s kind of like My husband used to be in the renovation business. So you had, I was on your sites, you had a flow of how you went out, you put all your tools and all your stuff and how you worked your way back out the door. So that’s kind of like the flow in my studios. Like, the clay comes in one door, then it moves to the next station, the next station, go into the kiln room, back out it goes, and then out the front door into the car and off it goes. So just a good flow.

What’s a big mistake you see younger potters or new potters make when it comes to pricing?

Oh, okay. I can’t say they make, if they can get the prices they’re asking for, that’s wonderful. My prices are, you know, what I have most people at shows go, oh, your prices are so reasonable. Basically, they’re saying your prices are cheaper than the other potter over there. Yeah, I just, you know, because I started so long ago and mugs were, you know, X price and I have tried to up them along with everybody else, but I just, I just can’t do what people are asking right now. It just kills me every time I have to go to the next level up. But you know, if those potters can get those prices, you know, that’s, you know, that’s great. But my other thing is I’d rather sell a lot and keep everything moving. I don’t ever have to put anything on sale or just keep everything moving and flowing out the door. So it, you know, really just depends on, you know, what you’re what your business model is, what you’re going for?

Now that you’ve moved into wholesaling and you take all the things into consideration, which is more profitable for you now?

Oh, it’s very similar. It’s similar. It can be similar, but it’s a different amount of work at different things. So, you know, like with the 20, 20 plus shows a year, there’s a lot more traveling, a lot less making stuff. Might make more per show. But some shows, really, you’re walking away after all the costs, you’re only walking away with wholesale, depending, you know. Other shows could be really good, but yeah, so– Interesting. Yeah, it’s just the amount of stress and whatever. So, you know, I know I can, you know, like, you know, in the new year, I’m gonna, I have a little pricing sheet. I do everything by size, get out my rulers and I price everything by size. And then I’m going to, change, slowly. I look at how much my materials costs have increased and I’ll slowly increase the prices of my pieces. But yeah, I would be bringing in more dollars, but I’ll also have a lot more dollars going out the door if I was sticking more to retail. Interesting. So the bottom line, I don’t think would be a lot different.

You’ve been making for shows and for wholesale, and you said that you’ve got your mainstays, and I’m curious, do you ever feel like you run out of creativity?

No, no, there’s just always something, a new thing you can play with, a new glaze combination. You know, like I do, I’m still teaching a bit, I cut back on teaching, so yeah, you know, there’s a lot of interaction with people and seeing ideas they have, but no, there’s always more to do. There’s, you know, like you can always delve into something deeper. Hmm.

Book

Amazing Glaze Food Safe Recipes by Gabriel Kline and Bill Collins

Contact

estherdrone.ca

Instagram: @estherdrone