famefamefame

Last week the current edition of Ceramics Monthly arrived. With all I have going on preparing for another river trip and getting the garden whipped into shape I am surprized that I had time to look at it at all. Of course I was delighted to see Kevin and Linda Crowe’s words in the Comment section. I read with some interest the focus on working potter’s titled “Work and Play:The Potter’s Life”. The article features the self written expressions of eight studio potters several of whom are old and new friends of mine. It was very interesting reading their various approaches and thoughts about this thing we do. It reminded me of the time when I was a lot younger and just had recently moved to Spring City. I’d say it was 1977 or so. My neighbor Lonnie Brewer who then ran the little filling station in town asked me as he checked my oil and cleaned my windshield (Yes, that was still going on here then.) what my line of work was. I told him that I was setting up a pottery shop. He cocked his head to one side and mused “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to play for a living.
Perhaps he was right, potting is a form of play for many. Lots of folks wait until retirement to pick it up. My endocrinologist and his wife make pottery on evenings and weekends and attend a workshop somewhere almost every summer. I have not seen their work but I am sure it is done for the right reason, love.
My career in clay began while I was studying developmental psychology and early childhood education in college and took a potting class to unwind. I am still unwinding I guess. Lee advised me when we were first married that I should think about going into ceramics as a major. She observed that when I came out of my education and psych classes that I was all knotted up and that when I had been kicking it (pun intended) in the pot shop I was relaxed and looked a lot more like the guy she had fallen in love with.
I remember asking my mother when I was about nine years old why it was I had to eat all my food, do homework and certain household chores that I found unappealing. I really felt that life should be spent doing things one wanted to do whether they were work or play.
I am afraid that that sentiment has become a defining element in my adult life. I busy myself with things that I find fun. Not all aspects of potting are as fun as others. Throwing cups is a gas while butchering wood is a bit more like work, but it is all part of what it takes and are all a form of working on my stuff. On the river rowing a big boat into Lava falls is as good as it gets while cleaning the crappers at the end of the trip is less romantic. In my garden planting, harvesting and eating are pure fun, weeding is less so. This morning I was shoveling fresh horse manure out of the corral so I will have compost next year in the spring when I need it. On Fridays I like to hang it up and go sit with murderers , rapists and various other felons because it feeds me and them. Last night I spent a couple of hours splitting large boulders into smaller more manageable blocks of stone for landscaping. Bursitis not withstanding, it was a lot of fun. I wish I had picked quarryman and mason skills a bit earlier in life.
One common aspect of each of the narratives in the CM piece was a breakdown of time spent on ceramics into potting, firing, marketing and bookkeeping. I was surprised at how much these other artists spend on the marketing and bookkeeping end of things. In my last post I talked about how I market my work. I asked Lee to give me a sense of how much of the time I spend on ceramics goes to those things. Her response was “About one percent.” Because my marketing is almost all out of my own front door I don’t spend much on packing, shipping, keeping track of inventory on consignment, traveling to shows and fairs or dealing with galleries. I check the shop (always open) once a day when I am not working there. I spend an hour once a quarter logging sales for tax purposes. Once a year I spend a day or two writing our newsletter and gathering photos. Lee will spend another couple of days on the computer designing the rag. In January I’ll spend another couple of days going through our filed receipts and statements organizing information for our accountant to generate a 1040 and related forms. Lee makes the deposits and balances the checking account. Once in a blue moon I’ll pack and ship a pot to someone who has contacted me from a distance wanting a piece. I don’t think one percent is too far off.
I don’t know if this is a better way. It is just what I do. I don’t make as many pots a some of the people in this article. My time on the river, in the garden and in jail takes me away from the studio. I go there when I need to restock the shelves or when I have a request. I’d say I spend eight months of the year all told making and firing pots and that is enough.

Nineteen years ago I had my work in 15-20 different galleries across the country. The work was all on consignment. I got checks when the work sold but not until they did. THe checks trickled in. I sold at a few craft fairs and at my studio on selected open house days. I was slowly starving to death. I had just quit my part time teaching job in hopes of making it on pottery sales alone. It was not working.
One day as I was standing in my studio looking out at Main Street it occurred to me that I should start a newsletter. I remember the moment very clearly. I had been receiving a newsletter form one of the galleries that carried my work. It was written by Joanne Onaga at the Little Tokyo Clay Works. It was very simple. I appeared to have been xeroxed hand colored and stapled together. It told about the gallery and profiled some of her artists. It was very inclusive and invited the reader to become part of what was happening at Joanne’s gallery even fro afar.
I set out to write something like that for myself and Horseshoe Mountain Pottery News was born. I started writing at the cafe in town as I sipped on a Coke. The cafe owners took an interest in what I was doing and asked if they, retired graphic designers, could help with it and get some pottery for the cafe in exchange. The result was satisfactory and our studio sales doubled with the first edition. When the second one came out six months later the sales doubled again. Since then we have dialed back to once a year and sales have grown more modestly but steadily. Soon I no longer had enough work to spare for the galleries and all of that went by the wayside.
The HMP News invites people to come to our town and spend a day soaking up the atmosphere here. It tells people about how we found the place as young starry eyed idealist bohemians just married and looking for a place to nest. It tracks our lives and those of our three girls. People evidently read it cover to cover because they come into the shop acting as if they know us. When people visit the shop I always send them out with some newssletters to share with their friends and coworkers. Those newsletter often come back just like spawning salmon under the arms of new recruits. The newsletter drives word of mouth.
I have found that as I have developed a following of people who feel invested in our work and life that my work really sells best here at the point of origin. The recent gallery show that Lee and I had in Scottsdale was more or less a bust. Lee sold nothing and my check was about enough to cover expenditures. In the first week after bringing the work home I have sold more pottery than during the whole month the pots were in Scottsdale. I don’t think it is because the Marshall is not a good gallery. It is because my work plays better here in its natural habitat.
When I teach workshops I always talk with the students about marketing. I encourage them to take control of their markets and quit depending so heavily on developers and gallery owners to make their living for them. I talk about the power of artist groups organizing their own events and the imortance of building community.
When I attended the NCECA conference last month I started hearing from other potters how poor sales have been, how that some trade show are off 30-40%. I have not seen that kind of drop off here at my shop which is where I sell most of my production. Things have slowed down for sure, but there is an encouraging flow of customers still. I think that the years that we have spent building a community of friends as customers have paid off and that we will come through this slow down OK. Thanks to all of those who came to our home show yesterday. It was pretty successful both Lee and I sold enough to get us through until the next sale.

Sale day

It is the relationship that developes with the people who recieve and use my work that makes the experrience rich and that brings them back again and again.

I am sleeping next to a little brook that makes a lot more noise in the spring than it did most of the winter. It is warm enough now that we leave the windows open at night and it provides a very nice white noise. Not that we need that sort of thing to drown out the occasional dog or car in the distance.
For most of the past month I slept at various points along the Colorado River as it makes its way through the Grand Canyon. I was on the river for 18 days. There is nothing quite like sleeping on the water with the boat rocking a little and the stars arcing above you. It is hard to come back to a stationary bed but the water sounds do help. Then there are the little night noises that Lee makes to remind me I am home.
The show in Scottsdale is over. I went and gathered yup our remaining pieces before returning from the river. Phoenix is such a pig when your AC quits in gridlocked traffic. I listened to Luis Alberto Urrea’s “The Hummingbird’s Daughter” on the drive. That helped a lot.
Lee’s new studio is good to go on the inside. The Heritage Day tour is today and we are in final prep mode. I am looking for a few hundred tourists to drop by today and make it happen.

My young friend Collin Taylor wrote this piece after the election last year. It is good to see that kids with ideals are still out there.

Lee and I drove down to Phoenix/Scottsdale last week and hung our show at the Marshall Gallery and spent the week at the NCECA Conference. it was a great time. I saw dozens of old friends and made many new ones. We were selling Lee’s salve and our Grand Canyon river trip that will take place in June of 2010.

This is NCECA, dinner and conversation with old and new friends, Ah Leon and Eric Serritella. I made pots for Creative Industries and they let us work out of their booth.

Von Allen put together a show of BYU Ceramics graduates for the conference. As ever at that institution as was the token potter, a distinction I rather relish.
The show at the Marshall was nice. Ron Richmond and Doug Fryer, both neighbors and friends had work in the gallery and it played well against ours. Ron’s pieces worked especially well as he uses my pottery as props in a lot of his still life paintings.


My pottery interspersed with Lee’s and Ron’s work.

This is a very busy time. If you don’t see much here that is why. I pulled another firing off and unloaded two days ago. It gave me some of the best stuff I have had for a while. I am scrambling to get things ready so Lee and I can head for Phoenix where we will participate in the NCECA gathering there. Of course there is the show we are having at Marshall Gallery.
It will be a crazy but great week. On the way we will stop in on old friends. Of course half of the valley are Lee’s cousins so there will be that.
When we return I have exactly a week to get ready to head into the Grand Canyon for three weeks with Louisa on a Grand Canyon Field Institute trip on the river. I am planning all of the food so that week will be a blur. Oh, did I mention getting the garden in? Two weeks after the river trip ends is Heritage Day in Spring City and I will need to have the rock on Lee’s new studio up by then. Well, at least it will have gotten started by then. It is the mother of all honey doos.
After Hertiage Day (May 23) Ill get the rest of the stone work done and gear up for our Grand Canyon Charter which launches June 12. Lee and Louisa will be on board for that one. It will include some of our best old river friends. Plans a re well underway for our 2010 river trip. More later.

So, making and firing pottery is off until at least July. I have dinnerware orders stacked up and, with a little luck, will have a bit of restocking to do by then. And then there is the garden. Isn’t life sweet?

I unloaded my last woodfire eight days ago. It has been a busy time or I would have posted these sooner. I had to fall right back into throwing for next weeks firing. I am selecting work to take down to Scottsdale. I’ll be throwing the last of them Monday and then getting my taxes done while they are drying and in between more gardening. Good thing I don’t have to work for a living.

Tea Bowls are always a nice place to start from.

Tea Pots and detail.

Commemorative plates.

Hump molded platters showing of the new tools.


There is a little of what I got. It was one of the better firings I have had in this kiln. Really only two or three pots that came out less than expected. The large bowl pictured has a joint crack visible on the inside. It will make a nice tomato planter for the deck.

Lee and I will be in Scottsdale/Phoenix April 6-11 for this show and the NCECA Conference there. Lee will spend most of her time at the conference sitting in the Creative Industries booth in the commercial exhibitor’s hall selling and talking about Mom’s Stuff. I’ll be in and out and will throw some pots in the CI booth.
Please note that the time on this card is wrong. The show opening is from 7 until 9 pm.

I planted peas, carrots, beets, lettuce, endive, spinach, garlic and two kinds of onions today. The sun shines and the breezes blow. The soil is rich and has been salted with with horse dung. We have some snow in the mountains. I expect that the garden will pay good dividends. I will get my bonuses. That is what Owen gave me. I am a wealthy man.