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#296 The Road to Personalized Pottery
39 Plays2 years ago
Welcome to another episode of "Shaping Nation" with your host, Nic Torres. In our conversation, Nic shares his insights on finding your unique voice in pottery. Interestingly, Nic suggests not to focus too much on finding your own style or trying to sell your pottery right away, as these could deter your path to discovering your true pottery voice. He explains that forcing a certain style could limit your overall pottery skills and focusing on selling could distract you from making pottery you truly enjoy.
In the second half of our discussion, Nic highlights the importance of surrounding yourself with other potters and artists. He believes that this exposure can significantly boost your growth and help you generate new ideas. He uses his own experiences as an example, explaining how he applied the sculpting skills he learned from one artist and the double-walled mug technique from another to create a unique product. Tune in to this episode to gather valuable tips from Nic's own pottery journey, learn how to market your pottery effectively, and find inspiration in the works of other artists.
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Transcript
Nate Torres' Pottery Mission
00:00:00
Speaker
If I was just beginning my own pottery journey, what would I do to help me find my own unique pottery voice or own style? If you love pottery and want to take your skills to the next level, you're in the right place. Find your own pottery style right here on Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. Let's get started.
00:00:20
Speaker
What is up, JP Nation? This is Nate Torres here, and for those that don't know me, it is my mission how potters like yourself discover their own unique voice, and I do that by giving you tricks and tips I have learned along my own pottery journey.
Is Style Overrated in Pottery?
00:00:32
Speaker
So what would I do if I was somebody new and looking to discover my own unique voice in pottery? So the first thing that I would do
00:00:42
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here is I actually wouldn't really focus too much on trying to find my own voice, my own style. It would be in the back of my mind because I'm somebody that doesn't want to be the same as everybody else. It would be in the back of my mind for sure, but I would try not to focus on that too much. I wouldn't try to focus on trying to sell my pottery either because that could also be detrimental to trying to find your own unique voice. Let me explain this thought real quick.
00:01:08
Speaker
So I talk a lot about trying to find your own unique voice with your own partner. I try to give you tips that will help you on the way. Hopefully I am doing a good job with that. Either way, why do I suggest saying why you shouldn't focus on that first? Why I wouldn't focus on that first? The reason is, is because if you're only trying to focus on make a certain style come to life, that style will never come to life because now you're just forcing it.
00:01:35
Speaker
You're forcing it and it's never gonna come to life because you're only focused, you're only trying to focus on that, but you're not seeing the bigger picture of your whole pottery. Because if you're only trying to focus on that, then your skills are gonna suffer significantly and you're not gonna be able to make the pottery that you can truly
Balancing Sales and Passion
00:01:53
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make. Because your only sole focus is trying to find your own style, try to be different, but your skills are gonna be solely, solely, solely lacking.
00:02:02
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that it's just never gonna happen. Same thing if you're trying to only sell your pottery, if you're only trying to make pottery to sell. I know I went to that phase myself for a long time where I was making a bunch of mugs thinking that I would make a bunch of mugs because they would sell. If you only focus on trying to sell your pottery, then you're not gonna be making pottery that you truly enjoy.
00:02:25
Speaker
And the whole thing about trying to sell your pottery is that you have to learn how to market your pottery first so that you could sell it. And that's a skill, a whole different skill that I'm still also trying to learn myself. But back to the point of those are the two things that I wouldn't focus on first.
Community and Growth
00:02:42
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I wouldn't focus on trying to actually find my own voice.
00:02:46
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So the second thing that I would do here is I would actually try to surround myself with as many different potters, even different artists as I could, as many as I could, whether it's starting and talking to potters by starting a podcast, or maybe it's just interviewing people for your own pleasure, just trying to learn from them, taking workshops.
00:03:07
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going into and joining a community studio. I would try to surround myself with as many different artists and many different potters as I can because this is going to be where your your growth is going to be exponential.
00:03:20
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I contribute being able to find my own unique voice and being able to find it quickly to this podcast. Because I get to speak to so many different potters every single week, I get to learn something every single week. So I'm surrounding myself with those people and those people are giving me new ideas for my own pottery.
Learning from Peers
00:03:38
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And I'll give you for an example. So I think it was about my fourth or fifth episode that I recorded was with Dylan Weber.
00:03:46
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Dallin makes some really incredible like sculptured pottery onto his mugs and I thought that was so so cool and that began to give me some new ideas with my own pottery and then a little down the road I met somebody else
00:04:04
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who made double walled mugs, Jordan Coons. She makes some double walled mugs and I thought that was so so cool and I thought if I could create mugs, a double walled mug and apply my skills of sculpture, I could apply those two skills together and combine them into one and it would make such a cool mug.
00:04:27
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and I love that idea. But I wouldn't have gotten those ideas if I just was sitting back passively trying to figure out everything by myself.
Workshops and Skill Enhancement
00:04:35
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Because I am able to go out and talk to potters every single week, I get to talk to them and I get to build up my skills gradually and I get new ideas very, very quickly. I get to learn things. You can do the same thing as well by simply taking workshops or joining community studios.
00:04:53
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are the two fastest ways that you can be surrounded by other potters or just simply learn from other potters and get the skills necessary to go faster that you want to go because each new skill that you you build is going to add to your own pottery voice so those so here is a little bit quick of a recap before I go into point number three so the first one is I wouldn't focus on trying to find my own voice
00:05:17
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and I wouldn't focus on trying to sell my pottery.
Embracing Failure for Success
00:05:20
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Point number two is surround yourself with as many potters and as many artists as you can because this is going to speed up your growth exponentially. Finally, the third and last tip that I would give you if you were looking, if you were a beginner and you're looking to try to find your own style, stand out from the crowd is simply fail a lot and make a lot of pottery. You have to be able to get comfortable with failure
00:05:43
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because pottery can be very humbling. You may be on a roll one week, one month. You're starting to get things. All of a sudden you put things in the kiln and boom, something fails, something breaks, something explodes. All the rest of your pottery explodes and makes everything worse because one thing broke. If you let that deter you from the idea that you have,
00:06:07
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then you're never gonna be able to make your party voice come to life. You have to be okay with being able to fail, and you have to make a lot of stuff. You have to build up those skills, and the fastest way to do that is to make a lot of stuff. If you make a lot of stuff, then your skills are gonna grow that much faster. The more stuff you make, the easier it's gonna become to actually find your own unique voice.
00:06:26
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So here they are again with the three things I would do. Number one, I wouldn't focus on trying to find my own unique voice. I'd focus on building skills, focus on building up my pottery, make my pottery look better and better each time I make it. Number two is I would surround myself with a bunch of different potters and a bunch of different artists. And finally, number three, learn to fail a lot. I would learn to also make a lot of pottery.
Episode Recap and Listener Engagement
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I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and I'll see you guys in the next one.
00:07:00
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We hope you enjoyed this episode of Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. Do you have questions about pottery that you'd like Nick to answer? Send them to us on Instagram at Nick Torres underscore pottery. We'll see you next time.