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#194 Artistic Exploration of Emotion and Vulnerability in Animal Sculptures w/ Cate Crowell
36 Plays2 years ago
In this episode of Shaping Your Pottery, Cate Crowell, a recent high school graduate, shares her journey in creating stunning animal sculptures that showcase vulnerability and emotion. Cate discusses the importance of outside feedback and how her experiences, emotions, and the world around her have shaped her pottery. She shares her story of finding her voice as an artist, marked by the creation of her first life-size wolf sculpture, and how attending a summer camp at Ohio University impacted her growth with exposure to new tools and glaze finishes. You can learn more about Cate by checking out her Instagram @clay.by.cate
Top 3 Value Bombs:
1. Embracing vulnerability and allowing oneself to be open and honest with emotions can greatly impact and improve one's pottery, leading to more powerful and meaningful art pieces. 2. Getting outside feedback and opinions can help push an artist's work further, allowing them to grow and evolve their unique voice and style. 3. Exploring new techniques, tools, and finishes can lead to significant growth and development in an artist's pottery journey, resulting in more refined and intricate pieces.
Take this Free Quiz to see how close you are to finding your pottery voice click here to take the quiz shapingyourpottery.com/quiz
Follow me on Instagram @nictorres_pottery
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Transcript
Discover Your Unique Voice Online
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, real quick before we get started and get into the episode, if you want to figure out how close you are to discovering your own unique voice, I put together a free little quiz for you to see how close you are to finding your own unique voice. If you would like to take this quiz, go to shapingyourpottery.com forward slash quiz, or you can just go to shapingyourpottery.com and it'll be right there.
00:00:24
Speaker
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.
Interview with Kate Kroll
00:00:36
Speaker
What is up, shaping nation? This is Nick Torres here. And on this episode of Shaping Your Pottery, I got to interview Kate Kroll. Kate has just graduated from high school and she makes some really incredible animal sculptures that she puts in motion and gets really vulnerable about these sculptures. In this episode, you will learn how Kate makes her vulnerable animal figurative pottery. You'll also learn how you can start being more vulnerable and adding that vulnerability into your own pottery.
Finding Your Voice in Pottery
00:01:06
Speaker
You also learn about getting outside opinions and why that matters in your growth in finding your own voice. I hope you guys enjoy this episode and I'll see you guys in there. Kate, welcome to Shaping Your Pottery and share with me what is something people might not know about you.
00:01:24
Speaker
When I first started doing pottery in elementary school I took my first actual like pottery like club and when I went they had all these wheels for like throwing except you manually spend them and The teacher had warned everyone not to spend them super fast and usually I was pretty compliant with rules but for this one I Put my pot on it and I spend it as fast as I could and the pot went flying off and it just smashed into like this lump
00:01:54
Speaker
and the teacher told me not to keep it but I kept it anyways and I painted a face on it and I named it Bob and I don't know where Bob is but that was like my first pottery class and that was my first piece of pottery ever. I love it that's awesome. So tell me the story how you got started in ceramics.
From Casual to Serious Pottery
00:02:11
Speaker
I always did it as something fun in school, but I never really took it seriously until my junior year when I started sculpting animals and found that path. But other than that, it was always provided. I was lucky enough to have it provided in every single school that I went to. And I got to experience it about every single year I took school. So what made you start sculpting animals?
00:02:34
Speaker
It was just always like a strong passion for animals. I really enjoyed the form and it was an easy way to express emotions that were sometimes harder to understand and it didn't also just make it point blank. It could keep some of my feelings kind of more hidden.
00:02:54
Speaker
I love that. So early in your life, you had moved around a lot, but art was always an escape for you. Tell me how did art and ceramics help you with the constant change?
00:03:06
Speaker
Art was definitely the one of the very few things that was kept consistent for me. So it also gave me a way to express how I felt through all the changes and express whatever I was passionate about. I mean, I always went through like phases where I was like really into something and usually it was an animal. So I was like really into lions. So I draw and paint and.
00:03:26
Speaker
Sculpt a bunch of little lions and then I got really into like guinea pigs and I really wanted to guinea pigs So I was always drawing guinea pigs during that phase. It was just a really nice outlet for sure I love that. So let's talk about your sculptures in one sentence. Can you tell me what you make? I make self portraits of myself and portraits of other people in animal forms Love it. So tell me the story how you started making sculptures that you make today.
Exploring Complex Sculptures
00:03:55
Speaker
I
00:03:55
Speaker
It started with me definitely hiding my true intentions like behind sigil patterns in the animals. I would look up symbols and then I'd carve them into the animals and I'd just have the animals in a very like simple position. And then it took quite a bit of encouragement and push from my art teacher to get me past my comfort zone to sculpt animals with more obvious intentions.
00:04:21
Speaker
and not as like a simple of a figure, like really getting into anatomy and whatnot. So what did your art teacher tell you that pushed you further? I think it was more of that I had to be told that I was capable of doing more because in the beginning when I made the more simple animals, I just kept making them and I never really progressed.
00:04:50
Speaker
So I feel like I remember my very first one that had more of a like balanced anatomy was at the very end of my junior year and it was the very last project I did and it was a fox on a stand with a ring on its nose and the ring was identical to that of my father's wedding ring and I worked with her a lot to get that project to something that I really loved and I still have it now so.
00:05:17
Speaker
I love this shaping nation. Sometimes all you need is just a little bit of outside feedback to kind of get you to push your pottery a little bit further. Just that little bit of outside feedback will help a lot. I love that so much. So you are inspired by the world around you, your emotions and your experiences. How have these things impacted your own sculptures?
Emotional Depth in Art
00:05:38
Speaker
It's given more of a vulnerable and uncomfortable feeling, especially in high school. Peers and staff would always say, like, it was always so sad and they felt so bad for the animals, which sometimes made me feel guilty, like, for making the animals so, like, sad and somber looking. But it's also very true, and I think emotion sometimes can be super, super uncomfortable, but without them being expressed, I mean,
00:06:06
Speaker
it wouldn't really make for art. I had one of my teachers tell me that I wasn't so sure on this one project I was doing. And so I went to him and I said, look, there's this project I'm doing and I'm not really sure if I want to go through with it because it's kind of an uncomfortable topic. And he said, well, if it's uncomfortable, then that definitely means you're doing the right thing. I definitely agree with that. Shape Nation, the more you get uncomfortable with your pottery, that probably means you are actually doing something right and you are going in the right direction. I love that so much.
00:06:34
Speaker
So can you give me an example of a vulnerable and emotional sculpture that you maybe made?
00:06:42
Speaker
I'd say the one that I get the most comments on is a wolf sculpture where it's a life-sized wolf ceramic piece and a pup and they both have arrows except the older one has three arrows in its back and the youngest only has one arrow in its back and the story behind it was that the younger one got shot once and he's laying down on the floor while the older one has gotten shot multiple times and he stands strong so it's like an evolution.
00:07:09
Speaker
supposed to be the same wolf kind of reflecting on itself. When I had a artist like exhibition, that one was the one that all the young kids would go up to and they'd like put it on the head and be like, oh, poor wolf. And so. I love that. That one definitely got a lot of attention for being very vulnerable and very emotional. I love that. I love the thought process on that. So speaking of thought processes, how do you think about adding emotion into your sculptures?
00:07:39
Speaker
I try to take how I'm feeling and what my goal is for the sculpture and while I'm sculpting I like to listen to music that is kind of in that same feeling range and channel that emotion as I'm sculpting. I do my best to directly portray how I'm feeling into the animal's face especially.
00:08:02
Speaker
Also then, moving on to the animal's posture and its expression, I usually go through a lot of reference photos into finding an animal in somewhat of the position that I want to create, but a lot of them I've had to kind of take multiple pictures of the same animal in different positions and kind of piece them together. So that part's been difficult, but it's also probably one of the most enjoyable parts once I get started.
00:08:28
Speaker
So can you give me a simplified explanation on how you create your sculptures?
Sculpture Creation Process
00:08:35
Speaker
For the medium-sized ones, I always build them completely solid. And then I hollow them out and stuff them with newspaper. And then I texture and do the details after I put them back together. And then after firing, I usually do an acrylic finish. For the bigger ones, they had to be made on a PVC armature.
00:08:57
Speaker
which I strapped clumps of newspaper around so that way it wasn't as heavy and then I would build onto it and usually it was still pretty thick so I'd have to cut it apart again and hollow it out and then the kilns at the school weren't big enough for the large size sculptures so they had to be put back together with super glue and epoxy sculpt and then usually I'd file that down and also finish with acrylic finish now I'm sorry
00:09:24
Speaker
So what advice would you give to someone trying to add a little bit more emotion into their own pottery?
00:09:31
Speaker
I would say, at least for me, it was allowing myself to be vulnerable because that was probably the most hardest part. I knew I had it in me, but it was being okay with that. Other people are going to see this and that's okay too because most times they feel the exact same way. It's just no one ever talks about it.
00:09:54
Speaker
Definitely agree, shape a nation. If you're trying to add some emotion or be vulnerable with your pottery, you have to allow yourself to be vulnerable in order to add those emotions. Because if you can't allow yourself to be vulnerable and be truthful about that, then you're not gonna be able to add that and you're not gonna be able to make the pottery that you truly wanna
Challenges in Sculpting
00:10:12
Speaker
make. I love that so much. So since you have been making pottery, what is something that you just absolutely do not like doing, but you end up having to do it anyways?
00:10:23
Speaker
starting starting a piece is always the hardest because it always looks like a lump and I always get worried that oh my gosh I can't create animals anymore and this one won't turn out and I can't do it and as soon as I just get like all the limbs on then all of a sudden it's like oh okay we're good and I can do all the details now but getting started is the hardest part for sure for me.
00:10:47
Speaker
That is very interesting. Again, I'm not a sculptor, so I wouldn't really know that part about it. So that is interesting to me right there. So let's talk about discovering your voice. Tell me about the moment when you knew you were heading in the right direction.
00:11:04
Speaker
When I sculpted the life-size wolf it was my very first big piece and I had just finished sculpting it and I brought in my teacher to ask her if there's any other corrections I needed and she was like looking around and pointing out like small details that I could fix and make my piece better and she told me how she really liked how I was taking up the space that I needed because at home at the time I was making sure I could do everything else forever
00:11:46
Speaker
So what do you mean by taking up space?
Art and Personal Growth
00:11:56
Speaker
For like at home, I usually like did things around the house to help. I stayed out of the way and made sure I was doing as much as I could for others and kind of make that kind of made for like me to be very small outside of school and that
00:12:16
Speaker
When I got here, instead of making a bunch of small projects, I was making these massive sculptures. So it was like a good correlation that I just hadn't realized. I love that shape nation. Sometimes in order to find your voice, sometimes you just take up some space, take up and start doing some certain things that you normally wouldn't do in your everyday life. And you start taking up that space. I love that so much.
00:12:41
Speaker
Now you contribute your growth as an artist to summer camp at Ohio University. How did this experience help you with your growth as an artist?
Influences from Art Camp
00:12:51
Speaker
Um, getting outside opinions, I mean, I absolutely love, I absolutely loved being in high school and being surrounded by this very comfortable environment. But getting out of that was definitely pretty scary, but I was able to be inspired by other artists and the teacher of the program, Chris St. John. His works were so different from what I had seen around and being exposed to that just gave me all these new tools that I actually still use now in my works.
00:13:20
Speaker
that I would have never discovered if I hadn't gone. So two things for you right here. So what is something, what is an opinion that really helped you drive your growth as an artist further? And then what is it that you are using, that you learned from there and you're still using today? You might repeat the first part. Okay, so what was an opinion someone gave you about your work that pushed it further?
00:13:47
Speaker
I would say I don't think this was more of an opinion as much as when I went to the art camp.
00:13:56
Speaker
I was very comfortable using acrylic finishes whereas at the Art Camp we had to use glaze finishes and it opened up that door for me and I realized that I can still do all the cool texturing on glazes so I definitely plan on going back to that at some point and then as for the tools I was taught by Chris he was showing me how he had bought dental tools
00:14:19
Speaker
To work on sculptural things and how he then use those to sculpt eyes and so when I got home I bought myself a dental tool kit and I use that for eye detail and sometimes for detail. How does that help with eye detail?
00:14:37
Speaker
he used it as in sculpting smaller eyes it was it has like the one dental tool that i have is kind of like a flat portion and it comes to like a point at the end and i was able to kind of get like into the like corners of the eyes and put down layers for like like eyelids and under eyes that way it wasn't just like
00:15:01
Speaker
what i used to be doing was a just like punched in and then i put the eye in and then kind of like mold the clay around it whereas this was adding way more dimension i love that i might have to start using that myself because i eyes are really difficult for me to make yes so what is something you are doing right now to try to evolve your voice even further
00:15:24
Speaker
still exploring and pushing further into vulnerability. And to struggle with every piece, even though I have broken through some of it, it's still very, very hard. And then also fear of once I put that vulnerable work out there, what people will think because a lot of the viewers I have right now are close family and friends. So that's definitely like a hard barrier to get past.
00:15:50
Speaker
So now you just, or you either, like at the time recording this, you either graduated or you have already graduated from high school.
Future Plans in Art and Therapy
00:15:58
Speaker
What are your plans for the future? I'm going to University of Alaska Anchorage to study hand built ceramics at the university. And then I'm hoping to eventually become a pro artist, but I also have plans on doing some psychology so that way maybe I can go into art therapy.
00:16:18
Speaker
I love that. So as we're coming to a close today, what is one thing you want to hammer home with my audience today?
00:16:24
Speaker
Finding your voice, being vulnerable, and exploring that uncomfortable area is what definitely is going to push your works more forward. And it can be such a hard thing to do. But if you just keep trying at it, I mean, over time, your work will evolve. And I've seen it with mine. And I'm super excited to do more work in the future after I've broken down more barriers and gotten to be more comfortable with being uncomfortable.
00:16:54
Speaker
Definitely agree and I'm so excited to see where you are going ahead in the future. That is such an exciting time. Kate, it was really great chatting with
Commissioning Custom Sculptures
00:17:04
Speaker
you today. Where can my audience go and learn more about you?
00:17:07
Speaker
I have an Instagram that's at clay.buy.kate with a C. I'm working on getting my website more out there and I also have an email for commissions. That's also clay.buy.kateatgmail.com. I'm open to pretty much any ideas, but then I also have like set ideas for sculpting people's pets and things like that.
00:17:29
Speaker
I love that.
00:17:59
Speaker
I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and I'll see you guys next time.