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Three Key Secrets to Accelerating Your Growth as an Artist
65 Plays6 months ago
In this episode, Nic shares three essential secrets that significantly contributed to his growth as a potter. The first secret emphasizes the importance of quickly learning from failures. The second secret highlights the value of surrounding oneself with a community of like-minded artists and leveraging platforms such as Instagram and community studios to gain insights and new ideas. The third secret focuses on being stubborn by prioritizing personal interests and being persistent in overcoming challenges.
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Transcript
Introduction to Artistic Growth Secrets
00:00:00
Speaker
When I did these three things, my growth as an artist skyrocketed. What is up, shaping nation? This is Nick Torres here. In this episode, I'm going to be giving you the three things, the three secrets that have helped me with growing as an artist.
The Role of Failure in Artistic Growth
00:00:14
Speaker
So secret number one is you probably already know it. It's failure.
00:00:21
Speaker
You got to be able to learn how to fail fast, fail often in pottery because the faster you fail, the more you're going to learn. The more you're going to be able to find your own style with your pottery. And there's no way in hell you're not going to be able to fail in art in pottery.
00:00:40
Speaker
Because that is literally the name of the game, especially in pottery. You don't even, there are sometimes cases where it's just completely out of your control and you have no idea what happened. Maybe it's the kill net broke or it's something very minor to happen and you need a complete oops, it failed. And you have to learn how to fail fast and fail often.
00:01:02
Speaker
Because that's how you grow as an artist. And not only that, when you fail, you learn more, right? You've always heard this, that when you fail, you learn more instead of like, if you're always winning, then you're not learning. But if you fail sometimes, then you're going to learn more and you're going to learn what works for you. You're going to learn how you want to be able to make your art. How do you want to make your pottery?
00:01:25
Speaker
So you have to fail fast. But what do you do after a failure? What happens after that failure is very important because sometimes I don't want you to go out there and try to fail. I want you to try to succeed in every part that you're making, because if you don't try to succeed in every part you're making, then that defeats the purpose of actually failing by accident. Failing by accident is where you learn instead of just trying to fail all the time. But when you fail by action, that's when you actually learn.
00:01:54
Speaker
So what do you do after a failure? Well, the thing that I tend to do after failure is I like to ponder. I tend to ponder what I can do to fix this, what I can do to make this even better. What can I do to fix the mistake that happened?
00:02:11
Speaker
And when I ponder, I tend to just kind of sit there for a second. I'll sit there just with my arm crossed sometimes or just like lean my back against the wall and I'll just ponder what I did wrong. What can I do to fix it? And by pondering, this is when ideas start to spark and that's when the solutions start to come about. You can also take walks. I've gotten a lot of advice from interviewing people where if they're stuck, they just take a walk. And that is great advice to get out of your own head, get out of your own environment.
00:02:40
Speaker
The first secret is to fail fast, fail often, and then to ponder the mistakes when
Learning from Others and Community Engagement
00:02:45
Speaker
they happen. Don't try to make mistakes on purpose, but when they happen, ponder them and try to dissect what went wrong. So the secret number two is.
00:02:57
Speaker
this podcast, this podcast has actually helped me probably the most with my growth as an artist. And that is simply because I get to be around other potters, I get to be around other artists all the time. I'm asking them questions and I'm learning so much from them that my own pottery has evolved because I get to ask so many questions. And before I started this podcast, my view about pottery was pretty narrowed. It was very narrow. So I thought that
00:03:25
Speaker
Because I knew how to wheel throw and because I took so long to learn how to wheel throw that I was better than everybody else. I thought I was better in terms of that. If you're not wheel throwing, then you're being lazy. And that was a very, very narrow view because I didn't know much about the poverty world at that time. Like I thought I knew a lot, but I didn't until I started interviewing these people.
00:03:47
Speaker
And the more interview people, the more ideas I got. And when I started interviewing people, at first, I really wanted to be focused on wheel throwing, you know, like the typical glazes that are like bright colored and drippy because that's what I was into at the time. But upon interviewing more people and more different styles, I realized that because my view was so narrow that I didn't know a lot.
00:04:13
Speaker
And when I interviewed these people, new ideas had to come ahead. Like the first couple of episodes I did interviewing people, it was somebody that was sculpting things onto their pots. Oh, this is such a good idea. And that idea stayed in my head for a while. And until I was ready to do it, I ended up applying that same thing that I liked from their pottery and I applied it to my pottery as well.
00:04:41
Speaker
That wouldn't have happened if I was getting around other potters, getting around a community of potters to learn from them. But how do you exactly do you but how exactly do you get around other potters? How do you get around these people to help you grow your work to be around these other artists? Well, here are a couple of tips. So the first tip is to number one, reach out to people on Instagram, ask them questions, ask them, comment on their posts.
00:05:09
Speaker
But more than likely, they're going to answer. And if you just get out of your own head for a second and just ask them the question that you want to ask, like, hey, how do you I love your pottery. How do you make this tech? How do you do this technique? I love that technique and I want to apply it to my own pottery. More than likely, they're going to respond.
00:05:26
Speaker
Trust me, I know I DM people all the time for this podcast. So go out there, use Instagram as a tool. And that's how you can start getting around other parties simply by asking questions through Instagram. Another way you can get around other parties, other artists is to join a community studio like in person community studio.
00:05:45
Speaker
And that's probably a very official way, although you do have to spend money, quite a bit of money sometimes, like $200 a month sometimes. But that's a very good way to get around other potters, other artists that are also like mine like you. They're also there to learn, they're there to make pottery.
00:06:01
Speaker
And you can ask instructors, instructions, instructions, and you can ask other potters around you, like how do they do this? And getting around in that environment, your growth will skyrocket, I promise you. Also, residencies as well. If you want to go down that route of residencies, try to apply for a residency and you will see your growth takes off because you're focused on purely just making pottery. And everybody around that environment is just making potter, just making art. By the way,
00:06:29
Speaker
If you want to get around like mine and potters, I created a community called the clay games where every single month we have a new challenge for pottery.
00:06:39
Speaker
and to help you grow your own pottery voice. If you want to join this community, click the link below to join the Clay Games community.
The Power of Stubbornness in Art
00:06:48
Speaker
Hope to see you there. So that was tip secret number two. So the secret so far is number one, you have to fail hard, fail fast, fail often. And then secret number two is getting around like-minded artists, getting around artists in general, getting around potters. And secret number three,
00:07:08
Speaker
is simply that helped me the most. One of the things that helped me the most is being stubborn, being stubborn in terms of sometimes you have to put your foot down in what you want to do. Right. We see all these different things that other artists, other potters are doing. And we think that if we start doing that as well, then we will start having success. We will start growing with an artist. But sometimes we don't a lot of times we're not going to like what
00:07:37
Speaker
what they are doing because it's their thing and it's not our thing. And we have to be stubborn about that in terms of what we want to do first. Be stubborn about that. If you could be stubborn about this and make what you want to make first, then your growth as an artist is going to grow because now you're taking your interest into account
00:07:57
Speaker
And you're being way more productive in terms of what you actually can make so that your pottery grows, so that your growth as an artist grows.
00:08:09
Speaker
simply by being stubborn and choosing to make what you want to make first and then above everybody else, then your growth as an artist is going to skyrocket because now you're focusing on just that one thing. You're focusing on what you that brings you joy because bringing you joy. It's going to grow as an artist going to be that much more enjoyable.
00:08:29
Speaker
You don't make what everybody else is making. You're being stubborn in terms of especially like this goes back to failure as well. If you fail, be stubborn and try to figure this out. Be stubborn, be stubborn because that's how you're going to grow. That's how you're going to grow. You're going to learn more by being stubborn, focusing on that one technique that you really want to master, that one glaze technique that you want to get down on your pottery.
Recap of Growth Secrets
00:08:52
Speaker
Be stubborn because that's where your growth is going to come from. So to recap, here are the three
00:08:59
Speaker
Secrets that I gave so secret number one is fail hard fail fast fail often Secret number two is getting around a community of other potters join the clay games community if you want to join community of lifeline and potters and Then three is to be stubborn and then make what you enjoy first if you have a problem Figure it out be stubborn until you figured it out. So those are my three tips for you I hope you guys enjoy this episode and I'll see you guys in the next one