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#277 Should Your Pottery Have A Meaning Behind it?
40 Plays2 years ago
On this episode I talk about question that is commonly asked with in the pottery and art community Should Your Pottery Have A Meaning Behind it? I give my 2 cents about this topic and I also give an example from a comment that someone posted on my instagram as well. Listen to this episode to learn more
Take this Free Quiz to see how close you are to finding your pottery voice click here to take the quiz shapingyourpottery.com/quiz
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Transcript
The Quest for Meaning in Pottery
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the meaning could be just that you just enjoy making what you are making. And sometimes it's hard to find a meaning behind what you are making. Should your pottery have a meaning behind it? If you love pottery and want to take your skills to the next level, you're in the right place.
Podcast Introduction: Shaping Your Pottery
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Find your own pottery style right here on Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. Let's get started.
00:00:25
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What is up, Shaping Nation? It's Nick Torres here. And in this episode of Shaping Your Pottery, I'm going to be talking about whether you should have a meaning behind your pottery or not.
A Story of Artistic Struggle
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Because I don't know me, it is my mission to help you discover your own unique voice with your pottery and do that through this podcast. So very recently, I was coming up with some questions for somebody I was going to interview very soon. And when I was on her website doing some research
00:00:51
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One of the things that she was talking about in her artist statement was that she felt like she would never have a meaning behind her own pottery, her own work. And it took her a long time to actually find that meaning to have meaning for her own work. And this
Community Feedback on Pottery's Meaning
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kind of sparked a little bit of a question for me. So should you have meaning behind your own pottery?
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and just kind of boiled in with me a little bit. And I decided to post this question onto my Instagram. And I got a decent amount of feedback on it, so I thought I would make an extended version
Art for Art's Sake or Deeper Meaning?
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of this. So here is my two cents on whether or not you should have meaning behind your pottery. So the short and simple answer is yes and no.
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So I believe that not everything really needs to have a meaning to what you are making. You know, you could be making just to make, right? The meaning could be just that you just enjoy making what you are making.
Inspiration and Evolution of Meaning
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And sometimes it's hard to find a meaning behind what you are making, especially if you're doing it every single day and for a business, it could be hard to have a meaning behind everything you are making.
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But there are times when we do get inspiration from our own pottery, from what we are making, and then meaning becomes what our inspiration takes us to.
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what you normally make like flower mugs or whatever and then all of a sudden you get inspiration to add some moose and maybe that inspiration tells a story and it becomes it has a meaning it has something to do with your life and ends up having a meaning but you don't always have to have a specific meaning for your pottery the meaning could just be the function of the pottery
Avoiding Obsession with Meaning
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And if we get too caught up in if our pottery should have a meaning or not, then it's going to take away from a lot of things. We're going to, one, we're going to just be too focused on whether, oh, our pottery doesn't have a meaning, so this isn't going to look as good. And then, two, we're not going to be making the pottery that we truly want to make because we're too focused on trying to find a meaning behind everything. You know, pottery that we're making doesn't always have to have a meaning.
00:03:12
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It could, but it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to. You know, if inspiration comes at like a random time, put meaning behind what you are trying to make because that inspiration took hold. But until the inspiration takes hold, then you really don't need a meaning. The meaning is just making the party that you like to make.
The Audience's Role in Attributing Meaning
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So here is something from the post that I posted on Instagram from Chai Ali Harder. I hope I said that right, but she basically says this. So as a psychologist slash ceramicist, I feel that sometimes a meaning and source of inspiration does not always perceive the execution of the idea. Sometimes it reveals itself as you go or becomes clear only in retrospect. It's like a dialogue between the clay and myself.
00:04:03
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And there can be a totally different dialogue between the piece and different audience members.
Finding Joy in Everyday Pottery
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That's the magic of it. And I really like the way she said this. I thought it was very, very interesting because it's very true. We may not have a specific meaning for the part of that we created.
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But somebody else looking at the pottery could have a different meaning for what they are seeing. They could have a meaning because that's the beauty of making pottery is that sometimes when we're making meaning starts to broil up as we are making. And sometimes you don't have any meaning at all. And it's somebody else giving meaning to that pot.
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You know, maybe you're bringing joy to somebody. Maybe the the meaning is that they are taking that cup of the mug and they're using it to make their coffee every single morning because that's their favorite mug. That's their meaning behind it. Meaning can come from anywhere, but it also doesn't have to have a meaning. I hope you guys enjoy this episode and I'll see you guys in the next one.
00:05:04
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Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. If you want to discover how close you are to actually discovering your own unique voice with your pottery, I put together a free four question quiz. It's very short. It takes 30 seconds for you to take. If you want to know how close you are to finding your own unique voice, go to shapingyourpottery.com forward slash quiz, or you could simply go to shapingyourpottery.com and it'll be right there at the top.
00:05:33
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I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and I'll see you guys next time.