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#71 Why you should create an Artist Statement
26 Plays3 years ago
On this episode of Shaping Your Pottery you will learn why you should create an Artist Statement.
Creating an Artist Statement helps develop your voice because it sets a standard for your pottery.
Listen to the Full episode now
If you have questions about uncovering your unique voice with your pottery then send them my way here https://www.shapingyourpottery.com/contact/
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Shaping Your Pottery'
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres where we help you discover your own unique voice so you can stand out from the crowd and have more fun making pottery so you make pottery that is truly amazing.
00:00:14
Speaker
Hey, what is up, everybody? It's Nick Torres here and welcome to Shaping Your Pottery.
The Role of an Artist Statement
00:00:18
Speaker
On this episode, you're going to be learning about making an artist statement and setting a standard for your potter. So one of the last things I was talking about with Leslie Bevin during my interview with her was that her best advice for anyone in pottery is to make an artist statement. And she goes on to say that
00:00:44
Speaker
This artist statement, even though hers isn't professionally done, like how it would be an undergrad or grad school, she made the artist statement and it made her apply her own pottery to that statement. It made her live up to that standard that she really wrote down.
Setting Personal Standards in Pottery
00:01:04
Speaker
And I think this is really powerful because I, in a way, kind of did the same thing. I didn't write an artist statement, but I set a standard for my pottery, what I wanted it to look like in my mind and what made pottery look good to me. And by doing this, it allowed me to set standard for my pottery so that each piece that I made and I kept, each piece that I made and kept was
00:01:33
Speaker
to my perfection. It was up to par for me. It may not be up to par for somebody else, but to me, that's what I like. For example, so I like my pottery. Back then, when I was making a lot of mugs, I liked my handles to be somewhat a little thick. They had to be in the middle between thin and thick, but they also had to be look nice. They had to look nice. On top of that, I had to have a nice foot ring.
00:02:01
Speaker
and my mug had to be rounded with a nice rim. Those were the criteria I set for myself when I was making my mugs a while back. And doing it this way allowed me to really push my mugs to what I actually wanted it to be, what I envisioned it to be.
Evolving Pottery Standards
00:02:18
Speaker
And back to that artist statement, that's where writing down an artist statement will really help you. Because in an artist statement, you're pretty much just saying what you want your pottery to look like, what you like to make in pottery,
00:02:31
Speaker
And that's pretty much it. And that's why it's so, so beneficial. And I really love that she said to make an artist statement at the end of the episode. And it really puts you into a standard for yourself, for your own pottery. That's what we need to start doing in order to really see good things with our pottery and start having our voice show up in our pottery.
00:02:57
Speaker
we need to set our standard for our pottery first. Otherwise, we're never going to be able to make something that is to our standard if we don't have that standard set already. Your standard can change a little bit as it goes around. She explained that sometimes your pottery won't always look like it was how you set it in the statement. But that either means you didn't do it right or you have to tweak your statement a little bit. You have to fix it a little bit.
00:03:26
Speaker
That's why you can change. Pottery is flexible. You can change however you want based on how you like to make your pottery. But if you set a standard for your pottery, your pottery is going to go a lot further and your voice is going to start showing up a lot better.
00:03:42
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this episode of Shaping Your Pottery. If you have questions about developing your voice or just pottery questions in general, send them to me my way. Go to shapingyourpottery.com forward slash contact to send me your questions.