Transcript
Speaker: Along your pottery journey, there's going to be patterns that are going to show up. You've got to learn to look at those patterns. What is up Shaped Nation? This is Nick Torres here. If you guys don't know, I'm going to be showing you how to put your own unique voice with your pottery. So, along our pottery journey,
Speaker: We go through phases, right? At the beginning stage, we are in that crappy stage where all our work kind of looks pretty crappy. But at the moment, we don't really know it's crappy because we're in that beginning stage. And then we move on to the next stage, which is kind of like the amateurish rookie stage where you are starting to get a little bit better and your work is starting to look better.
Speaker: And then you start getting into more of the experimental phase, where you are experimenting with more things and you are doing all these different things to kind of find your own style with your pottery.
Speaker: But along all these stages, patterns start to show up in your own pottery. Maybe you start liking shadowy figures, or maybe you like doing graffito, or maybe you like doing comic type of work, or maybe you like doing funny tuning type of work. These patterns start showing up, and they probably start showing up pretty early on as well if you start experimenting.
Speaker: And when you start listening to these patterns and start looking at these patterns of what you like, that's when your pottery voice truly starts to grow because now you are heading right in that direction. I'll give you an example. So a little while ago, I was pretty into raccoon firings and I still kind of like to be raccoon firings. I used to do them as often because they get very smoky and I don't have a respirator mat. Anyways, for a while I was doing
Speaker: And what I would do in my my naked raccoon pots, my vases, was I would put a I'll cut out a picture of an anime character that I liked and I would slap it to the to the mug and then I'll paint the slip over the cup, the mug vase over the vase and then I'll repeal the paper off and made like a little bit of a design on the vase. And then when I put it into the raccoon kiln, it would have like a shadowy market. I really like doing that.
Speaker: And while I stopped doing the raccoon for a while, and I haven't done it in a while, that
Speaker: thing kind of stuck. Like I was still doing nerdy things to my pottery because then I got into sculpture and that's when I started making these like ninja type of magnet characters. And then I got into making mugs and my sculptures are all very nerdy and they're all very things that I would want or I would want to see like in my day to day life. I'm a huge nerd and I haven't applied that to my pottery.
Speaker: And I started seeing these patterns in my pottery when I, after that, that first raccoon that I did with the anime character that I did. And I started listening to those patterns. And when I started listening to those patterns, I noticed that I like putting nerdy things onto my pottery or like fancy things onto my pottery. And that's the direction I am heading in with pottery. And that's my voice. I'm that nerdy potter that likes to add nerdy things to my pots.
Speaker: And because I started listening to that pattern, my pottery became that much more enjoyable. So if you find patterns in your work, listen to those patterns and see where that takes you. Listen to those patterns so you can continue grow your pottery, continue growing your own style. Grow through the stages, but you're going to have patterns in those stages where you are going to be more likely to head in that direction because of those patterns.
Speaker: Hope you guys enjoyed this episode and I'll see you guys in the next one.
