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#382 Pottery Patterns: A Creative Evolution
56 Plays2 years ago
In this episode of 'Shaping Your Pottery with Nic Torres,' the journey of a potter is explored through the different stages of skill development, from the initial 'crappy' stage to the discovery of a personal style. Nic discusses how patterns and preferences begin to emerge as one experiments with pottery, using his own transition from raku firings to incorporating nerdy, fantasy elements into his work as an example. He stresses the importance of listening to these patterns to find one's unique voice in pottery, illustrating how it made his pottery journey more enjoyable. Nic encourages listeners to identify and follow the evolving patterns in their work to grow their personal style. Additionally, he mentions a newsletter for listeners interested in delving deeper into pottery techniques.
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Transcript
Introduction to Pottery and Finding Your Voice
00:00:00
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,
Stages of Learning Pottery
00:00:16
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.
Experimentation and Developing Personal Style
00:00:29
Speaker
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.
00:00:38
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.
Emerging Patterns and Unique Pottery Voice
00:00:49
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.
Nick's Experience with Raccoon Firings and Nerdy Designs
00:01:13
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
00:01:39
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.
Embracing Nerdy Style in Pottery
00:02:07
Speaker
I really like doing that.
00:02:09
Speaker
And while I stopped doing the raccoon for a while, and I haven't done it in a while, that
00:02:17
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.
00:02:44
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.
Advice on Listening to Patterns and Developing Style
00:02:55
Speaker
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.
00:03:12
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.
00:03:39
Speaker
Hope you guys enjoyed this episode and I'll see you guys in the next one.