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Restarting your pottery journey after a long break image

Restarting your pottery journey after a long break

Shaping Your Pottery with Nic Torres
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177 Plays4 months ago

In this episode, Nic Torres offers practical advice for individuals looking to get back into pottery after taking a long break. He discusses common challenges such as busy schedules and life commitments, providing three key tips to rebuild the habit of making pottery: engaging in art as often as possible, dedicating just five minutes a day to making art, and surrounding oneself with like-minded artists and potters.  

If you want to restart your pottery and are looking for fun pottery challenges to grow your pottery come join The Clay Games community  Join Here


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Transcript

Introduction to Restarting Pottery

00:00:00
Speaker
How do you start over when you've taken a long break from pottery? What is up Jape Nation? This is Nick Torres here and in this episode I'm going to be talking about if you've taken a long break from pottery and you want to start making pottery again, you want to start making art again, what do you do to get back into that habit? Is your pottery going to be the same as it was when you started before? How can you navigate these things?

Balancing Art with Life's Responsibilities

00:00:25
Speaker
So, as you know, life gets busy sometimes. Some of us have kids, not me personally, but some of you guys are moms, some of you guys are parents, some of you guys have full-time jobs, and you want to be making art, you want to be making pottery, but you feel like you just don't have the time. And then by the time
00:00:41
Speaker
that comes around you know you get so absorbed into the family you get so absorbed into the job that it becomes that much harder to get back into pottery start making pottery again How exactly can you get back into it?

Rediscovering Joy in Pottery

00:00:56
Speaker
Because I know you want to get back into pottery. You want to get back into pottery because that's the whole reason why we started pottery is because we enjoyed it. We enjoyed making it and that is our pleasure, right? We enjoy making art. We enjoy using our hands to make stuff.
00:01:13
Speaker
And we want to get back into it, but sometimes it can be so hard to get back into that that habit, into that groove of making pottery again, especially when life gets super busy. And I get it. Life gets busy sometimes where you can't get into the studio or even like outside factors where it's just like heat. Like for me, example, I make pottery in my garage and it's been so hot lately, I literally can't even get into the studio like any time of the day. It's just so hot.

Building a Pottery Habit

00:01:39
Speaker
But what do you do to get back into that habit? Here are some things that have helped me here, things that hopefully that can help you as well and things that I've learned from other powders as myself. So the first thing I would recommend. Is it to try to make art or make pottery as often as you can, because if you are someone that works as a family, the longer you wait, the harder it is to build that habit again.
00:02:06
Speaker
So try to make the habit once a week, if you can, once a week, a couple times a week, just make something. It doesn't matter what you're making, just make something because the longer you wait, the harder it's going to be to get back into that. So that helps me a lot is that even if when I know that it's like hot in my studio, I will go in there and I'll just bear with it. I don't care how hot it is. I would just sit in there and I'll just make something like right now. Very recently, I've been practicing making some Ninja Turtle heads, just the heads, because I I really want to make a Ninja Turtle magnet. And so I've just been practicing the heads. And so I've been trying to get into the studio as often as I can.
00:02:45
Speaker
even with it being super hot right now, like 100 plus degrees. And right now, I'm literally just trying to get in there as often often as I can, not every single day, obviously, because it's super hot, but as often as I can, every week, at least. And that's my goal for you as well. If you are something right now that is trying to get back into making pottery again, just try to start very small. Get in there once a week, get in there a couple of times a week. The next tip is ah kind of along the same lines.

Daily Art Practice Tips by Sarah Pike

00:03:16
Speaker
It is doing something, making pottery for just five minutes or making art for just five minutes. It doesn't have to be just pottery. You see, a while back, I got to interview Sarah Pike.
00:03:26
Speaker
And one of the things that Sarah, she was going through a very rough part of her life, right? She lost a family member and is very rough part of her life and she couldn't find the time to get into the studio, which is hard for her to get into the studio. So she made a goal for herself. She made a goal to where she was going to make. little stamps every single day for just five minutes, five minutes every single day to help her get back into that habit of getting into the studio. And by the end of like the 30 days that she put her the challenge on tour, she was ready to get back into the studio doing five minutes a day just to get back into the studio, just to do something of making art, making pottery.
00:04:08
Speaker
that five minutes a day will help you so much. It doesn't even matter what you're making, you can literally just sit five minutes a day to just draw or paint or maybe you're making something out of wood or maybe something out of clay. Whatever it is, spend five, try to take five minutes out of your day and just make art. Because the more creative things you start doing, the more creative ideas you start to have and easier it becomes to start doing the pottery, making pottery all over again. Right. Our goal is to build the habit of making pottery again.

Finding Inspiration from Other Artists

00:04:39
Speaker
We want to make pottery. So now the third way that you could get into making pottery again is to get around other potters, get around other
00:04:50
Speaker
people like minor potters, like minor artists, this could be a very easy way. They're going to start posting things. They're going to start showing off things. And the more you're around them, the more you want to get into the studio as well, because every single time I get a new idea from somebody I'm interviewing, I immediately want to go try it because I'm around them. I'm interviewing them. I'm asking them questions. And if you simply get around other potters, then you are going to have that much easier time getting back into pottery again.

Joining the Pottery Community

00:05:19
Speaker
If you are looking to start making pottery again, I have a pottery community called The Clay Games, where every month we do a challenge to help you grow your voice and help you get back into the studio again making pottery. If you would like to join the clay games community, go to shapingpottery.com forward slash community, and you can join there, where you can click the link in the description as well. I hope to see you guys in there.
00:05:43
Speaker
And so that's my advice to you, to anybody that is looking to that wants to start making art again, wants to start making pottery again. Hope you guys enjoyed the episode and I'll see you guys in the next one.