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#368 Sculpting Creatures of Clay w/Eva Funderburgh
26 Plays6 months ago
This episode of 'Shape Your Pottery' features an in-depth conversation with Eva Funderburgh, an exceptional pottery artist known for her unique sculpture creatures. Host Nic Torres explores Eva's journey from her earliest encounters with pottery in school to her decision to pursue art over science, leading to the development of her distinctive sculptures. Eva shares her experiences with wood firing, residencies in Denmark, and the significance of community in her artistic development. The discussion delves into the challenges and successes of selling art, the importance of experimentation, and the evolution of Eva's work, which now includes public installations and diverse materials. Eva also provides insights into her creative process, her approach to discovering a unique artistic voice, and practical advice for aspiring artists. The episode highlights Eva's advocacy for persisting in artistic pursuits and encourages listeners to actively engage in shaping their pottery skills. You can learn more about eva by checking out her instagram@evafunderburgh
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00:00 Introduction: The Art of Sculpting with Eva Funderburk 00:49 Eva's Pottery Journey: From Community to Creativity 02:41 The Birth of Flying Creatures: A Dive into Public Art 05:19 Evolving Art: From Ceramics to Diverse Mediums 06:45 Revisiting Ideas: The Key to Artistic Growth 08:12 The Origin of Eva's Sculptures: A Tale of Monsters and Pottery 10:04 Discovering a Unique Artistic Voice 11:22 Building a Personal Wood Kiln: A Story of Flexibility and Control 12:51 The Magic of Wood Firing: A Collaboration with Fire 14:04 Sculpting Techniques: The Importance of Detail 15:21 Three Essential Tips for Aspiring Sculptors 17:53 Navigating the Business of Pottery: From Viral Success to Sales Strategies 24:10 Finding and Sharing Your Unique Voice in Pottery 26:50 Final Thoughts and Where to Find Eva
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Transcript
The Art Experience: Viewer as Participant
00:00:00
Speaker
artwork changes when you put the viewer in the formula.
Meet Eva Thunderbird: Sculptor and Potter
00:00:06
Speaker
Meet Eva Thunderbird. A pottery creates amazing sculpture creatures. In this episode, you will learn Eva's three best tips when it comes to sculpting. Something entirely different from what I've been doing. You will also learn Eva's biggest struggles and accomplishments when it comes to selling her own sculptures.
Selling Art: Challenges and Emotions
00:00:26
Speaker
It makes me so sad when people get their hearts broken for sculptures. Finally, one of the last things you will learn is how Eva learned how to discover her own voice and get out of the traps you felt in. There's been times when I have felt sort of trapped within my own body of sculpture.
Finding Artistic Voice and Overcoming Traps
00:00:44
Speaker
And there's so much more in this episode. I hope you guys enjoy it and I'll see you guys in there. Eva, welcome to Shape Your Pottery and share with me what is something that has helped you the most on your pottery journey so far.
00:00:56
Speaker
Hello, Nick. Thank you so much for having me on. I was thinking about that, and really at every stage of my career, community has been a big part of my journey.
Community Support in Pottery
00:01:06
Speaker
From both when I first left college and I found my way to like the Washington Clay Artists Association, to later when I was feeling stalled and I did such things as
00:01:17
Speaker
taking a class at the community art center or doing a residency to later doing art retreats. And also through all of it, the wood frying community has really been a big part of my career.
Eva's Pottery Journey: Childhood to Career
00:01:31
Speaker
Absolutely love that shape nation. The more you get around other artists and other potters, the better your pottery will grow. I absolutely love that. So tell me the story, how you got started making pottery.
00:01:42
Speaker
So to some degree I've always made pottery or rather it's hard to find a distinct start point because I was lucky enough that I remember those terrible ashtrays slash coin jars that you'd make in elementary school and then summer camp we'd make pots and whatnot.
00:02:03
Speaker
I started really liking it in middle school, where our middle school had a ceramic studio. That's where I started throwing pots. In high school, I was lucky enough to do the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts.
00:02:17
Speaker
And I'd hoped to attend as, it was a free program for high school students in the state of Pennsylvania. It was a five-week program. It was really cool. I'd wanted to attend as a sculptor, instead ended up attending as a potter. And at that point, that's the first time I started considering art and specifically pottery as a career. Before that, I had thought I was going to go into science.
Residencies in Denmark: Flying Creatures
00:02:40
Speaker
I love that. So you did a residency in Denmark. Can you tell me the story about this? Yeah, so I did two residencies over the years, actually both in Denmark at Gulego. And the first one was really interesting because I went and I proposed, okay, I've been making my creatures for a while. I want to see what happens when I make
00:03:09
Speaker
a whole large number of them. Are they still as cute when there's like 100 flying creatures with teeth at eye level? Like, how does this change? And so I propose that to them. And they're like, yeah, yeah, no, that sounds good. And I get over there and I just start making these beasts, these little flying beasts. And the director of the program was like, okay, so where do you want to install these? I was like, Oh, you
00:03:37
Speaker
I don't know, a closet would be fine. Like, wherever works for you. She's like, okay. Well, I've asked around and you can either do an installation at the mayor's office or in the local high school. I went, what? And so I ended up installing these nearly a hundred flying beasts in the high school of Skill School, Denmark.
Public Art's Influence on Artistic Approach
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And they're only installed for two weeks.
00:04:04
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But that ended up being my first taste of public art, and just how much artwork changes when you put the viewer in the formula, when you start interacting with the people seeing your work, and when you start putting your work, not making your work not just for yourself, but for everyone.
00:04:29
Speaker
What were you feeling when you got this opportunity to put your flying creatures up in the high school? I was really excited about it, but I also didn't know what to expect because I'd never had my work presented to the general public like that before.
Exploring Materials and Styles
00:04:50
Speaker
And so once it was there and I saw the faces of all the students coming by to see it and how much they enjoyed it and how they weren't expecting it, it was such a delight. That really blew me away. But something for like, I hadn't realized I was missing that before that moment. Absolutely love that. So how did this experience impact the way you make your sculptures today?
00:05:19
Speaker
So that was my first taste of public art. And I came back from that and I actually applied to a couple of grad schools, but then nothing was the right fit. And instead I ended up taking those ideas and going to the City of Seattle Public Art Boot Camp, which is a program that they offered to take artists in general who didn't have any public art experience.
00:05:50
Speaker
and to give them a walkthrough of what it was like to get involved in public art and just start making work there. And the effect the whole experience ended up having is it ended up diversifying my work massively. I still make my ceramic creatures. I still make my small cute ceramic creatures.
00:06:13
Speaker
But I also am finding other ways of making my work. I make my work out of bronze, out of chicken netting. I did an installation in 2020 of a bunch of my creatures, but made out chicken wire hiding in trees for people to enjoy. And it's something where it's been a very key stepping point into like diversifying how I make my own sculptures, which has been very fun.
Revisiting Ideas for Growth
00:06:43
Speaker
absolutely love that. So what is something you learned during this time that helped you with your own sculptures? To not be afraid of repetition. This piece that set this all off was a hundred flying creatures all in a swarm. And since then I've made new versions of that same piece. I've found ways
00:07:10
Speaker
I found that if I come back to the same idea multiple times, I keep finding new things. I keep growing every time I look at it. It's like people will say like you can't cross the same stream twice. Because even though like you might physically be in the same location, everything around you is different. And so with artwork, if you just keep coming back to the same idea, you can grow in new ways that you might not be expecting.
00:07:39
Speaker
And that's honestly a lesson as an artist that took me a while to learn, especially coming out of college where you make an idea once you're done, it's on to the next thing. But instead, I feel like revisiting ideas has led to some of my most unexpected growth in the past few years.
00:07:58
Speaker
I love that. Shaping Nation, you can revisit old ideas and old techniques that you've used in the past. And by revisiting them, you can also make it 10 times better because you already had that experience.
Transition from Pottery to Sculpting Creatures
00:08:10
Speaker
I love that. So let's talk about your sculptures. Can you tell me a story? How you started making the sculptures that you make today? So after I left college, I wanted to be a potter. I was trying to decide to either do
00:08:27
Speaker
pottery or go on to grad school in chemistry. And I ended up being an assistant for a person and I just
00:08:37
Speaker
I was not a very good potter and I love pottery. I love the joy of it, but I just, I honestly don't have the eye for it. And so as I was trying to make pots and trying to improve my skills there, I was also making little monsters out of the scraps just for fun. And at some points it was like, have you, have you ever thought about just focusing on the creatures?
00:09:00
Speaker
And I did, and over time they grew in ways that I wasn't expecting. And I create a whole vocabulary and a whole world of these little creatures that were first just trimming scraps.
Struggles with Pottery and Creative Transition
00:09:13
Speaker
So you mentioned that you felt like you didn't have the eye for pottery. Tell me more about that. I'm not sure how much it's not having the eye or not having the patience
00:09:26
Speaker
or perhaps to put it by way, I feel like I had too strong of an eye for my own work's flaws. When I was making pottery, I wasn't coming up with designs that really were inspiring to me. And instead, I just see the flaws of my own work.
00:09:48
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I tried. I have a lot of love of pottery. You know how it is.
Inspiration: Humanity and Wilderness
00:09:51
Speaker
I love that. Shaping Nation, if you feel like you're going through the motions with your pottery, try doing something else because maybe what you're really just missing is just something more creative. I love that. So you are inspired by the overlap of humanity and wilderness. Can you tell me more about this?
00:10:13
Speaker
I like taking ideas from each side and mixing it into the other. I like using creatures serve as the stand-ins for people as I do explore storytelling and myth-making and a lot of like folk tales. I love exploring the feel of folk tales. And a lot of that comes from using creatures in the place of humans as sort of a more approachable window into this world.
00:10:44
Speaker
And then on the other side, I love examining cities and humanity in terms of the biological imperative to grow. Where you look at bacteria, you look at anything, it spreads until it stops. And so with some of my creatures, I play around with the idea that the city is symbiote. And I have creatures that have whole cities growing on their backs.
Building a Wood Kiln: Journey and Motivation
00:11:13
Speaker
I love that. I love hearing about that. That's so cool. And you could definitely tell a story when you do it that way. It tells a story in itself. I love that. So something interesting that you are doing is you are building a 16 foot wood kiln. Tell me the story how this came to be.
00:11:32
Speaker
Yes, so I've been lucky enough to be woodfiring for almost 20 years now. And a lot of this time has been in the same two kilns. And I've loved the community there. I will say I've seen the good sides of it, though I've also seen bad sides of it. And as I've been growing in that as part of that, I've realized I want something with more flexibility.
00:12:00
Speaker
where I've been helping to manage, or I was helping to manage this Anagama for a few years, but every firing you had 15 to 20 people's work in it. And so that meant you had 15 to 20 people's hopes and dreams contained in that kiln. You don't want to try new things. You want to stick with what works. You don't want my steppe for women's work.
00:12:23
Speaker
And so I decided that building a small kiln, that would give me the flexibility to experiment and to try new things and also to control my own schedule, which has been, is very important to me as I'm committing to larger shows and larger projects. All of that came together and I decided it was time to build my own kiln, which has been a pretty amazing journey.
00:12:50
Speaker
So now you mostly fire in wood fire. Why do you decide to go down that route instead of something else? So my work is...
00:13:02
Speaker
And when I sculpt it, my sculpting methods are very, very controlled. And I've tried loosening up, but you know, that's just not how I sculpt. On the other hand, when I put pieces into the kiln, it becomes this collaboration with fire, with ash, with the path of the flame.
00:13:21
Speaker
And I just love the unexpected results that come from that. I have enough experience with wood firing that I can design a piece for the kiln and I can know, okay, the color on this side will be different from this side. I can load it this direction, which means the flame will go over here. And
The Sculpting Process and Wood Firing
00:13:42
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while I can never know exactly what's going to happen, it gives me just enough control over the piece that it just becomes
00:13:53
Speaker
It creates magic art working with science and fire, and it's hard to get better than that. So you mentioned control while you're making just sculptures. Tell me more about that. I have a nearly pathological need to make everything really, really smooth. And so I'm working on pieces, and I do so much of my refining using a sure form, using a tool to just shave off clay.
00:14:22
Speaker
And I actually, I joke because I had a friend who we, talking together, we decided sculpture is about the second derivative. It's the second derivative. You aren't necessarily looking at the curve of a line. You're looking at something even smaller, which is the rate of change of that curve.
00:14:42
Speaker
Is it moving up a continuous rate? Is it slowing? Changing the angle of a limb or of a shoulder changes so much in a piece. And I'll sit there as I sculpt just removing bits and pieces with a sure form until everything's just right and everything's just so smooth and nice.
00:15:03
Speaker
I definitely agree with you on that because when I'm making my sculptures, I definitely notice like I'll sit there and I'll be like, okay, is this pose good or is this pose good? And moving one little thing can actually have a really big impact. I love that. Oh, yeah, it's it takes all the tiny details to make a hole. Absolutely. I love that. If someone is looking to elevate their own sculptures or get started with making sculptures, what are three things they should know to make the best possible sculptures they can?
00:15:30
Speaker
So I've been thinking about this for a bit, and it's interesting because the three answers I have are radically divergent. And the first one is practice. In a way, it's like pottery. Your body is going to learn as you do it, and like just coming back again and again and putting yourself in the chair will make your work grow in ways that you don't expect.
00:15:59
Speaker
I often find that if I'm stuck, getting into the studio can be so hard, but once my hands are in the clay, I can find a way forward. I make progress in ways that I'd never expect. And then the second thing is
00:16:18
Speaker
try something new. Thinking back, a lot of my growth has been signing up for a class or just finding something entirely different from what I've been doing. It could be taking a bronze casting class. It could be doing the art retreat that I mentioned earlier. It's just suddenly working with other artists who do something entirely different from you can open your eyes to entirely new ways of working with
00:16:49
Speaker
clay to working with art or even working with people. And then I think the third thing honestly is put all the art away and just take a walk. There could be a good thing to be said for like, you've stared at the piece for long enough. You aren't seeing anything new. Just go take a walk, take a nap, do something not in the studio, and let your brain relax a little bit.
Advice to Sculptors: Practice and Experimentation
00:17:13
Speaker
Like,
00:17:14
Speaker
When you're farming, there's fallow seasons or times when you leave the land alone for a season and it lets everything regenerate. And so rest is actually pretty useful also.
00:17:29
Speaker
Absolutely agree, I love that. To recap a little bit, Shaping Nation, number one is to practice. Practice is probably the most important thing that you can do in anything in art, just practice. Number two is try something new because getting new ideas can come from anywhere. And number three is take a break, take a walk, and let yourself to be refreshed.
Becoming a Full-time Artist: Journey and Decisions
00:17:51
Speaker
I love those three pieces of advice.
00:17:53
Speaker
Let's talk about the business side of pottery. Can you tell me about the moment when you decided to go full-time as a potter? So I was lucky enough to have support from my partner.
00:18:04
Speaker
which it's very interesting to sort of talk about because not everyone does and it helped me a lot on my road. Originally, when I first came out of college, I was trying to decide whether to focus on art or whether to focus on chemistry, which I did sort of a split major in college.
00:18:26
Speaker
And I worked part time at chem lab. And eventually I realized that my path was in art and I switched to focusing on that full time. Is around then the starting to develop the creatures. And I had a conversation with my partner of, do I focus more?
00:18:44
Speaker
on creating a commercial line, on doing craft fairs, on focusing, or do I focus more on growing the work, maybe focus on the gallery route and see where it grows. So that was the moment I decided to focus more on taking the time to see where the work grows. How did you finally decide upon growing your work instead of going the other way?
00:19:12
Speaker
I was lucky enough to have the support of my partner because we sat down, we talked about it, and he said that he would support me in this as I worked to figure out the right path for my own sculptures, instead of having to immediately focus on the salability aspect first versus the sort of letting it grow and letting it figure, find the correct path.
Success in Online Sculpture Sales
00:19:39
Speaker
over time more gradually. I absolutely love that. So what would you say has helped you the most being able to sell your own sculptures? So I've lucked out just with the timing of how I developed my work and my presence online, and how the internet has grown with me. So the first few times my work went viral, it was on Tumblr back in the day.
00:20:07
Speaker
And this is back when I had, as non-Instagram, I was on Etsy and Flickr. And so I definitely am very thankful for the fact that as my work has grown, there's been the correct platform to step into each time. However, I was thinking about it, and if there's one thing that helped the aspect of selling my work online,
00:20:35
Speaker
It was the point where I decided to stop doing presales. Cause originally back when I was on Etsy and just posted my pictures on Flickr, I had a few very loyal customers who'd support me across the years. And as a thank you for them, every time I did a wood firing, I would send out a private link to the pictures and people, my existing customer base could get first dibs on things.
00:21:00
Speaker
However, eventually I realized that wasn't particularly fair and I just opened all of the sales all at once to everyone. And once I did that, my sales absolutely took off because it turned out that the other people weren't interested in having a second choice or having the pieces that were other buyers second choices.
00:21:25
Speaker
It just didn't feel as nice.
Rethinking Sales Methods Due to High Demand
00:21:28
Speaker
So opening my sale just as a single shop launch all at once with no presales has made the process much smoother. And initially it was more equitable and it seems to have gone pretty well. My only problem with it now is I'm at a point where the demand has outstripped my ability to make sculptures.
00:21:52
Speaker
And so I often get very sad emails about people trying to buy things during my shop launches only to click go and have it already be sold. So the same shop launch that worked so well for me at sort of early slash mid-career is now being a little bit of a trouble spot later in my career. What were you feeling when all this would happen, when you stopped doing pre-sales?
00:22:18
Speaker
and you just open it up for everyone. It's been a while to see the growth. I'm so thankful for it. It got to the point where, when I was first generally selling out every time I did a sale, it was such an amazing feeling. And it's
00:22:37
Speaker
It's very strange because I feel like over the past maybe five years from when this first started happening, it feels almost like I accidentally created a monster because I'm watching this demand grow. I'm like, oh, this is so great. This is so exciting. And now it's like, oh, it's a little scary. Oh, no, it's really like breaking people's hearts. And that really like bothers me a lot. And so
00:23:02
Speaker
It's very interesting to be a point where like the sales method is working for me financially, but I'm going to need to try and figure out a new method sometime in the future that's more equitable, that does a lottery or something like that because it makes me so sad when people get their hearts broken over sculptures.
Sharing the Creative Process Online
00:23:25
Speaker
Now, what advice would you give to someone looking to start selling their own sculptures?
00:23:30
Speaker
persistence, the ability to show your progress as you're working on a piece, the ability to interact with everyone with a general audience as you're making your sculpture is very important. It's a real need for people to see the process that goes into it, to see the work that goes into it, to see the love that goes into it. It definitely means that you end up spending more time on social media than
00:23:59
Speaker
is really ideal but at the same time you're making really important connections with people and people are making really important connections with your work.
Recognizing the Right Track and Overcoming Blocks
00:24:08
Speaker
Some excellent advice right there. Let's talk about discovering your voice. Can you tell me about the moment when you knew you were heading in the right direction with your sculptures? So it's hard to pinpoint it a specific moment from my entire career
00:24:24
Speaker
But I know in any given batch of work that I'm making, I'll often run into points where I just look at a piece and it'll make me laugh. It'll make me smile. And if I'm working on a sculpture and I hit that point where I'm like, oh, this is going to be good. That's always one of my favorite pieces, points to reach as I'm making a sculpture. I love that shaping nation.
00:24:51
Speaker
There's going to be probably moments in your pottery or your sculptures where you're going to have a smile on your face and you're laughing. That is when you know you're going in the right direction with your pottery. I love that. What would you say was your biggest obstacle when it came to discovering your own? There's been times when I have felt sort of trapped within my own body of sculpture because my creatures are very distinct and I'll periodically feel sort of stuck within them.
00:25:21
Speaker
But at the same time, I've always managed to work through it. I find new ways to say the things that I want to say. I don't limit myself to just the creatures. And so every time I come back to them, it's very exciting to find new ways of exploring art and the messages I want to say using the same visual language of my creatures.
Patience and Persistence in Art
00:25:47
Speaker
Absolutely love that. And it goes back to going back to repetition as well. Like you said earlier, I love that. So what advice would you give to someone looking to discover their own unique voice with their pottery? Patience.
00:26:01
Speaker
It just takes time. It takes time. It takes making things. Once you've been doing things for maybe five to seven years, you'll be able to look back and you can see your early work and you'll be able to see your voice with, you can see things early on and be like, oh, I see, I, from that piece, I grew in this way. I grew in this way. I grew in this way. But at the moment, as you're making things, you don't know which of the pieces you're making.
00:26:31
Speaker
are those early steps. And so you've got to just keep making things and accept that it's going to take years to figure out exactly who you are as an artist and that the path will become evident in time.
Getting into the Studio: Encouragement
00:26:47
Speaker
Some excellent words of advice right there. Eva, it has been a great chat today. And as we come to a close here, what is one thing you want to hammer home with my listeners today?
00:26:58
Speaker
Keep at it. I realize it's a theme that keep coming back through all of this. But just getting yourself into the studio and putting your hands to work and figuring out where they will take your mind is always just a wonderful step to take. Some excellent parting words of advice. Eva has been so great chatting today. Where can my listeners go and learn more about you?
Follow Eva: Instagram and Website
00:27:24
Speaker
Probably the easiest spot right now is on Instagram. I'm on Instagram at Eva Thunderberg. I also have a website, evafunderberg.com, and I'll be probably posting updates about my new wood kiln, which I'm hoping to fire for the first time in April.
00:27:43
Speaker
Hey thanks for listening to this episode of Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. If you want to master the art of pottery and dive deeper into the techniques of the potters I interview, I created a newsletter that does just that. It dives deep into the techniques of the potters I interview. If you want to learn more, go to shapingyourpottery.com forward slash newsletter or click the link in the description to learn more.