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Do this to find your pottery voice
55 Plays1 year ago
This clip from my interview with Adrienne Eliades, Adrienne talks the journey of finding one's unique voice in pottery, emphasizing the importance of reflecting on techniques, avoiding direct imitation, and gradually developing a personal style. It touches on the role of mimicking others' work as a learning tool and highlights the significance of not monetizing copied designs.
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Take this Free Quiz to see how close you are to finding your pottery voice click here to take the quiz shapingyourpottery.com/quiz
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Transcript
Finding Your Unique Voice in Pottery
00:00:00
Speaker
They learn new techniques, but maybe don't take the time to reflect and ask themselves if they really are jiving with those techniques. On this short clip with my interview with Adrienne Eliades, Adrienne gives some excellent tips for anyone looking to discover their own unique voice with their pottery. Let's listen up and see what she has to say. Let's talk about discovering your voice. What would you say was your biggest obstacle when it came to finding your own voice?
00:00:26
Speaker
quieting the noise of everyone else's truly. There's just so much out there to look at, to be inspired by, to try and copy to, you know, whatever it is. And I see it a lot with like my workshop students too. Maybe people
Reflecting on Techniques and Personal Practice
00:00:44
Speaker
that don't have a formal art background, but are really trying to grow their, their skill or their craft with just these kinds of hands-on workshops.
00:00:54
Speaker
They learn new techniques, but maybe don't take the time to reflect and ask themselves if they really are jiving with those techniques, if they bring them joy, if there's something that needs to be in their practice. You know, I see some people, they take a workshop, then they make work like that person, and then they move on and take another one and make work like that person. And I did that for years, I think, maybe not like workshops per se, but more being in school for art or
00:01:24
Speaker
working for artists and I realize I'm just making like a version of their work just from being around them and being exposed to it.
Mimicry as a Tool for Personal Style Development
00:01:32
Speaker
You can't necessarily see that in the moment but you see it years later when you look at a pot you made you're like oh my god that's just like that person's and I think that it's so great it's a great exercise to mimic someone with the idea that yes I am mimicking someone I'm trying something
00:01:47
Speaker
that I like that looks good. And you use that as a point of departure. You don't get stuck there, right? You just, you try it. You say, that's a really nice whoever pot. So how can I make that more my own? And then you kind of take steps to do that. It's incredibly hard to find your voice though. And it took me years. I mean, 15 years in clay, honestly. I think I just found it a few years ago. So just don't give up, you know, eventually it'll happen.
00:02:18
Speaker
It's probably not going to happen as quickly as you want it to, especially with clay because clay is such a technical media and there's so much that you can't control. You mentioned taking.
00:02:30
Speaker
or mimicking what other people are doing, but taking that with other people are doing and trying to make your own. How exactly would you do that?
Exercise to Transition from Mimicry to Originality
00:02:38
Speaker
So this is an exercise that I actually was given when I was a volunteer tech at San Diego State. Richard Burkett used to be the professor there and I think he could see it in me. He could see that I was just making other people's work. So he gave me this prompt where he was like, I want you to pick a pot and I want you to try to remake it exactly.
00:03:00
Speaker
way that you see it and then I want you to make it again and let yourself kind of diverge a bit you know and then make it again and diverge even more and it was this exercise and starting with something you like and then picking it apart into all these elements of like why do I like it what do I like about it what's working with it what do I need to keep and then how can I
00:03:25
Speaker
roll that into something that's a little bit more genuine to what I'm trying to communicate instead of the original person's pop that I was copying or mimicking.
Morphing Style into Unique Expression
00:03:36
Speaker
So he
00:03:36
Speaker
It was like meant to be an exercise as a point of departure to try to get to my own voice. And I've always been grateful to him for that because it was just a really nice way to kind of give me permission. Like you could copy people's paths, you know, you can, as a learning tool, go ahead. You just can't put them out in the world and say they're your own or you shouldn't at least. So, um, yeah, I did that for a while until things morphed into
00:04:07
Speaker
being an Adrian pot instead of whoever I was looking at. I absolutely love that. Shaping Nation, it's okay to copy and model other people's work, but don't stay there. Continue making small changes until you have found that one thing that resonates with you. Right. And just don't monetize those things either. That's the really important part. When it's not your intellectual property, you probably shouldn't be selling it.
00:04:31
Speaker
Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres.
Discovering Your Unique Voice: A Quiz
00:04:35
Speaker
If you want to discover how close you are to actually discovering your own unique voice with your pottery, I put together a free four question quiz. It's very short. It takes 30 seconds for you to take. If you want to know how close you are to finding your own unique voice, go to shapingyourpottery.com forward slash quiz, or you could simply go to shapingyourpottery.com and it'll be right there at the top.
00:05:00
Speaker
I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and I'll see you guys next time.