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The Secret To Blending Nature Into Sculptures w/ Bethany Krull
72 Plays2 years ago
This podcast episode features an interview with sculptor Bethany Krull, who shares her journey from pottery to sculpture, emphasizing the importance of finding one's passion and unique voice in art. Bethany discusses the transition from using pottery wheels for functional pottery to utilizing them as a tool for creating sculptural works, reflecting on her inspiration from nature and the complex relationship between humans and animals. She also offers insights into the business side of being a full-time sculptor, including tips for selling work and getting into galleries. The conversation covers the significance of idea generation, process exploration, and perseverance in developing a cohesive body of work. Bethany encourages artists to focus on making strong work by looking outward for inspiration and inward for personal voice, emphasizing the balance between seeking audience engagement and staying true to one's artistic vision. You can learn more about bethany by checking out her Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bethanykrullsculpture/
I have some exciting news. On May 31st I am doing an workshop with Guest Artist Mike Cerv and Mike is talking about How to Make Slab Built Goblet Cups! To register and get bird price before prices go up click this link to register https://shapingyourpottery.ck.page/products/how-to-make-a-slab-built-goblet-cup-w
00:00 Kickoff: Upcoming Online Workshop Announcement 00:20 Diving Into Bethany Krull's Sculpture Journey 02:09 Bethany's Transition from Pottery to Sculpture 14:53 Exploring the Significance of Porcelain in Sculptures 18:37 Bethany's Advice on Starting with Sculptures 20:31 The Business Side of Being a Full-Time Sculptor 26:11 Finding Your Unique Voice in Pottery and Sculpture 35:08 Bethany's Final Thoughts and Where to Find Her Work
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Real quick before we
Announcing the Workshop with Mike Serv
00:00:01
Speaker
get started. On May 31st, I'm doing an online workshop with guest artist Mike Serv. And in this workshop, Mike's going to talk about all about how he makes slab built goblet cups. If you would like to attend this workshop, click the link in the description to register. Before prices go up, go get the early bird price.
Bethany's Artistic Journey Begins
00:00:18
Speaker
With that being said, let's get to the interview. You also need to spend like enough time with one idea to sort of bring it to like a fruition. Meet Bethany Crowell, a sculptor who takes great inspiration from our relationship with Enn. Well, I think that I'm often like looking for ideas within that umbrella. In this episode, Bethany offers some excellent tips to anyone looking to start their journey.
00:00:47
Speaker
If you're in a zone of pottery, my inclination would be to say, like, how can you use the wheel as a tool? Right?
Transition from Pottery to Sculpture
00:00:55
Speaker
Bethany also offers some excellent advice to anyone looking to sell their pottery or sculptures. Focus on your work and make it the strongest work that it can be.
00:01:05
Speaker
Finally, Bethany ends the interview by giving her best tips to helping one discover their only midi pottery voice. It's a balance between looking outward and filling yourself with inspiration. And there's so much more in this episode. I hope you guys enjoy it and see you guys in
00:01:25
Speaker
Bethany, welcome to Shaping Pottery and share with me what is something you believe potters or sculptors should be doing to make the best possible work for themselves.
00:01:43
Speaker
It comes down to process as well. And I think in terms of idea, I think that the best thing for me as a sculptor was to find an idea that was large enough and big enough of an umbrella for me to be able to sort of move around freely within the confines of this idea so that I always feel like there's something new and fresh for me on the horizon. Absolutely love that. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me the story, how you got started making sculptures.
Artistic Process and Philosophy
00:02:13
Speaker
Well, you know, I actually started off as a potter. I went to my first ceramics class when I was 17 years old and my teacher was a potter. And so I learned how to throw on the wheel, which propelled me forward into college where I went for my undergrad in ceramics.
00:02:32
Speaker
and really focusing on pottery and the wheel and all of that, which I was very interested in the mastery of it. And I was doing art fair selling pottery, but as I moved forward with it, I started thinking about the wheel as a tool a little bit more. And so I started throwing these closed forms that in my mind were seed forms. And so I started like
00:02:55
Speaker
carving into them and creating these like peeling back of layers and you know they were very sculptural abstracted seed forms and from there I started making totems and then just fully went into the realm of sculpture after that but
00:03:11
Speaker
I keep going back to the wheel actually because I feel like it's a wonderful tool but I don't necessarily use it for pottery anymore. It's only a sculptural tool for me now. Tell me about why you decided to only use pottery the wheel as a tool to help you fuel your sculptures.
Influence of Solo Residencies
00:03:31
Speaker
Well, I just, you know, I think I sort of lost the interest in making pots, right? Making functional things. Although if you look at some of my recent sculptures, they're actually, I'm incorporating a pot form into them, making these snake plants, right? And the base is actually a sculptural pot. So I guess I'm sort of using it in this odd way right now that combines sculpture and function.
00:04:01
Speaker
But for me, I just think that they're that that sculptural pursuits are more interesting to me at this moment. And often I think like, oh, if I were to ever go back and do functional pottery, I feel like I would because it requires so much attentiveness to sort of, you know, kind of find a distinct voice or a distinct style within with whatever you're doing. I feel like I would have to like quit sculpture and say, OK, I'm going to do
00:04:28
Speaker
functional pottery for the next few years. Otherwise, you know, I can just see myself dabbling and making little crappy things here and there. But I think that anything that you're applying yourself to, like for me at least, needs a lot of time. So right now I'm just like full steam ahead in sculpture. But you know, maybe someday when I'm older, I'll get back to pots. I don't know. Those are like really my roots. But
00:04:50
Speaker
I think I need a lot of time for that. I love that. Shaping Nation, your pottery doesn't have to be functional. It could be a more sculptural piece if you want it to be. And you can go down that route or you can go back to other route if you want to. I love that. Right? And to switch things up, but in contrast to that, I think you also need to spend enough time with one idea to bring it to a fruition or to a strong place. It takes time for that.
00:05:18
Speaker
that's really interesting you said that because I almost wrote that exact same thing in my journal this morning really that's yeah so that's pretty crazy actually I love that so tell me the story about when you did a residency at the Archie Bray Foundation
00:05:34
Speaker
Oh my gosh, yeah, that was awesome. I was so honored to be invited to do that. I was invited as a summer resident. And at that time, I was a resident artist at a community art center down in South Florida, but I was sort of in the process of moving to my next residency, which was in Reading, PA outside of Philadelphia. So because I was in this weird moving situation, I ended up
00:06:00
Speaker
kind of switching my time a little bit and I was a summer resident but I wasn't there with like a whole group of people it was I felt very much like solo in that gig there was one other person that was with me but he was like always off hiking and like looking for bears and stuff so I was kind of solo in my summer residency I mean it was still amazing obviously to be in like
00:06:24
Speaker
gorgeous Helena, Montana with these huge, beautiful skies and just a different landscape.
Balancing Social Media and Artistry
00:06:31
Speaker
It was pretty amazing. Of course, there was the long-term residence there, but it felt like a solo experience for me there, honestly, because of the timing. But I don't know, I thought that was, obviously, to have time for your work is the key with a residency, right? I just plugged away in the studio and then made time to play outside.
00:06:52
Speaker
my gig for I think I was there for six weeks, maybe. How did this time at the Archie Bray Foundation impact the way you make your own sculptures? I mean, I think always having that like dedicated time sort of like brings you to a point where you sort of see how how focused time can like build upon itself. And with that particular
00:07:18
Speaker
With that particular experience, because I felt very solo, I was in college, right? Surrounded by a ton of people. You're always talking about the work. And then from college, I went, you know, my BFA went to, I went to grad school surrounded by people and then jumping around to different residencies where.
00:07:33
Speaker
you're always in this huge community space of people. And because that experience was a little bit more solo, I feel like it prepped me for kind of what I'm doing now, which is I have a couple of kids, I work out of my house. So it's a very sort of solo studio practice. And I feel like I vibe really well in that environment. And I think that that was my first taste of not necessarily having
00:08:02
Speaker
all of the feedback of other people that I was always having and calling on myself for that and being very much insular in how I was making the work and not really feeling like there was a lot of eyes on the work, which I thought was good for me. With the whole world of social media, you feel like all eyes are on your work all the time because you're trying to share it and you're trying to put it out there and you're trying to build your audience and all these things.
00:08:31
Speaker
Like always try in my heart of hearts to sort of like throw my work out there without much care to like how people are going to react to it because I think that I just want to I want to be building my work from my own place. Right. Not not from this place where I'm thinking about what other eyes are on it or what other people are thinking about it. I love that shaping nation. Sometimes the best solution is to be by yourself and do deep focused work on your own pottery.
00:09:00
Speaker
So you continue growing as a potter. I love that. So let's talk about your sculptures. Tell me the story. Sorry. Tell me the story about how you started making the sculptures that you make today.
Nature and Childhood Inspirations
00:09:14
Speaker
So I would say that like my current body of work was really born in grad school where, which, you know, I was encouraged to be, you know, to find like, what's your passion? What's your idea that you want to share with the world?
00:09:27
Speaker
You know, I of course went back to my roots, you know, being a kid like growing up on a farm and like, you know, barefoot running through the woods kind of thing. And then, you know, also being in this environment where, you know, there was suburbs like being built all around me. And I ended up making all of these friends with kids that didn't have the same kind of experience.
00:09:48
Speaker
with the natural world that I was having, right? They were like in the, you know, in more of these like cookie cutter type houses with, you know, staying indoors most of the time. They lived on like one acre of land, whereas I was like, you know, I just had free reign to like go catch frogs. And my parents just let me be like a nature kid. And so when I was in grad school, I started thinking about all of that and really like going back to my roots and like understanding that like I feel like, you know,
00:10:17
Speaker
our society is becoming much more disconnected from nature. And so my work then started really looking at the natural world and natural objects and sort of sculpting from that point. And that was really much like, that felt like an aesthetic exercise. Like I would go out and find like, you know, like a dead bee and bring it into my studio and like look at it really closely and study it and sculpt it, right? And so like the idea was like, okay, we're really overlooking all of these
00:10:46
Speaker
things in nature and I was sort of sculpting them larger and putting them on display in like a white gallery and like trying to you know get the world to like look and see like look at what you're what you're not seeing look close at this it's amazing that sort of stuff and from grad school I moved down to South Florida
00:11:03
Speaker
where you know there's all these like you know my husband and my two cats we moved down to south florida and there's all these like stray cats like all around our house right and they're like catching frogs and free as you know as they want to be and then i have my two little cats that are like stuck in my little tiny apartment and i give them like a plastic frog to play with and so i just
00:11:33
Speaker
We keep pets and make pets and this idea of taking wild creatures and bringing them into the confines of your home and making them tame and how we give them artificial environments and artificial things to supplement the fact that we've taken them out of the natural world. That's where
00:11:55
Speaker
I feel like my body of work has kind of evolved from. Generally, I would say that I make work that deals with the human relationship to nature and other animals and how complicated that can be. And so I sort of dive around from subject matter to subject matter within that larger umbrella. Oftentimes, I'll think about how humans
00:12:22
Speaker
effect ecology or how we're impacting the environment, or, you know, a more personal thing, how much we love our pets, but how you know, we're, we have this, you know, extreme affection for them. But there's this overlying dominance and all everything that like lies in between. So you mentioned the complicated relationships with our animals and other animals. How does this impact the way you make your own sculpture? Well, I think that I'm, I'm often like, looking
00:12:52
Speaker
for ideas within that umbrella and then when I find the idea it sort of is the basis for like trying to figure out what the best way to make that idea is. I have a couple things going on in my studio right now so I like with different processes so it's like you know I'm I had someone contact me and they commissioned a sculpture of their two cats right so like
00:13:18
Speaker
how best do I create that? Okay, well, you know, I have a lot of experience with building solid on an armature. That's probably the best way to go about it. And so I'm sort of creating that in that zone. I have another series of sculptures or snake plants, right, which is about this sort of idea of how we, you know, we bring in the natural world into our, our homes and our environment.
00:13:41
Speaker
But they're, you know, you're taking a plant and you're pulling it from the earth and you're putting it in a pot, right? And the same thing with how you might, you know, take a snake from its environment and put it in, you know, a glass habitat that you created. And so, how do I make this, right? I'm like, okay, well, I want to make a potted snake plant, basically, right? Okay, well, the wheel is going to be the best tool for me to make that pot and
00:14:08
Speaker
I'm extruding the coils that become the snakes and there's a little bit of hand building in there. So I think that I've sort of played around so much in different techniques that I kind of, I feel like I have a freedom in terms of creating my ideas because I've slab built, I've coil built, I've, you know, I've used the extruder, I've made molds, I can throw on the wheel. And so I think it gives you the freedom to
00:14:34
Speaker
to really bring your ideas forward if you have lots of different techniques in your toolbox, so to speak. I love that. Shaping Nation, if you have experience in other techniques, even if it's outside of pottery, try to bring those experiences and put them into your own pottery that you make today. I love that. So now, something interesting about your sculptures is that you use porcelain to make them. Tell me about why you decided to use porcelain for your sculptures.
Sculpture Techniques and Materials
00:15:02
Speaker
The porcelain actually started with an idea. Actually, I was in my studio in grad school right before I was about to leave. I went right from grad school to another resident artist position in Rochester. But as I was moving out, there was all these dead flies and bugs that were in the windowsill of my studio.
00:15:26
Speaker
And it really started me thinking like, you know, and I would show that I would show them to a couple people and they're, you know, there's really like, there's a lot of people that are really scared of insects, right? Like, that's like one of the creatures that has this ability to like, repel a large percentage of the human population.
00:15:42
Speaker
And so I thought, oh wow, it's so interesting that so many people are afraid of these insects, but they're so ecologically important, right? Like they, you know, we rely on them for so many things in terms of how they balance the ecology of like our whole system, right? Like, you know, bees.
00:15:57
Speaker
bees pollinate the things to give us food, right? There's lots of insects that break down the leaves and sort of just help the system to cycle, right? And so I was just thinking about this juxtaposition of how ecologically important these creatures are, but how oftentimes they're viewed as pests.
00:16:20
Speaker
And so I started thinking about like the death of the insect as being a signal of a greater ecological sort of problem. And so I started sculpting these insects like dead on their backs and placing them in like, I would basically pour out earthenware clay.
00:16:40
Speaker
as a slip and let it crack up like so basically looked like the desert right and I wanted these insects to look like they were like bleached bone they had been you know they had died and they were you know they were had been out in the environment like baking in the sun right so I was like okay well let me let me try porcelain for this which was
00:17:03
Speaker
you know, solid much learning curve with that. But, you know, I found that the surface of the clay was just so beautiful, unglazed, that I kind of stayed in that zone for a decade. You know, and it's like, and I think that, again, it's kind of like, I have this thing where like, if I'm challenged, I'm like, like I can hyper focus like with the wheel, right? Like if you're learning how to throw pottery, like there is,
00:17:33
Speaker
It is a complicated thing to understand and learn as I'm sure all of your listeners know, right? But there's this perseverance that comes with it and this desire to master it that I had back when I was on the wheel. And then I think when I moved to Porcelain, I was like, oh my God, I sculpted this thing. It took me 30 hours. I put it in the kiln and it cracked.
00:17:55
Speaker
like horribly you know so then you're like okay well I could give up on that but I'm like you know what I love the surface of this clay so much that I want to understand how it works so I spent like a decade
00:18:07
Speaker
figuring it out, basically. And now I'm moving a little away from porcelain because I feel like I'm tired of babying my clay and spending so much time in the drying and just being so uber careful that I'm like, okay, now I'm in the zone where I just wanna work quick and not worry about it. So now I'm not, I don't even really work with porcelain at the moment because I've sort of, I've followed the spark of excitement someplace else.
00:18:34
Speaker
absolutely love it. Now, what are three things my listeners should know if they want to start making sculptures? Well, I would say start with an idea, right? If you're in a zone of pottery, my inclination would be to say like,
00:18:48
Speaker
How can you use the wheel as a tool? What kind of forms can you make that take it completely out of a functional realm? What if you're thinking about throwing two bowls that match to make a sphere? Or how can a cylinder and a sphere interact? I think that actually could be really fun to start just from a process point of view and say, how can I
00:19:14
Speaker
make something that is not functional at all that comes off the wheel. Sometimes you can play with process and then ideas. You put whatever you made in front of you and maybe some sort of umbrella ideas can come from that where you're
00:19:31
Speaker
able to sort of move forward and make series, but maybe it's just something fun, right? And then if you start with an idea that you feel doesn't work with the wheel, then maybe it's time to explore a new process. Maybe you want to work with slabs. Maybe you want to think about how
00:19:48
Speaker
how you might start building solid, right? Like I do a lot of sculpture where I build solid and then hollow it out. And maybe look at other artists who are doing things that you find interesting because that's always a place to get some inspiration, right? So you can understand, you know, how are they working? Is there a way that you can incorporate their processes into your work and make it your own?
00:20:13
Speaker
Absolutely love that shaping nation. The three tips are number one use the tools you already have and you have already learned To start making the sculptures number two pivot if that doesn't work And number three look at other artists to gain inspirations and see how they are making their own sculptures. I absolutely love that So let's talk about the business side of pottery Can you tell me about the moment when you decided to become a full-time sculptor?
00:20:38
Speaker
You know, it's funny, I actually feel like I've always been a full-time sculptor. I feel like, I mean, if I think about it, that has been like the, like I've never had a full-time job. I've always done the part-time gigs or residencies. And so I think that it's kind of always been in my nature to be an artist and to be full-time. Obviously,
00:21:01
Speaker
You know, you have to supplement in your younger days. I mean, I did some waitressing and all of that sort of stuff, and I'm always doing community teaching. I did a lot of years where I was in academia teaching, but I always considered that to be my part-time gig, and my full-time gig was the sculpting. I would say when I had kids,
00:21:19
Speaker
I really, I sort of moved out of like my public life in terms of like being in a studio outside of the home. And maybe that would be the moment where I would say, okay, like now I'm really in it. This is like my full-time gig. Even though I was like taking care of my kids, I was, you know, my, I was working full-time in the studio at night basically until my kids were in school. And so, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I think that like to
00:21:48
Speaker
I mean, I don't know if there's many artists that just, I mean, fully, fully, fully only do their sculpture, only do their pottery. I think that it's, I've always done community teaching to supplement my income, but also to give myself some outside community and space. And so I've been doing that since
00:22:09
Speaker
I graduated with my master's so that's about a decade now that I've been that I've been you know really just mainly focusing on my studio and a little bit of community teaching on the side.
Selling and Showcasing Art
00:22:22
Speaker
So now what would you say is your
00:22:24
Speaker
preferred method to sell your own sculptures.
00:22:44
Speaker
you know, setting up with a whole bunch of people and selling your pots for a weekend. And that was great. I was making money doing that. As I started like shifting more towards making sculpture, it started to not be as great of a venue because my price points were higher. And so then I started really trying to
00:23:01
Speaker
shift into getting my work into galleries and more museum exhibitions. You don't usually sell too much out of museum exhibitions, but commercial galleries. And then as social media started coming in, that's actually become a really great way for me to sell work. So I would say at this moment, it's a mix of Instagram,
00:23:29
Speaker
finding people through Instagram and directing them to my website and selling work that way and then shipping my work off to various galleries around the country that then sell my work. And I find that my larger pieces that have higher price points do better at the galleries and I can sell smaller things that have smaller price points by directing people from my Instagram to my website.
00:23:54
Speaker
And that's been pretty good. It's been working out pretty well, but I think it's a mixed bag. I think you, I think depending on what you're making, you gotta sort of find where your work fits, right? Like, you know, I think if you're making pottery, there's lots of venues where you can do pop-up things and art festivals and art fairs. And there, and there are certainly some commercial galleries that focus on functional stuff as well. So I think it's a matter of like kind of finding what gallery is going to be the best fit for your work.
00:24:25
Speaker
So let's dive a little deeper onto galleries. What advice would you give if someone wants to start getting their own sculptures and their own work into galleries?
00:24:38
Speaker
I will say the most important thing is to focus on your work and make it the strongest work that it can be. And that might take, I think, especially if you're just diving into a new world. Like I said before with like, oh, if I wanted to be a potter again, I would have to like stop sculpting and make pots again for two years. I actually do think that it takes
00:25:01
Speaker
like focus dedication in order to develop work that's strong enough, right? To feel like you can present it to a gallery. And I also think that, you know, you have to be really researched in who you're approaching, right? You want to make sure that the stable of artists that they already have
00:25:20
Speaker
sort of fit with what you're doing and what your aesthetic is. I don't think that galleries like to be cold called necessarily. And actually I do, I think it's hard to sort of break into the scene, but I think that making really, really good work is probably the first place to start. And then, you know, finding a good fit aesthetically and conceptually for your work. Like you don't want to just, you know, this gallery is down the street for me, so I'm going to see if I can get in that gallery, right?
00:25:50
Speaker
You got to kind of see what they're selling and what kind of programming they have to see if what you're doing is a good fit. Some excellent advice right there. Shaping Nation, number one thing is to focus on making the best possible work you possibly can. That's how more opportunities start coming your way. I love that. Agreed.
Discovering and Developing Artistic Voice
00:26:12
Speaker
So let's talk about discovering your voice. Can you tell me about the moment when you knew you're heading in the right direction with your soul? You know, I always kind of felt like where I'm at in the moment is like the right direction. You know, I think that like
00:26:27
Speaker
I think that grad school, I would say, was the beginning of feeling like I was very much in a zone of quality ideas, quality work. I feel like I had found that umbrella idea that has sustained me through the last... It's been over a decade and I'm still
00:26:51
Speaker
in this I still feel really confident in the work that I'm making and I think that because I was really encouraged to like research and to spend time you know reading about my interests and looking at other artists and like sort of having like a strong a strong base of thought research and idea before I started making the work I don't know for some reason I think that that like really set me on a good path like it wasn't
00:27:21
Speaker
Whereas maybe in the past I was, like I said, I started with the process in my first sculptures. I was like, oh, I'm on the wheel. I'm throwing. Oh, let me close this form. Okay, now I have this closed form. Now let me carve it. Whereas in grad school, I was sort of like, okay, what is it that I want?
00:27:41
Speaker
to share with the world, right? What is it that's important to me? So I think it's sort of like starting with the idea as opposed to just playing in process was sort of where I started to find my voice.
00:27:58
Speaker
Because I'm a very process-oriented maker, right? But I do have really strong ideas about how we're interacting with the natural world and other animals. And so I'm always thinking about that. And to be able to kind of like meld those two worlds of like process and idea, I think was pivotal. So you mentioned that you did a lot of research beforehand that helped you be able to find your own voice. Right. What does that research look like?
00:28:27
Speaker
For me, it was like looking at other artists. It was sort of seeing, you know, I was really interested in what Andy Goldworthy was doing and Mark Dion and like all these different artists that I found inspiration from. It was interesting to sort of like look at their writings, look at how they were talking about the work, look at how they were making the work. And not to say that, you know, the idea is to like
00:28:55
Speaker
steal what they're doing or do what they're doing, but it kind of helps you shape what you want to do when you're kind of seeing how a bunch of other people are doing what they want to do. I also read philosophers. There's a philosopher called Yifu Twan who wrote a book called Dominance and Affection, which is about this psychological human impulse to make pets and to tame things and to control things. So like reading this philosopher,
00:29:21
Speaker
really helped me to sort of like hone and understand sort of the things that I was thinking about in my own work and then again like looking at artists for process too so it's like looking at artists in terms of how they're exploring their ideas but also looking at artists in terms of how they're exploring process I just think it's like gathering information from as many different places as you can I mean I was also like and I always still do this now like
00:29:47
Speaker
nature walks, right? Like going out on a nature walk and looking closely at just the beautiful things that you see, the tiny things, the things that are under rocks, like picking up a salamander, picking up, you know, like looking at the forum. So I would say it's like an outward thing where you're just gathering and almost like brainstorming in a divergent way. And then you can bring everything you've gathered back to your studio and like sort of process it through yourself and then see what comes out, right? Like then what do you make from all of that?
00:30:18
Speaker
I absolutely love that. Shaping Nation, if you slow down for a little bit and do research on what you enjoy, what processes you enjoy, then finding your voice becomes a lot easier. I love that. You're very good at summarizing what I say, I've noticed. I feel like I'm just blabbing and you're like, you just bring it down to like a very succinct, good, you're good at this.
00:30:42
Speaker
Thank you.
Opportunities After Finding Artistic Voice
00:30:44
Speaker
What new opportunities started to cover your way once you found your own voice? Oh, I, you know, I think that like I, I started, you know, picking up galleries. Like I, I got a couple museum solo shows. You know, I, I feel like, you know, once my work.
00:31:02
Speaker
was honed in and strong then I was more confident. I started applying for artist residencies and I hopped around the country doing that for a while and galleries that I've admired for years have found me on Instagram and asked me to be in shows and you're like, oh, I've started to get more invitations and found more venues to sell the work.
00:31:28
Speaker
you know, sort of built an audience on my Instagram where, you know, you know, people are interested in what I'm making and they're interested enough to buy it and they're interested enough to live with it. And like that to me is like such an honor where like, you know, I make something and someone wants to live with it in their house, right? Like,
00:31:45
Speaker
what an honor that is. And to be able to make money doing what I love, it's been really great. And I think, again, it's sort of like a mixed bag. You got to put your eggs in lots of different baskets and see what works for you. And what works for me isn't necessarily going to work for you, but I think you just got to keep pushing and it's got to come from the passion to
00:32:08
Speaker
to keep making because that that's at the heart of it all is like i'm just a maker i'm like i just i get off on making things like when i you know start to finish like that's what that's what keeps me happy right and i mean sometimes i feel like like i'm i'm making a sculpture right now that is that's that's coming a lot more slowly right and it's like i keep having a like
00:32:29
Speaker
cut things off and redo them. And it's funny because I'm noticing that when I'm outside of the studio, I'm a little more agitated. I'm like, oh no. So much of my life revolves around my studio. And so I notice that sometimes when things aren't going well in the studio or I'm not feeling like they're going well, it kind of affects my whole being. I'm like, you know what? I gotta buck up. I'm out of the studio. Let's go have fun. Leave that there.
00:32:59
Speaker
But yeah, it's I don't remember what the original question was now. I think I like you hit it. It was what one new opportunity started coming your way once you found your own voice. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just feel like things just like I'm like, I feel very lucky because.
00:33:15
Speaker
You know, I mean, I mean, I'm at a point after like so many years of just like trudging along that, like, I feel like I'm in a zone where I'm getting invitations and that's really kind of nice to not have to be like seeking things out as much. I mean, I'm still I'm still pushing, but, you know, I've gotten some things that I'm really proud of. So absolutely love it. So now what advice would you give to someone looking to find their own voice with their pottery or sculptures?
00:33:43
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I would just I would just say that it's, you know, again, it's like I would take some time to look outward, you know, it's like it's a it's a it's a balance between looking outward and and filling yourself with inspiration, whether that's like going out in nature or, you know, reading, reading books. I think that you have to fill yourself.
00:34:05
Speaker
with the outside world right and then it then you know kind of find where your interest lies and maybe it's maybe it's really like insular and maybe it's really personal to you or maybe you know you're you you understand that your sculpture is something that can communicate an idea to an audience right and if that's where you want to go with it like what is it that you want to communicate right so again that's it that's like an out out word sort of practice but then you
00:34:34
Speaker
There's also that other part of like coming into the studio and being by yourself and working through process and trying to figure out what process is going to best get you to the place where you can bring your ideas to fruition, right? So that's like practice and discipline and
00:34:53
Speaker
showing up all the time and working through, you know, feeling like shit about your work, you know, like pushing through, showing up even though it's like not going well, you know, perseverance, basically. Love them. Definitely agree. Bethany, it has been so great chatting today. And as we come to a close here, what is one thing you want to hammer home with my listeners today?
Focusing on Passion and Personal Growth
00:35:14
Speaker
I would just say drown out all the other voices. I think we're in a world right now where we're very cognizant and aware of all the eyes that are on us or not on us or the eyes that could be on us and striving for more eyes. But I think that in the end, you have to work for yourself and you have to
00:35:44
Speaker
You have to find your internal passion, right? That's not to say that you shouldn't be, you shouldn't be trying to like build followers and build an audience because, you know, that helps you to make a living. But I think that there's got to be a balance between caring and not caring. Like listening to your own voice and drowning out everything else, you know, focusing on, on, on building the work. I absolutely love that. Some excellent parting words of advice. Bethany, it's been so great chatting today. Where can my listeners go and learn more about you?
00:36:13
Speaker
Well, my website is BethanyCrawl.com, but I'm really more daily active on my Instagram, which is Bethany Crawl Sculpture. So that's where you'll find little snippets of what I'm doing in the studio weekly. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. I have some exciting news happening on May 31st. On May 31st, Mike and Mike Serve are doing a workshop talking about how to make slab-built goblet cups.
00:36:42
Speaker
In this workshop, Mike's going to run you through his exact process of how he makes these awesome looking goblet. If you would like to register for this workshop, click the link in the description to register and get the early reprise before prices go up. I hope to see everybody there and I'll see you guys in the next one.