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#6 Amy Rae Hill - Space Pottery, Commissions, Taking Breaks and Much More
49 Plays4 years ago
On this episode of Shaping Your Pottery with Nic Torres I interview Amy Rae Hill. Amy is a glaze artist and creates super cool space pottery.
We talk about:
Space Pottery
Commissions
Taking Breaks
you can follow Amy on Instagram @amyraehill
Join Amy's Email List at amyraehill.com
Recommended
Transcript
Meet Amy Rae Hill: The Space Pottery Artist
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. Today, I am interviewing Amy Rae Hill. She makes pottery that is completely out of this world, literally. She makes space pottery. She is a glazed artist, and her pottery looks really, really great and super unique. Amy, welcome. Awesome. Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.
Are We Alone? A Chat on Aliens
00:00:25
Speaker
Now, I know this is a really weird way to start this conversation, but I was very curious. Do you believe in aliens? Because I have my opinions about it, but do you believe in aliens?
00:00:40
Speaker
There's that whole Fermi paradox thing, right? I think that it's very self-centered if we believe that we're the only people or life out here in the universe. However, being around scientists a lot online, I do realize that every time we think that it might be aliens that we observe out there, it's not probably.
From Painting to Pottery: Amy's Artistic Journey
00:01:02
Speaker
There's lots of other explanations for it, but I am pretty certain that we're not alone out here, for sure.
00:01:09
Speaker
I think the same thing. There's no way that we could be the only people like in this universe. No way. No. Yeah. There's just like too many possibilities for other things to happen. And probably in ways we don't even know how to perceive. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I just thought I'm sorry because I was super curious about that. It's a good opener. Yeah. So now could you tell me the story on how you started glazing your pottery the way you do?
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah, so I kind of went about it a slightly different way than probably most ceramic artists because I'm not a potter. I don't like hand build my own pieces. I actually came from a painter on pottery studio and learned techniques that I kind of synthesized with my painting knowledge from school and then just became a ceramic painter. And I have a long version of that story or kind of
00:02:04
Speaker
That's the short version if you want to stick with that. I would love to hear the long version.
Crafting a Unique Style: Inspirations and Transitions
00:02:09
Speaker
Okay. So it kind of goes way back to when I graduated college back in 2013, I had a BFA in painting. And at that time, I wasn't really expecting to get any job in art. So I was working in like a call center for about six months or so. It lasted about that long. And then I jumped on the chance to get my first, uh,
00:02:33
Speaker
painting job at like a paint and sip studio that was like brand new to the town I was living in. And it was really fun. It was like, you know, hosting painting parties with people that wanted to learn how to paint landscapes and flowers and things like that. It was just a good time. And it kind of quickly went south with the management and the ownership of the studio. And it ended up with myself and basically four of his five employees like walking out because it was
00:03:03
Speaker
really bad with a lot of kind of mistreatment and harassment and things like that. It was it was not not great situation. So when I left that job, I had signed a contract with them in the beginning, which said I it was a non compete. And it was basically saying that I couldn't paint on pottery at another not pottery pot on canvas at another job for like two years. And so
00:03:29
Speaker
that was pretty rough. And I was like, okay, well, it's this bad. I just want to kind of get out of this job and I'll do something else for two years. Doesn't matter. I'll figure it out. But back when I was working at the paint and sip studio, one of my peers from school, she came in with her boss who ran the paint and room pottery studio in town and they took a class from me. And so they saw what I could do. And she knew my situation kind of after
00:03:59
Speaker
All of that went down and said that we have a brand new position that we are opening up here at Creativity, which is the pottery studio. And we think you'd be really good for it. So I went in and I thought that, okay, this is not painting on canvas. This is painting on pottery. So that's one way around this non-compete that I had.
00:04:22
Speaker
And yeah, so that kind of worked out. So then I got that job and it was just like night and day from the last place that I worked at. The owner knew the ins and outs of everything with like pottery blazing and how to fire it and how to fix problems. And the marketing, the finances, she just like did everything and so knowledgeable. So I got to work really closely with her and develop my own style and kind of bring what I knew of painting
The Art of Glazing: Challenges and Techniques
00:04:52
Speaker
to her really revolutionary kind of organization of pottery-blazing techniques. So it was kind of like a perfect matchup of two people working together. But then the space part of it came in because at the time I was really interested in this game called Lifeline. It's like a little text adventure game. Have you heard of that one? No, I don't think I have, but it sounds interesting.
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's really fun. It's a really short game, but it had a really great like fan community and it was it was just really nice for me at the time because I was dealing with like some other family issues health stuff and so it was just something I could like kind of kind of hang on to for
00:05:33
Speaker
Something to look forward to I guess what the fan community was doing and having like weekly streams and stuff like that So I got inspired to paint like a moon plate based on that game thinking about all the different techniques that I had learned from this pottery studio and my sci-fi interest at the time and I just kind of figured that this worked really well on this medium like using like paper masking and
00:06:04
Speaker
etching or sgrajito and like the watercolor effect you can get with some glazes. But it was, it felt more successful than painting on canvas even. And I just loved how things transformed through the kiln, how deep the colors got, how rich it got. So it felt like more of a convincing illusion of, you know, fantastic kind of outer space world.
00:06:25
Speaker
on ceramics than I could ever even achieve on canvas. So I instantly just kind of like fell in love with it and then wanted to do a whole lot more.
Inspiration from the Stars: Designing Celestial Pottery
00:06:34
Speaker
That's kind of like where it ended off. And I just kind of kept going. Right. What were some of the difficulties you faced from transferring from canvas to pottery? I think that there's a lot of things you can't do with ceramics, as you probably know.
00:06:51
Speaker
You know, like it has a lot of rules about how thick your glazes can be, otherwise you're going to get firing problems.
00:06:57
Speaker
Your glazes are going to show you all of your past mistakes that you ever made. Right? You know, as acrylic or something, you can just cover it right up and then it's gone. With glaze, if you're using, you know, low fire underglaze like I am, at least it's going to stay where it's put and it's usually pretty transparent. So you have to be really deliberate with your brushstrokes or your mark making that you're doing and like keeping track of, you know, your layers.
00:07:26
Speaker
what order you put things in. So I guess I just had to be a lot more deliberate in my process, a little bit less just see how it goes, which I think helped me in the long run to make my art process a lot more enjoyable, I think. Do you have a list, like as you're going painting your pottery? Like a list of things to do in what order?
00:07:52
Speaker
Oh, um, I don't have like a physical list of it. I kind of just keep it all in my head. Um, but I kind of, yeah, I do have a list that's a little bit flexible of, you know, I'm going to put down this, uh, if I'm, for instance, painting like a moon or a planet, like I have to put down the color of the planet first and it's going to look really messy. And then the next step is to cover that and mask it with like a piece of paper as a circle to create the shape.
00:08:20
Speaker
And then the last phase is putting down that black on top of the color to make sure that I have a really crisp edge when I remove the mask to kind of keep it looking really clean and neat. So yeah, I kind of light to dark, etching into the glaze is usually one of the last phases. It can work with like layering glaze back into it. So yeah, there's a lot of techniques that are pretty flexible in the order, just kind of depends on the project.
Mastering the Glaze: Techniques and Adaptations
00:08:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:48
Speaker
Now, how much testing did it actually take for you to get kind of your process down? I would say everything is kind of a test. I mean, I learned something every time something gets fired. And I think nowadays I have a better ability to predict how things are going to turn out. So I'm a little less surprised than I used to be. I think I probably, I mean, to really get into my own style with pottery glaze, it probably took me a few years
00:09:17
Speaker
of kind of testing different subject matter out, you know, if I wanted to make landscapes or if I wanted to make just planets or nebulae and things like that. I think back when I first started and this was like around 2016 painting kind of space imagery, it was a lot more formulaic and I thought about the kind of
00:09:39
Speaker
images that I could easily reproduce so like it was a lot more strict of like I'm going to put down a color and then I'm gonna put down a piece of paper to mask it and then I'm going to paint the background that sort of thing yeah but now um yeah now I kind of I guess I trust myself a little bit more trust the pottery glaze a little bit more getting to know it better and so it can be a more like
00:10:01
Speaker
painterly process I can say well I put this nebula in this spot and I think I can probably give it to move a little bit this way if I want to. So I guess I can play around with things more and trust how it's going to turn out over time. It's not very scientific just a little bit of knowledge like each time you do it you're getting better at it each time.
00:10:26
Speaker
I have something right here. Hold up. How do you find inspiration for you when you're making your pottery, when you're glazing? That's a good question. It kind of changed over the years too. Now I do mostly commissions, so the inspiration comes a lot of times from the customers.
00:10:43
Speaker
they are really good at giving me a lot of information and ideas to work with. Sometimes it's kind of emotional. Sometimes it's just an appreciation for the beauty of space. You know, sometimes I learn things too all the time because a lot of my customers work for like JPL or, you know, SpaceX or other, other space industries. And they, they know a lot more than I do in those fields because I definitely am not a scientist. And so I'm learning, you know, yeah, about different like celestial objects all the time.
00:11:13
Speaker
Um, but I think on the things I've chosen to make over the, over the years, I was, um, doing a lot more kind of solitary astronauts in like the vastness of space at the beginning. Cause I was feeling a little bit like I was on a sort of unstable ground with like all the stuff going on in my personal life and things like that. And nowadays I think I've transformed it a little bit more uplifting and I'm trying to make more.
00:11:41
Speaker
you know, figures out in space, maybe working together, working towards something coming together. I want to put out something into the world that we should aspire to, I guess, at this point.
Fan Art and Personal Projects: Creating for Passion
00:11:52
Speaker
Have you ever heard of a breakpot? No. Yeah, I don't I don't think I think my ceramics teacher came up with this. So basically, you take a base,
00:12:03
Speaker
that has been bisque fired and then you break it with a hammer and it's like multiple pieces and then you will paint or glaze like the sections that broke off and then you glue it back together and it turns out really cool. I have this right here. I don't know. So this is what I made. Oh wow. That's so cool. I thought that would be really interesting for you because that would add a lot more like I guess detail to a lot of different pieces.
00:12:32
Speaker
Yeah, I've honestly thought about breaking something before. I've just never committed to it. But yeah, I like that idea. I thought about breaking something after it's been fired and then putting it together or breaking it before.
00:12:44
Speaker
Um, it looks like, did you just, um, paint that and then break it and then just glue it together? Did it go into the kilner? Yeah. So that's not like glaze. That's a quick paint. Okay. That's right. But, uh, yeah. So I broke it first and then I painted every single piece and then you glue it back together with just Elmer's blue. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So it's more of a, um, like fine art kind of thing. That's awesome. Yeah. But I thought that would be very interesting for you because
00:13:12
Speaker
I think it would make your party look really cool if you did that, something like that. Yeah, I have thought about it. It's something that's been on my mind. Maybe one day. Keep saying that.
Balancing Business and Creativity: Managing Commissions
00:13:23
Speaker
Now, if you could explain your process for when you're actually making your glazing, what would that process look like? So usually I start off just the piece of this because already here I have
00:13:41
Speaker
Like for instance, there's this unglazed base. I have a bunch of these. I don't have to worry about the sculpting process or the throwing process. So then it's just researching what I want to do. A lot of times I'll look up like Hubble imagery and see maybe looking for certain colors of like nebulae or different planets or, you know, stars, things like that to work from and then kind of see how that will fit on the piece itself.
00:14:10
Speaker
Different pieces work better for different kind of celestial objects. And then once I have a plan, I might do a little sketching. I might not sometimes. It kind of depends on how the form looks to see how it fits. I might sketch directly onto the base or the teapot or a sketch. If it's like an astronaut figure, I might sketch that out first and then on a piece of paper.
00:14:33
Speaker
scan it and sometimes I'll even transfer it on to the piece after I kind of resize it in the computer and then use like carbon paper to just like draw it on there and it burns away when you're firing. So then I will just start with usually like the lightest color or the color I want to bring out if I'm using this graffiti technique and etching into it.
00:14:59
Speaker
And from there, I kind of layer a lot with sea sponges to get sort of a cloudy effect, so that's a common tool that I use. And then kind of, you know, they're all slightly different processes, but work that until I get the colors right. The very last step of adding some of the black, because the black clays can be really, it can overtake all the colors if you let it, it's a very
00:15:25
Speaker
thin line of just kind of walking how much black you use to like the dark blue. And I want to get that nice soft fading from color to the blackness of space. So that's usually the last step. And then after I've finished the whole painting part, I've got it just the way I want to. Let it dry for at least a day and then take it and get it. I dip it in clear glaze.
Discipline in Art: Lessons from Fine Arts Education
00:15:50
Speaker
and then let that dry and then I prior it to cone 06. So this is pretty standard like paint your own pottery studio process. And then it's out the next day. Dremel off the little stilt marks on the bottom because I put them on stilts so the whole bottom is painted too. And going back to the clear glaze part, I do that so that the whole thing is food safe and usable.
00:16:16
Speaker
and usually wipe a lot of it off of the black area because you can see a little like cloudy mist if you leave it on there too much. But after it's fired, yeah, dremeling and then it's pretty much ready to go. Could you explain that dremeling?
00:16:32
Speaker
So I take a little Dremel, this tool that has like a little sander on the edge of it and go to the bottom of the piece, have some right here. This is all glazed down here, it had to sit on the stilt. And it usually has like three little sharp shards that drip down from the glaze when it's resting on a stilt. So if you don't Dremel it and sand it down, you'll
00:16:56
Speaker
slice your finger on the bottom of it. And I've done that several times. So you want to make sure to sand that down so that you can touch it and it's not going to accidentally cut you. So it used to make it smooth. Yeah. Yeah. And you can also drum a lot of anything like, you know, like little stones in the glaze or anything weird that happens on the outside, I guess.
00:17:21
Speaker
That is very interesting. So now, when it comes to commissions, how often are you doing commissions? They usually open every few months. I'm about to open another round, probably in May. I don't have a date set quite yet, but that I usually take on.
00:17:38
Speaker
like between 20 and 40 it depends on like the season and I think probably somewhere around 20 or 30 this next time the projects tend to be taking a little bit longer than they used to they're just a little bit more elaborate nowadays but I think if anybody wants to try out for a commission because they do go really fast when I put them on Etsy you can sign up for my mailing list at amyrayhill.com and then I'll just let everybody know when it's when it's coming.
00:18:10
Speaker
Now, when it comes to pricing for your commissions, how do you like to think about that? That's also a good question. It does change a lot. I've definitely gone up in price over time because you have to figure in, you know, how much your time is worth really. And it's not only necessarily how long it takes you to make something because the more skilled you get at something, you'll probably get faster at it. So you don't want to charge yourself less if you're getting more skilled at something.
00:18:40
Speaker
So I don't have an exact science. I kind of just go with whatever feels right at the time. I remember back when I was in college, a visiting artist came and one of my peers always asked that same question, how do you price your work? And the best response was just like, however much you're willing to part with it for pretty much. And I've always kind of stuck with that in my head. And the more I kind of like feel like I'm
00:19:07
Speaker
really putting in a lot of detail and care and things like that, I kind of try to match the price to that feeling. Right. That's some great advice, actually, because you're working for your time, but you don't want to sacrifice price just because of that. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Now, hold on. So you have a bachelor in fine arts. How did that
00:19:35
Speaker
help you with your overall just painting? I think it really helps with being disciplined and kind of working more in an entrepreneurial way overall because the BFA is a five year degree. So the last year is just kind of like professional practice where you're really responsible for getting a whole body of work together and then having a show at the end of the year and showing what you've done.
00:20:03
Speaker
That helped me have that focus to stick with a subject matter and theme for a long period of time. And then to develop it, maybe create even like an artist statement, you know, what you feel about your work, what you're trying to say, what message you're trying to send.
Advice for Aspiring Pottery Artists
00:20:20
Speaker
So I think it just helped me work in a disciplined, really professional way. And would you say that kind of inspired you more to make, I guess, more paintings at the time?
00:20:34
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like the paintings I was making in college are a lot different than what I'm doing now. But there's definitely days where I was spending very long hours in the painting studio working on these like more large scale canvases like three feet by four feet or four feet by four feet. And I do not
00:20:54
Speaker
recommend all of my work practices from when I was like 22. I try to make a more steady pace nowadays and actually try to work myself a little bit less to have more of a work-life balance, something I've had to learn more recently than back in the day because it's just not sustainable, the crunch time working on, especially on something like art where it needs to be taken with a lot of care.
00:21:18
Speaker
So there's a lot of learns of what not to do and the kind of painting that I want to keep and maybe want to move away from. And I do think that I developed a really good understanding of my own voice in college, getting my painting degree and kind of figuring out how to symbolize things with my subjects that I choose to paint.
00:21:45
Speaker
Now, when it comes to work-life balance now, how do you approach it? Yeah, I try to set a good schedule for myself. And I actually teach art classes on the side too. And I've minimized that to two days a week so that I can spend my daytime hours working on painting or other things that go into this business. And so I try to set hours in the morning times
00:22:13
Speaker
during especially Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to get a lot of work done. Tuesdays and Thursdays to have a little bit more maybe admin work time, because a lot of the time I spend on this business isn't just painting, you know, a lot of it's like photographing or spending time just firing or like working with customers.
00:22:33
Speaker
consulting 40 different customers with 40 different ideas takes a lot of time too. Then there's marketing on social media, things like that. There's all these other facets of running your own art business where you have to be like the accountant, the marketing department, the administration office, all of that stuff that goes into those hours during the week. Then I try to keep my evenings more free. It doesn't always work out, but I try. That's great.
00:23:02
Speaker
Now, a while back on your Instagram page, you made a mug that had the female Titan from Attack on Titan. How often do you make mugs or pottery just for yourself?
00:23:16
Speaker
Oh man, not as often as I should. But that one was fun. I always have fun just doing some fan art for myself. I feel like that's one of the greatest gifts of being an artist is that you can just make merch for yourself if you feel like it. But I try to get something in for myself after every round of commissions as kind of like a little reward and just paint something for me that I want to keep just to enjoy. Because I have a whole cabinet of mugs that is nice just to have something to remind yourself that
00:23:45
Speaker
you know, it's, it's pretty cool what you do and like to keep it for yourself. Cause a lot of the stuff I have gets shipped out. And so I don't spend more time like looking at it and studying it. And I'm kind of a firm believer that like looking at your own work and studying it, putting it on the walls is really great because then you can see what you did before, maybe what you want to change, or you can just feel pride in like what you've been able to do when you're not feeling maybe that ambitious or like,
00:24:10
Speaker
motivated. So it is nice to do that routinely just to get something to appreciate for yourself. So it kind of sparks your creativity when you keep your pottery. Yeah, yeah, I don't do it very often, but it is nice to do it every once in a while. So now that we're on topic of the female Titan, what made you want to make the female Titan?
00:24:34
Speaker
Oh, I just I thought she was the badass. I love that Annie's character in the show. I just thought that like her running and then just like easily knocking away all these guys on horses was just like something you don't see every day, especially I feel like an anime you don't see like particularly like very strong women very often without
00:24:57
Speaker
kind of being like overly sexualized and stuff like that. So I thought she was just inspiring. It had like a mission that she was set out to do, you know, just wanting to go on her run back to the city center or whatever. So I was inspired by her. I feel like Attack on Titan isn't like the normal anime. It's very like, it could be like dark sometimes and just like have a lot of different like twists and turns in that show. Oh yeah. There's a lot of like societal commentary. I'm not even done with it yet. I'm trying to get through the last
00:25:27
Speaker
season, but yeah, it's there's a lot of layers to it for sure. Yeah. This latest season is pretty crazy too. Yeah. I am excited to catch up. I need to do that. Now this will probably be my last question. Okay. If you had to give three pieces of advice for people looking to start making pottery the way you do, what would they be?
00:25:56
Speaker
It's hard because I know I've had certain advantages and I got lucky, you know, getting into, um, like a paint your own pottery studio. I got to know suppliers and things like that where I can get this from. And I could, I got lucky with finding a kiln that was affordable that I could buy. So, um, I don't just want to say, you know, work hard at it. A lot of it is kind of luck getting into it, but, um, the biggest
00:26:20
Speaker
thing I think is different is just that, not necessarily for ceramicists in general, but if you can just take advantage of when luck comes your way, if you're able to see it and jump on it. For example, when I left the painting world and went into the more fired arts world, I had nothing like that on my radar at the time. But if you're able to envision a way that it might work for you,
00:26:48
Speaker
and be open to it and not have a very rigid plan, that's gonna serve you really well. So I would say just keep your mind open to opportunities that present themselves. And the next thing I would say is to don't feel pressure to follow the trends of those around you. I feel like I for a long time was bogged down with that after college especially.
00:27:16
Speaker
And it kept me from making art for a long time. So just remember to do what makes you happy. And you're probably in the wrong bubble if you are not finding your audience. There's an audience for everyone is what I believe. So you might just have to step out of the group that you're in to find the people that are going to appreciate the kind of message you want to send or the kind of work that you want to make. So that's number two. And I guess number three, let's see.
00:27:48
Speaker
It's to respect your time, like make a deliberate plan to have downtime, time where you're not working on your art because you need that. And I didn't realize it was something I necessarily had to plan when I started working for myself, because when you're working a job where you have a boss and things like that, they will plan your downtime for you. They tell you when your time off is.
00:28:16
Speaker
But if you're doing it sort of the entrepreneurial route, you have to do that yourself. So do really, really take care to give yourself a break and downtime and use it deliberately to rest and get rejuvenated. Um, so that's, those are the three main things I think are most important. I like that last advice because I, I, for a while I was definitely like go, go, go. And I had to like, I had to force myself to take a break. When I took that break, I was definitely like seeing a lot better.
00:28:46
Speaker
Oh, yeah, you need it. It makes you actually more productive to take a break and come back like you have more energy to focus after that. Yeah, I totally agree. Well, that was my last question. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Yeah, great problem. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thank you. You too.