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#305 Should You Be Making Pottery That Is Challenging to make?
44 Plays2 years ago
In this episode of "Shaping Your Pottery," host Nic Torres explores the tension between innovation and practicality in the craft of pottery. Drawing on his competitive spirit, ignited by a sibling rivalry in Mario Kart, Nic delves into when it's appropriate to push the boundaries of creativity versus sticking to proven, saleable designs, especially during busy times like the holiday season. He encourages potters to embrace challenges to grow their skills and develop a unique artistic voice.
Send Nic a Voicemail by clicking here https://www.speakpipe.com/ShapingYourPottery
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Transcript
Introduction to Finding Your Pottery Style
00:00:00
Speaker
Should you be making pottery that is challenging to make? If you love pottery and want to take your skills to the next level, you're in the right place. Find your own pottery style right here on Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. Let's get started. What is up, Shaped Nation? It's Nick Torres here. Who's that don't know me? It's my mission to help potters like yourself discover your own unique voice and do that by giving me simple tricks and tips I have learned along the way of my own pottery journey and from interviewing other people.
Challenging Pottery and Skill Development
00:00:28
Speaker
So in this episode, I'm going to talk about whether or not you should be making challenging pottery. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? Will actually make your pottery better? It will make your pottery worse. That's what exactly what I'm going to be talking about today. So here is the thing about making challenging pottery. In my opinion, I think you should be making challenging pottery, but it's about choosing the right times when you're actually trying to challenge yourself.
Selling vs. Challenging Pottery
00:00:55
Speaker
So there are going to be times in our pottery journey where maybe we want to focus on trying to sell our pottery. So instead of trying to make challenging pottery, what we want to do is instead focus on what is working right now, what is working and selling for us right now. And that is totally fine. If that is something that you want to focus on, maybe it's the holidays, like at the time I'm recording this, it's a little bit before Christmas.
00:01:23
Speaker
and maybe it's around the holidays and right now your only focus is to get pottery out, get the shows and make that money so you can maybe buy gifts for other people and support yourself a little bit at the end of this, at the end of the year. And that's totally fine. So you have to pick and choose when you have to, when you want to make challenging pottery.
Cornhole and Mario Kart: Lessons in Challenge
00:01:43
Speaker
But here are the benefits to making challenging pottery.
00:01:48
Speaker
So have you ever felt like a competition, maybe you're in a competition, like let's say cornhole, you're playing cornhole and the person you're playing against is that much better than you. They're that much better than you and they're whooping your butt. You are literally, whatever you're doing is just not working. But you know, you find that drive in you because you, oh, I want to beat this guy because he's so good. I want to beat him. I want to beat him. I want to beat him. I don't know about you, but I feel that a lot, like very recently,
00:02:19
Speaker
me and my brothers all played Mario Kart. We all freaking loved Mario Kart and we literally played it for five hours and at first it was just two out of the three of my brothers were there playing because my other brother showed up late and
00:02:35
Speaker
I was kind of winning. I was winning. I had played a while, so I was getting my groove back a little bit. And I was winning here and there. It was between me and one of my brothers. I can't really explain it, which one, because I'm the youngest. But yes, it was between me and my brother. We were going back and forth. And then my other brother showed up.
00:02:56
Speaker
And he has played it a lot more than every single one of us. He played it with his roommate and he would play it online, you know, against people around the world. And he played it way more than all of us. So he showed up and he literally started kicking our asses. Literally every single time he got first. It's so frustrating. I wanted to win so bad, but he got first every single time.
00:03:22
Speaker
And that made literally every single one of my, the rest of my brothers, we were so like mad, we wanted to win, we wanted to win so bad. And we would get so close, we would win like the first two matches and then he would come out from nowhere and win the last two matches and win the whole thing. Like what the heck? But because we had that challenge and actually made it more enjoyable and made it more fun and we made it wanting to improve our own skills. I'll tell you this, I actually started practicing
00:03:51
Speaker
Mario Kart again on my own switch when I after I was done with that session in I can't wait till Christmas because I I'm gonna kick their asses all of them, but back to what I was saying Why is it so how does that apply to?
Growth Through Challenges in Pottery
00:04:06
Speaker
Making pottery. So you see the same thing with our pottery We have a challenge with your pottery What's gonna happen is your skills are gonna grow?
00:04:16
Speaker
And you're going to get a little bit out of your comfort zone. And that's what we want. We want to get a little bit of our comfort zone because we get a little bit of our comfort zone. That's where our pottery is going to truly start soaring. And that's where our pottery is going to start coming alive and coming alive. And that if you can choose something challenging, then your pottery will start evolving even further and your voice will evolve even further as well.
00:04:40
Speaker
Because if you choose something that's challenging, you're not going to be doing the same thing over and over and over again. What begins to happen is your skills will grow because you have that challenge in front of you and you're thinking of new ideas to how can I conquer this challenge? How can I make my pottery look better? How can I make my idea come to life?
00:04:57
Speaker
And when you're able to start doing those things like that, that's when your potteries truly start coming into unison together simply by having that challenge in front of you and doing those hard things so you can grow as a person so you can grow as
Listener Interaction and Feedback
00:05:10
Speaker
a potter. I'll see you guys in the next one. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. If you would like to send me your own voicemail,
00:05:19
Speaker
and have questions about pottery or finding your voice, don't be afraid to send me that. You can go to shapingyourpottery.com forward slash voicemail to send me your own voice message and I'll do my best to answer the question. You can also look in the show notes and we'll be there. I hope you guys enjoy this episode and I'll see you guys in the next one.