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#303 Following Your Artistic Intuition w/ Anastassia Zamaraeva
80 Plays2 years ago
The Questions we ask will determine how our pottery will look like that's why I created a Free 15 questions to help you discover your voice template go grab it here www.shapingyourpottery.com/questions
In this inspiring episode, we delve into the world of pottery creation with the incredibly talented Anastassia Zamreva. From her early love for pottery, a detour into architecture, and her master's degree in art psychotherapy, Anastasia's journey is a testament to the power of following one's intuition. Discover how her unique approach to sketching and sculpting offers a refreshing perspective on artistic expression. Anastasia also discusses her brave transition into full-time pottery amid a pandemic and the balance she strikes between profitable and passion projects. Finally, Anastasia shares the importance of patience, authenticity, and allowing your work to find its audience in the world of pottery. Tune in for a deep dive into the captivating realm of pottery creation and artistic bravery. You can learn more about Anastassia by clicking this link here @a_zama_ceramics
Top 3 Value Bombs:
1. Trust the Process: Anastasia Zamreva emphasizes the importance of trusting the process in pottery. By relying less on preconceived ideas and plans, and more on intuition, artists can create pieces that are deeply personal and unique. This approach allows for the creation of pottery that is an authentic representation of the artist.
2. Balancing Act: Anastasia shares her experience of turning pottery into a full-time career amid a pandemic. She highlights the importance of finding a balance between creating pieces that sell and ones that fulfill her artistic passion. This balance allows her to maintain her love for pottery while still sustaining a viable business.
3. Discovering Your Unique Voice: Anastasia underscores the significance of patience and authenticity in finding one's unique voice in pottery. By allowing your work to naturally find its audience rather than aggressively selling it, artists can develop a distinct pottery style. This can lead to new opportunities and connections in the pottery business. Anastasia also stresses the importance of repetition and practice in achieving artistic freedom.
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Transcript
The Role of Intuition in Creativity
00:00:00
Speaker
When you do less thinking and follow your intuition more, what comes out is from a deeper level of you, kind of from an unconscious level, and things that maybe you haven't really processed consciously that are in there, and then the processing happens through the making.
Interview with Anastasia Zamariba
00:00:21
Speaker
What is up Shave Nation this is Nick Torres here and on today's episode I had the great pleasure of interviewing Anastasia Zamariba. In this episode you will learn how Anastasia makes her incredibly unique sculptures and you'll also learn about why Anastasia doesn't actually try to build a meaning around her pottery and her sculptures and how that actually helps her with creating unique work.
00:00:45
Speaker
You'll also learn about why you need to trust the process of whatever you're making. And finally, you learn about why Anastasia also keeps a sketchbook and how that helps her with her own sculptures. And there's so much more this episode. I hope you guys enjoy it. I'll see you guys.
00:01:01
Speaker
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.
Subjective Success in Pottery
00:01:12
Speaker
Anastasia, welcome to Shape Your Pottery and share with me what is something you believe potters should be doing to have success in pottery. Well, thank you for inviting me. It's really nice to talk to you today. Success in pottery. I mean,
00:01:27
Speaker
I think success means different things for different people. So in some ways it's difficult to say, but I think at the foundation of what you do needs to really be a practice that resonates with you and work that makes sense to you. And then I think everything else you kind of build around that. And that's been a big motivating force in the way that I approach things and
00:01:57
Speaker
Recently I was talking to a friend and I actually realized that I don't get disappointed in the same way when I don't get accepted into a show, an exhibition, something like that, because I believe in the work that I'm making, so it doesn't make me doubt the
Building a Resonant Artistic Foundation
00:02:15
Speaker
work. So I think when you've got the foundation of work that really fits you, everything else is in service of that, if that makes sense.
00:02:25
Speaker
I absolutely love that shape nation. The most important thing is if you believe in your work, then your work is going to be that much better. You're going to be able to have success in your pottery. I love that.
Anastasia's Journey from Architecture to Art
00:02:34
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So tell me a story how you got started in clay. I was seven, I think, roughly about that at the time we were living in Toronto and Canada and just moved over from Russia not long before that. And my parents just sent me to after school art classes.
00:02:54
Speaker
And I'd always done a lot of drawing and painting, but I'd never tried clay. So initially I went to drawing and painting classes, and then I think I went to just one clay class, and for the next five years that was all I did. I didn't want to do any of the other things. I think it's the way it happens for some people, you just touch the material and you fall in love with it, and that's it from that point on.
00:03:18
Speaker
I absolutely agree, I love that so much. So tell me about the story, why you decided to get in master's in art, in art psychotherapy, and how did this impact the way you make your own pottery and sculptures? So I guess my kind of roots into clay, I started off going to those after school classes, and then they had a really big gap.
00:03:44
Speaker
until, so between the ages of maybe 12 and 25, I didn't do any clay. And in that time I got an architecture degree and I was trying to be a little bit more practical because art, I didn't really know how to have a career in art and my family are mathematicians and physicists. So I kind of went for a middle ground, something that felt creative, but had that technical side.
00:04:11
Speaker
But then after a couple of years of working in architecture, it just wasn't. I could tell it wasn't the right fit. I could tell that there was something missing and something more that I could be getting.
Embracing Intuition through Art Therapy
00:04:25
Speaker
And that initially I thought that was because I
00:04:30
Speaker
wanted to help people that felt like that's why I was lacking in architecture. So then I trained as a massage therapist because I was like that's the way you can help people. But then also around that time is when I picked up clay again and that filled
00:04:47
Speaker
the void of like the creative side of what I wanted to do and then I learned about art therapy and I thought oh perfect it's got that creativity but then it's also got the element of actually working with people and helping someone and using art to do that that sounds amazing so yeah that was I think maybe so I started my degree in 2020 I think it was about 2018 that the idea of art therapy
00:05:15
Speaker
came up and I kind of started tentatively looking into it. And I did a foundation course, which was just a week long, but that was really a pivotal point in my own ceramics journey. So yeah, it was an art therapy foundation. So they basically would have lectures in the morning and then experiential art making in the afternoon.
00:05:43
Speaker
where you would kind of, you would get to experience of what it's like to be in an art therapy group and participate kind of as a client.
Crafting from the Unconscious
00:05:51
Speaker
And that was really where I was introduced to the idea that whatever you make, it's always reflective of you.
00:06:01
Speaker
And I think what I had in my own mind, I didn't go to art school, but I think some of those ideas still end up in your head, like that the work you make has to have this strong concept before you actually make it. You have to go into it knowing what it's going to be, and there's a lot of thinking, and then you create something. So I had an idea of that's how I should make my ceramics, and that's what I was doing at that time.
00:06:31
Speaker
thought processes and how do I express this idea. But then what that Art Foundation did for me was allowed me to let go of that. It allowed me to basically make first and think later because it kind of reinforces the idea that
00:06:54
Speaker
just by making, making whatever is coming up for you, that's the most honest work you can make and that's the most representative of yourself work and that's the most unique work. So it kind of, yeah, it allowed me to drop these weighty concepts that I was trying to put on things and in the end actually made my work I think more unique and more meaningful
00:07:19
Speaker
because there was less thought behind it and the way that I understand it is when you do less thinking and follow your intuition more, what comes out is
Transition to Expressive Sculptures
00:07:32
Speaker
from a deeper level of you kind of from an unconscious level and things that maybe you haven't really processed consciously that are in there and then the processing happens through the making and then afterwards you begin to understand why is that you made that thing.
00:07:51
Speaker
absolutely agree. I love that shape a nation, you don't always need a plan for your pottery. If you just let your instincts kind of take over your pottery will look amazing. And you can start making things that truly reflect who you are. I love that. So let's talk about your sculptures. Can you tell me the story how you started making the sculptures that you make today?
00:08:10
Speaker
I think it all links to, again, that course that I did. But I'll back up initially. So when I was a child doing ceramics, I was making all kinds of creatures. I remember I had dragons and cats and haunted houses. I think there's a lot to be said for how we teach children pottery in comparison to how we teach adults.
00:08:36
Speaker
where children are already encouraged to express themselves creatively. Whereas with adults, we tend to go down the route of functional pottery. And when I came back to ceramics as an adult, I thought, I'm going to be an adult. I'm going to make functional things. I'm going to learn to throw on the wheel because that's what a grown up person does. And I tried. I tried for a while. I was terrible at the wheel.
00:09:03
Speaker
So that was, yeah, that was a no go for me. And I was initially making, you know, vases, trying to do some like mugs and stuff. And very slowly, bits of the kind of creatures that I'd made as a child started coming into those functional pieces. And there was a point where I had to let go of the idea of, this is what an adult makes, and
00:09:31
Speaker
actually just reconnect to what it was that brought me the most joy in clay. And it is that ability to basically make whatever comes up in your mind. And I think in comparison to something like a 2D medium, what's really brilliant about it is that you don't need to have
00:09:53
Speaker
You don't need abstraction. If you're looking at a cup and you want to paint that cup, you have to flatten it. You have to think about perspective. But if you're looking at a cup and you're making a cup, it's a 3D object so you understand it.
00:10:06
Speaker
in three dimensions, because that's how we move through the world. So I think because of that, clay, it makes a lot of sense to me. And it's the only way that I can let these kind of creatures come to life.
The Power of Sketchbooks in Artistry
00:10:22
Speaker
Because if I was to draw them, they wouldn't have the same quality. I wouldn't be able to represent what's in my mind as clearly. And yeah, I think that's the best thing that clay allows me to do.
00:10:35
Speaker
have that freedom to make whatever is in my mind. I love that. Shaping Nation, you don't have to be stuck doing traditional pottery like throwing on the wheel, making mugs, making vases. You can make whatever you want and express yourself in that way. I love that so much. So something I found interesting is that you have a sketchbook filled with drawings. Can you tell me why you keep a sketchbook?
00:11:00
Speaker
I've got my sketchbook here. Yeah, it is a very helpful thing. Lots of kind of little bits. The way that I sketch tends to be, it's connected to the way that I get my ideas. So sometimes an idea will just pop into my head as an image and it can just be a flash of an image.
00:11:25
Speaker
And I've learned to harness those and really pick up on those images that my mind throws at me. And usually the best way that I can make sure I don't lose that image is to sketch it. So a lot of the time it is that kind of thing of to make sure that I remember what it is that I want to make. And sometimes it starts off with something that's in my head. And then as I'm sketching, it does gradually develop.
00:11:56
Speaker
into things that are a little bit different and I think that is also, it's a big part of my process of designing the work and a lot of the time the sketches are quite small so I don't go into a lot of detail but it's just the main kind of composition, the main ideas of what I want to include. But there's also a kind of different freedom in the sketching that
00:12:22
Speaker
comes from the fact that I don't need to have them be precise or accurate, because I can't draw a person as well as I can sculpt a person. So that, again, allows me to let go of something, it allows me to just kind of sketch roughly what I think a person looks like. And I know that once I start sculpting it, there's going to be more details, there's going to be better proportions, everything's going to
00:12:50
Speaker
kind of fall into place. So it's very much for the purpose of ideas and I'm not precious about it, which I think is an important thing in a sketchbook to be able to give yourself that leeway, that freedom to do whatever you want and not put pressure on how it's going to look. Would you recommend for people to have their own sketchbook or should they just continue doing what they think is right?
00:13:16
Speaker
I mean, I think different things work for different people. Most people I know do keep sketchbooks. I think it's definitely, it's helpful. It's helpful to look back at it a while after as well. And there's often things I'll flick back to and there's ideas there that I had, and then I abandoned for whatever reason.
00:13:36
Speaker
But maybe six months from now, I look back at them and I think that's actually really good. Maybe that's worth coming back to. And it has this, I think sketchbooks have this almost narrative-like quality where you're documenting a lot of things for a long period of time. So you can kind of follow the trajectory of your own life through a sketchbook. I think that's really interesting.
00:14:04
Speaker
I love that. Shaping Nation, if you choose to have a sketchbook, it can definitely help you with getting ideas out, getting ideas captured and just help you with the whole process if you choose to go down that route.
Hands-on Techniques in Sculpting
00:14:14
Speaker
I like that a lot. So can you walk me through your process of creating one of your sculptures? So yeah, like I was saying, usually an idea pops into my head, usually an image, then I will sketch it. And while I'm sketching it,
00:14:33
Speaker
sometimes I'll develop it a little bit, maybe change some things. And then I go pretty quickly into sculpting. I tend to coil build or kind of, I've been doing this thing, which is, I guess like it's basically like pinching slabs. So I'll take chunks of clay and then just like thin them out by pinching. And that, that feels like quite a natural way for me to work. So I use quite
00:15:00
Speaker
heavily grogged clays at the moment. And yeah, it's one of the things I like about those clays is that there's less pressure on things to be, you know, perfectly joined together. So then while I'm actually making it can feel quite free. A lot of the time I'll avoid, you know, using slip and stuff just because I like my clay fairly wet when I'm working with it and
00:15:27
Speaker
It has a lot of grog, so it just tends to hold anyway. So yeah, it's a process of pinching, coiling, kind of. Yeah, just shaping the form. And then at the moment, I'm very much into using these very groged clays and then applying slip over them once they've dried. So I'll usually leave them for a couple of days at this time of year. It's cold.
00:15:57
Speaker
Sometimes it takes a little bit longer for things to get to that level of dryness that I like them to be at. Sometimes I'll let them dry too much intentionally. So there are pieces that I've made where I've gone for an intentional cracking slip, and I do that by basically allowing it to get to bone dry or as close to bone dry as I feel is right, and then apply slip over the top.
00:16:26
Speaker
that can either cause the slip to kind of flake away or it can just cause a crackle effect. And with that, I do, I sometimes try to emphasize it once the piece is fired by putting something like a gouache wash over them, which just, yeah, brings up the crackle effects.
00:16:49
Speaker
But yeah, so once I've done the slips, I don't use that much glaze actually. Occasionally I'll add bits of glaze, but often I just do a single firing because glazing isn't that much of a thing for me. And if I am glazing, a lot of the time, all my glazes are brushed on. So if it's a small detail that needs to be glazed, I'll put that on the greenware and then just put it
00:17:19
Speaker
in for a single firing.
Balancing Market Needs with Passion
00:17:22
Speaker
Interesting. That is very interesting. I love hearing about that. So let's talk about the business side of pottery. Can you tell me about the moment when you decided to go full time with your pottery? I chose a strange moment to do it. It was a moment that made sense in the context of of my life. But basically, it was 2020 when my Instagram started doing really well.
00:17:48
Speaker
I think, yeah, just right at the beginning of the pandemic, it was like March when it really, really amped up. And as that was happening, I just started getting more sales. And there was a month, I think it might've been April or June, that I realized that I was getting enough money that I could live off it. And at the time I had a part-time job working with adults with disabilities. And actually it was,
00:18:17
Speaker
The pandemic did help me in a few different ways. So it partially helped me because I was furloughed from that job. So I was getting, I was getting paid, but I didn't have to go into work. So I was working about half the time that I would have usually. So it gave me that space to really work on my ceramics and build up more work that I would be able to sell. And then actually I was also about to start my master's in September.
00:18:47
Speaker
which I was doing part-time, but the way it all worked out was that I went full-time with my pottery at the exact same time as starting my master's. So that was, it's funny because I wasn't really full-time. I was full-time in the sense of it was my only source of income, but I was making in the time frame of a part-time job. So that put pressure on and
00:19:16
Speaker
I wouldn't have chosen to do it that way if I could have, but yeah, it was just the right time. And I think sometimes we're encouraged to go full time too quickly or to see that as the main goal that you should just make all of your money from your art practice. I think that actually there's a lot to be said for having a part-time job.
00:19:46
Speaker
which provides enough money to maybe feel a bit of stability. So there is still income that you're getting from your pottery, from your ceramics that you need to keep living and functioning. But when you have that other part-time job, it does take the pressure off and it allows you to make more of the kind of work that you want to be making as opposed to
00:20:14
Speaker
what I think happens to a lot of people where they go into it, it's a passion, but then once it becomes a full-time job, they're not making the kind of work they want to make. They're making the work that people want to buy, the things that sell, and that in the end can end up destroying that passion. I'm lucky that that didn't happen to me. I think it is because I do make the work that I like. There's still,
00:20:40
Speaker
certain things that I do make because I know that they sell. So there's the smaller pieces just because that's what's accessible to people. Most people don't have enough money to be buying, you know, a three, four, 500 pound piece. So with those, it's a much smaller audience. So, you know, I think there's, there's a lot to be said for balance. So for me, the smaller pieces are almost like that part-time job.
00:21:07
Speaker
They're the thing that bring the stability. And then if I had a part time job, maybe I would do less of those, but I would still have the kind of one off sculptures that I do. I love that. What would you say helped you the most of being able to start selling your own pottery? I mean, I feel like it all happened quite naturally for me. I didn't necessarily intend to do it as a job. It just.
00:21:37
Speaker
You know, I was in a studio and had one of those, like a Christmas open studio sale. And I think that was where I sold my first thing. And then just kind of gradually bit by bit. I don't think I was that intimidated by the idea of selling because I didn't launch into it as like a completely, I'm going to do this, you know, really intensely. It was, it was much more.
00:22:04
Speaker
a little bit here, there's other people doing this thing. I'm just going to join them rather than having to put myself in that position of, you know, now I'm going to start selling my work. And I think there's also when people started messaging me on Instagram asking to buy things that also felt like I didn't necessarily have to push too hard at the beginning. At the beginning it was driven by
00:22:31
Speaker
people wanting to buy as opposed to me wanting to sell. I love that. Shaping Nation, sometimes the best solution is to be patient and let people find your work naturally. And if they start asking, that's when you could start selling because they know people are going to like it already. I love that. So what are some of the steps you would take if you wanted to get your first sale today?
Marketing and Personal Style in Pottery
00:22:55
Speaker
Well, I think it depends where it is that you want to be selling. A lot of my experience comes from Instagram, so I can kind of speak a little bit to that. I think it's a little bit of what you said, that you have to put the work out there. You have to make sure that there's people who are seeing it. So have an Instagram page. And I think initially when you're posting, it's just about
00:23:21
Speaker
putting the work out there, so focusing less on I need to sell this and more trying to form connections with people, trying to see other artists that you can find on there and sharing about your process, sharing about your work, sharing about yourself. And then I think gradually that leads to someone taking an interest or someone inviting you to
00:23:45
Speaker
something or in my experience if you're part of a studio and there's an open studio sale or something like that just having your work there it's it's there you don't have to do much but you might have someone walk past fall in love with something and want to take it home. I love that that was some excellent advice with there so let's talk about discovering your voice.
00:24:10
Speaker
What would you say are some of the new opportunities came to you when you found your own unique pottery style? It's interesting the idea of my own unique pottery style because that is something that I feel like shifts quite a lot for me. I move through these kind of different phases of what it is that I want to be making, but all of it feels like my own thing, like different aspects of myself. But in terms of the the opportunities,
00:24:38
Speaker
I think a lot of it has been the connections with different people. Finding people that resonate with my work, they tend to be the kind of people that I get on with. There's something that when you see a certain type of artwork that you get pulled in by and you feel like
00:25:03
Speaker
you are a similar person to the person that's made it. So I think I've formed a lot of those kinds of connections. And then those people have offered me different opportunities. They have mentioned me to friends of theirs who have then bought things from me. And I think that kind of word of mouth aspect is really great and really helpful. And the way that you can get there is by putting yourself out there. That's the only way
00:25:32
Speaker
that you can get that kind of excitement going. Absolutely. Shapingation. The more you put yourself out there, the more your voice will grow, the more connections you'll make, and then the cycle will continue repeating. I love that. So you contribute your growth as an artist to letting go of the need for your work to be unique and have or have meaning. Can you tell me more about this? Yeah. So that again goes back to that very first
00:25:59
Speaker
foundation art therapy course. And it's based on the premise of just trusting the process and trusting that whatever you do, as long as it's what you want to do is going to be reflective of you. Because if, you know, if right now I asked you to draw a circle on a page, while I also drew a circle on a page, our circles will be completely different. You know, it's,
00:26:29
Speaker
Yours might be a different size. It might be a slightly different shape. You might have put it in the corner of the page. I might have put it in the middle. So even when you feel like you're doing something that's already been done so many times before, you're still doing it in your own way. And that's really, yeah, that's the kind of motivating force behind how I think about clay.
00:26:51
Speaker
That was such a great analogy. I love that. So what helped you the most being able to let go of having the need to work, have meaning and be unique? I think repetition is a big thing and repetition, not in the sense of making the same thing over and over again, but just sketching and making and drawing because I think with each new thing you make,
00:27:18
Speaker
you can get a little bit more detached in a good way because there's less pressure put on that one thing because you've made many, many, many others. And then gradually over time, I think that kind of builds up on itself, if that makes sense.
Focusing on Authenticity in Creative Work
00:27:35
Speaker
I absolutely love that. Shaping Nation, the most boring thing is to put in those reps, get repetition, practice, practice, practice so that your pottery can start coming to life. I love that.
00:27:45
Speaker
So now, what advice would you give to someone looking to discover their own unique voice with their pottery? I think there's a lot to be said for just making and just being brave. I think a lot of the time we think about how others will perceive the work that we make. And that's been a very useful thing for me in my current studio because it is a home studio I make on my own.
00:28:13
Speaker
So while I'm actually making, nobody is seeing it. And then at the end, I can choose whether it goes out into the world, whether I keep it to myself. And that takes a lot of that kind of pressure off. It allows me to let go of things. It also allows me to not care so much about how others may perceive my work. And it's obviously a big
00:28:39
Speaker
It's a big thing for all of us, how our artwork is perceived. We want it to be perceived. There's, you know, that's the reason we make it. But having that little slice where it can just be your thing, I think is really, really helpful. And that creates the more personal work as well, because there's less of that feeling of there's eyes on you. I absolutely love that. Some excellent advice with that.
00:29:04
Speaker
Anastasia is a really great channel today. And as we're coming to close here, what is one thing you want to hammer home with my audience today? I guess it's what I've been saying all along that just make the work that makes you happy. That's why we love clay because it feels good to us. So I think it deserves, our artistic process deserves to reflect that. It deserves to be honest to who you are.
00:29:33
Speaker
That was some excellent parting words of advice. Anastasia, where can my audience go and learn more about you? So my Instagram is a underscore Zama underscore ceramics. Probably the best place to find me. I also have a website, but you can find that through my Instagram.
00:29:54
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this episode of Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. If you want to start discovering your own unique voice, you must first start with the right questions. That's why I put together a free 15 question booklet for you to start discovering your own unique pottery voice. All you have to do is go to shapingyourpottery.com forward slash questions to get this free booklet.