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#112 Creating the Human Experience Through Pottery w/ Jamie Bates Slone
27 Plays3 years ago
What is Up Shaping Nation on this episode of Shaping Your Pottery I got to interview Jamie Bates Slone. Jamie creates some wonderful functional and sculptural porcelain pottery that she expresses the human experience by creating human figures such as hands, lips, and so much more. You can learn more about Jamie by checking out her Instagram @jamiebatesslone
Top 3 Value Bombs:
1. How to create the Human Experience Through Pottery
2. Learning to say no to free up more time for yourself
3. Looking back at your old pieces to help you gain confidence with your pottery
and so much more
If you have a Full time job but still want to have time to experiment with your pottery, I put together a Free Guide to help you make time to experiment go to shapingyourpottery.com/time to get your Free Guide To Make Time To Experiment With Your Pottery
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Free Guide
00:00:00
Speaker
Real quick before we get started, if you have a full time job and you would still like to try to find your own unique voice but you just don't have the time, I put together a free guide to help you manage your time so that you can experiment with your pottery and make pottery so that you can find your voice.
Interview with Jamie Bates Sloane
00:00:20
Speaker
If you would like this free guide, go to shapingyourpottery.com forward slash time to get your free guide.
00:00:27
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. What is up, Shaping Nation? This is Nick Torres here with Shaping Your Pottery. On this episode, I got to interview Jamie Bates Sloane.
The Art of Saying No
00:00:48
Speaker
Jamie makes some really incredible human body figure pottery.
00:00:55
Speaker
In this episode, you will learn how Jamie creates your human experience pottery. You also learn how the power of saying no will free you and free up more time for yourself. You will learn about the power of looking back at your own work from past in order to gain more confidence with yourself. Jamie, welcome to Shaping Your Pottery and share with me what is something people might not know about you.
00:01:24
Speaker
I feel like it's nothing related to my work. I feel like I do share a lot on the internet. It's kind of part of my practice. But I would say probably something they don't know about me would be I was on the dance team in high school, and I really love to dance.
Academic Journey
00:01:44
Speaker
Awesome. Love it. Yeah. Love it.
00:01:48
Speaker
So you are currently an assistant ceramics professor at the University of Oklahoma. Can you tell me the story how this came to be? Yeah, it's kind of a long kind of a funny story and a long story, but I'll tell you. So I'd say it probably actually kind of some seeds were planted back in 2015.
00:02:14
Speaker
when I met Stuart Asprey, and he told me that a position was going to be available at the University of Oklahoma soon and to keep my eyes peeled. And so I kind of knew that I really enjoyed working with Stuart when I had as a visiting artist in 2015. And so I'd kind of kept that in the back of my head for about probably about five, I don't know, three years. Yeah, that would make more sense, three years. So once the application actually came out,
00:02:44
Speaker
I got my application in and the interview process was interesting because ceramics is a very insular community. You know a lot of the people that are up for the same positions that you are up for. So it gets a little weird sometimes.
00:03:06
Speaker
I knew that I was up for the position against multiple people that I knew and what's friends with, particularly one person that I'm very good friends with. I won't mention his name just in case it's weird. But yeah, so I ended up getting a position.
Time Management for Professors
00:03:23
Speaker
And yeah, so it's kind of how I hoped my future would work out, and it did. I got pretty lucky in that front.
00:03:36
Speaker
The interview process was quite exhausting, though. I will tell you that I think a lot of people who have never applied for a job in academia, or maybe not gotten very far in the whole process, they may not realize just how intense it can be. I know that we interviewed on the phone first, and then in place of a Your Typical Skype interview, or which was the norm back then, but now we have Zoom.
00:04:05
Speaker
In place of that typical Skype interview, we had interviews that in SICA. So, you know, the National Council on the Education for the Ceramic Arts, it's our conference every year that we go to. So we had interviews there. And so that was wild too, because I was running into some of the other people that were interviewing for the position like in the hallway. So that was even more daunting, like knowing who you're up against and that sort of thing. But yeah, Push came to shove.
00:04:32
Speaker
did the hotel interview at Encica, and then got an on-campus interview here in Oklahoma. So they flew me out. And I was here for three, four days. I had to give a lecture, critique with students.
00:04:47
Speaker
basically have little mini interviews with many of like my future colleagues, the dean, the chair of the department and all of that. So it was pretty intense and pretty nerve-wracking. I do remember my lecture crashed while I was working on it like 2 a.m. the night before I had to give my lecture and I had to redo the whole thing. Oh no. Yeah, it was awful. But hey, it worked out. I still got the job. I made it work.
00:05:16
Speaker
But I think it's those things that people don't see, especially the folks that are looking to get a tenure track job. It's a pretty nerve-wracking process. So what is something that you have learned from being an assistant that has kind of helped propel your pottery further? So are you asking what I've learned from being an assistant professor or just an assistant for other artists?
Passion for the Human Figure
00:05:43
Speaker
assistant professor for ceramics. Okay, tons. How to better organize my time because the way my job is specifically set up is I, my job requires me to dedicate 40% of my time to teaching, 40% of my time to my research, which is my art practice, and then 20% of my time to service to the university, which is
00:06:11
Speaker
committee work and whatnot like that. So balancing my time was pretty challenging in figuring out how to do that and how to not overdo it in all realms of what I'm responsible for doing. I'd say that's one thing I have learned in a big way is to protect my time and learn to say no and be very mindful of what you do want to do. I've learned that I have to give myself time
00:06:42
Speaker
think about something long and hard before I respond with my excitement because I'll get that initial email asking me to do something and I'll go, yeah. And then three days later, I'll be like, oh, I should have said no because I have like four other things to do that day. So learning how to take a step back and really give myself some breathing room before I say yes to something because the excitement that
00:07:09
Speaker
I got even five, six, seven years ago being asked to do something still lives in me. It still feels nice when someone says, hey, I have this thing. Are you interested? Whether it be something small or something really big. So I think that's been the biggest thing to learn is balance within my position here as an assistant professor.
00:07:34
Speaker
Excellent, excellent advice. Shaping Nation for listening right now. Sometimes you have to learn to say no in order to kind of further your own life and also your pottery. This is going to make things a lot easier for you as well. So can you tell me the story how you started making your human experience pottery? Well,
00:07:55
Speaker
I would say like I've always been interested in the figure in some capacity. So started when I was young and thought I wanted to be a doctor. I just turned out I was fascinated by the human body. It had nothing to do with me wanting to actually fix it. And so
00:08:12
Speaker
I think it started there, and even in elementary school and high school, I really enjoyed doing portraiture, drawing.
Identity and Mental Health in Pottery
00:08:21
Speaker
I hadn't done really any sculpting then. I grew up in a really small town and in a very small high school, so we didn't have a lot of art programs. So in your case, you were saying that you started doing pottery when you were a junior in high school. I didn't start doing it until I was a junior in college.
00:08:43
Speaker
I I've always felt a little behind Sorry, I'm getting tangent tangenty and I know I'm like, oh wait. What was the question? It was What was that it was just I was just gonna if you would want to know what the question was It was just can you tell me the story about how you started making a human experience pottery? Oh, yeah. Gosh, sorry Got off the track for a second. Um, yeah, so basically yeah, it all started there early on whenever I
00:09:12
Speaker
was an undergrad my junior year of college. I took my first ceramics class ever.
00:09:19
Speaker
And before that, I think I made a really terrible coil pot in undergrad. It was supposed to be a pitcher, and the spout was way down at the bottom. It made no sense. But yeah, I started my first ceramics class my junior year. And at that time, I was actually an art education major. And I had to take the ceramics class because it was part of the requirement for my degree.
00:09:50
Speaker
And then I just, yeah, it just came naturally to me. So that's kind of where it all began. And even then I was making figurative work in some way. So even in my beginning ceramics classes, like there was something related to the body. I think we had to make a piece inspired by the human body mixing it with industrial like aspects and
00:10:14
Speaker
I made something with a bolt that was screwing into a human heart. It was terrifying. And my father thought it was a bong, but it wasn't. It was definitely not a, I would have had no idea how to actually make something like that at that point in my life. But yeah, and I think my final project was a stomach that was also doubled as a bowl. So it was like this cross-section. I'm a morbid person.
00:10:44
Speaker
Yeah, and ever since then, the figure has like found its way in my work in some capacity, even if I was told like in grad school, I was kind of pushed away from like, making figurative work because it was too literal. At the time, like, really objective and abstracted work was kind of the hot thing. And so my work kind of didn't really fit into that bubble. But
00:11:11
Speaker
Once I finished grad school and started making work on my own outside of grad school, I just kind of started following my passion and what I would prefer to do rather than what I was told what I should be doing. I was like a sponge when I was younger and it just absorbed everything and did everything that I was told to do. And finally, yeah, just making that figurative work after grad school and just continuing to do it, that was
00:11:41
Speaker
I don't know, it's just
Techniques in Sculpting
00:11:42
Speaker
the thing that I feel compelled to do. So it just comes naturally. It's really hard to explain. Really, really awesome. Shaping Nation, if you're listening right now, you have to pursue what you want to do, even if other people don't think it's the norm. Pursue what you want to do and your pottery is going to go a lot further.
00:12:03
Speaker
So something I found interesting from your website is you said, my current work is a cerebral exploration of my identity and mental state. Could you explain this to me further? Yeah. So I do leave it pretty vague in my artist statement for a reason, because it's always changing. I am a human that lives with ADHD. So I feel like
00:12:27
Speaker
my personality changes with the wind sometimes. So that's why I kind of like leave that so vague. But all in all, yeah, it's kind of just a reflection of what's kind of going on internally for me at the moment. So right now,
00:12:47
Speaker
With my work, I'm thinking a lot about, actually, I've been kind of stirring up this piece. I have a solo show in January. And I have a piece that I want to make that's in reference to the 36 years that I spent not knowing that I had ADHD. Because after you get diagnosed with something like that, you're almost angry because you feel like you've been fighting this thing and feeling morally corrupt or bad because you're not able to adhere to social norms.
00:13:18
Speaker
So after finding out that I had ADHD and like all of those things kind of like I learned more about it and all those things kind of came in the line I kind of want to reflect on that that feeling of anger or Irritation that like maybe you just didn't know for so long There's a lot of things too in my life I feel like I'm kind of going through like this evolution like where things are changing and I'm finding out more about myself like therapy is like
00:13:47
Speaker
another part of my research practice, basically. I do it for my own mental health, but I also pull from that to influence my work. So I would say that's pretty much what I'm talking about whenever I'm saying it's like a reflection of my mental states. It's literally like, what am I thinking about right now?
00:14:10
Speaker
How am I processing these feelings? And sometimes making the work about it is just another way to process those feelings. So I feel like it's just as therapeutic as my medication or the therapy that I participate in. Love it. Shaping Nation, if you're listening right now, how can you add moments from your life
00:14:32
Speaker
Maybe it's a trauma or maybe it's something happy or something that you learned recently. And how can you add that into your pottery to make it more personal? So can you give me a simplified version of how you sculpt body parts onto your functional pieces? Oh, yeah.
00:14:51
Speaker
I think people think I just sculpt it onto it. I just attach things. I actually pinch the whole form and then use the clay that's just there residing in the walls to sculpt into. So that's what creates that translucency. If I were just adding more clay onto the surface, I wouldn't have that translucency that's present in the work.
00:15:14
Speaker
So I physically push and pull and sculpt into that surface of the clay, trying not to pierce through the wall. But yeah, it's just a push and pull. It's not really adding any extra clay. Occasionally I'll add a little extra if I've got a really big tongue or something I really do want that to protrude just a little bit farther and I don't have enough clay there. But yeah, it's just simply push and pull, folding the clay,
00:15:43
Speaker
A little bit of carving, but it's really initially in those first stages of when it's like pretty wet, where I really like get to kind of like find the form and push and pull into the clay. What advice would you give to someone trying to add some body parts into their own work? Use references.
00:16:06
Speaker
Don't go off of what you think that part looks like, because often you'll be wrong. Our minds play tricks on us, and we assume a lot that's actually not there. So use your references. Use images if you can. If you have a real-life human person in front of you that you can look at, that's even better. But I realize that's difficult, so a lot of times images are the most helpful. The internet is a very helpful place for finding those.
Overcoming Overwhelm
00:16:34
Speaker
There are quite a few resources out there as far as image databases where you can find figurative images. I can't think of any of them off the top of my head right now for some reason. I'm not in teacher mode. This is my Christmas break. So that's kind of weird. But yeah, there's tons of resources out there. Use your good old fashioned Google and you can find something.
00:17:03
Speaker
I would recommend getting some books as well. My favorite books are Sculpting. Let's see. It's I think it's the the figure for the sculptor by I should have had this book on me. I am drawing all kinds of links right now. Sorry, Nick. That's OK. It's the time for the books. But yeah, I can send you the links later if you need those. Yeah, awesome.
00:17:30
Speaker
OK, but yeah, get yourself some books. The Figuring Clay was my gateway drug to sculpting the figurines. It's an older book. I think it was maybe published around 1999, 2000. But that's where I found a lot of those artists that really inspired me to make figurative work. But yeah, look at what's out there. Don't isolate yourself. Pay attention to what's being made.
00:17:59
Speaker
Don't get caught up in the realism of everything, too. Find your kind of style and voice within what you're making. But yeah, references are going to be your best friend. And practice. Don't get so caught up on making one thing forever. One thing that I'd done that was really helpful a few years ago was I gave myself 20 minutes to sculpt an eye, a mouth, or an ear. Those were my studio rules for like,
00:18:27
Speaker
three or four days. Um, and I made 75 of these little bitty tiles, right? And it was a practice and just getting really good at sculpting specific parts of the figure quickly and gesturally and without like overthinking it. So I think it's just, yeah, practice and user references. Those are the two main things. Some excellent advice. Love it so much. So when you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do to get back on track?
00:18:59
Speaker
I like list making. If I feel overwhelmed by the amount of things my brain is telling me I need to do, I'll sit down and make a list of the things. I might have done that yesterday too. I may have done that the day before. But it helps me regardless if I am writing the same list over and over again. It gets it just out of here and onto some paper where I can visualize it.
00:19:25
Speaker
And then I think it's just to get in there and just play. If you can't think of something to make, maybe find and look at an old piece that you want to remake. Maybe you don't have to think of something new. Maybe it's just like, let's practice my skills today. You don't have to go into the studio thinking up of the most elaborate, groundbreaking piece of artwork every day.
00:19:52
Speaker
So I just recommend just get in there and do it. I have so many students that overanalyze and overthink and think they have to have this whole game plan before they can even step foot into the studio. And just get in there, grab your bag of clay, and just start doing something. Something will happen. But yeah, writing, that's my bullet points here.
00:20:16
Speaker
Writing I think is like number one, list making, writing, writing those thoughts down, getting out of your head and just doing it, just getting in there and making. Also, if you just need to take a break and go for a walk, that helps. And I've also found meditation can help in the middle of the studio practice. If I'm feeling really overwhelmed by getting in there, I'll just try to take a mental break
00:20:46
Speaker
maybe meditate for a few minutes before I go in and then I'll feel like I'm in a better head space. Some excellent pieces of advice. I love the meditation part to that kind of calm yourself down a little bit. Yeah, that's a huge thing I've learned in the last few years of trying to like kind of ease my anxiety is meditation. I feel like on edge, it's just like, okay, we're gonna go find like, sometimes I'll do a guided meditation with Spotify or something. But if it's anything, just kind of calm my nerves and kind of recenter myself.
00:21:16
Speaker
I love that. I've also been experimenting with meditation recently, these last two weeks. I love it. It's helpful. Part of finding your voice is gaining confidence in your work.
The Power of Personal Experience
00:21:30
Speaker
What is something you have done or still do to help you gain confidence in your work? That's a really tough question. Confidence in my work is something I still struggle with. I think every artist will tell you that there's always that little
00:21:46
Speaker
I think voice inside your head saying like it's not quite good enough or you've done this better before or I think the thing you have to do is just remind yourself to that you're working, you're practicing, you're getting better, you're moving forward in your practice. One thing I do when I am feeling a little like not so confident in my work, I'll go back and look at my old stuff because then I can see like the true improvement from point A to point B.
00:22:16
Speaker
Um, that I think is the biggest, uh, confidence booster possible. It's just like looking at how far you've come. And I know that like, I have a 15 year career at this point, so I have a lot of time to look back on. Um, but even folks that get started, you know, there's a vast, you know, difference between, you know, your first day to a year in. So just always like, take a look back and, and, and look at the facts. See that you've made improvement.
00:22:45
Speaker
See that you are getting better. And don't compare yourself to other people. I mean, you're going to compare yourself to other people, but check yourself when you do that. Remind yourself like, hey, I'm comparing myself to Beth Kavaner, who is my mentor. I love her like my sister. But she also has 10 years of a career on me, right? Like she's been doing it for longer than me. And our paths are different. So I think
00:23:10
Speaker
trying not to compare yourself to other artists out there in a harsh way. You can compare yourself all you want if it's motivating you. Just don't let it get to a point where it will keep you down. Love it. Excellent piece of advice. Shaping the issue for a listing right now.
00:23:31
Speaker
Go back and look at your old work and see how far your progress has been. Your confidence is going to go through the roof by doing that because you're going to see how much progress you have made. I always show my students, specifically in my figurative classes, my first figurative artwork ever, which was in high school.
00:23:51
Speaker
Like I think I mentioned it earlier, it was a pitcher that was a head and the spout was the mouth. So it was way down at the bottom. So it made no sense. And the figurative parts, there are lots of like every time I look at them like that, I did that wrong. I did that wrong. I did that wrong. But it's super helpful because I'm like, I can see that I started there, you know, little
00:24:11
Speaker
16 year old Jamie made that weird little picture. And now she's not making spaghetti hair and like strange squishy eyeballs and all the things that I see, you know, done wrong and figure in the beginning. So, yeah. Yep. Excellent piece of advice. So what advice would you give to someone trying to discover their own unique voice? I think the best thing you can do is speak from
00:24:39
Speaker
your own experience. I think the most contrived work I've seen and the most, the things that don't interest me the most, and this is personal taste, this has nothing to do with like what's good and bad, right? But the things that I don't find interesting at all or something that I can't find any way to relate to it, right? If you're just telling me about
00:25:01
Speaker
a formal quality of something or other, you know, and it's work about just nothing.
Consistent Practice in Pottery
00:25:06
Speaker
I can't get, I can't make a connection with it, right? So, but I always tell folks is like, speak about what you know, right? I think I felt, I felt like I was being most authentic with my work when I started talking about my family's history with cancer and illness in grad school. And from there, that's where it kind of
00:25:30
Speaker
started becoming more about mental health because I realized that was a lot of my own issues, my own psyche. So I think it's just allow things to evolve. Don't get too caught up in pigeonholing yourself. And also don't be afraid of speaking to your own experiences. I never thought that I could have any kind of impact on anything.
00:25:59
Speaker
Who am I? But the moment I started speaking about my own problems with my own mental health and ADHD and even like sexual health and exploration and all of that, the moment I just started being kind of open about that, that's whenever I felt like people were really resonating with my work. So I think do it when you feel comfortable. Like you don't have to like, you know, put yourself out there if you're not ready to. But I think speaking about your work from an authentic place,
00:26:29
Speaker
is probably the most important thing you could do. If you're really struggling to find your voice, I think everyone has a really impactful story to tell, even if they think they are boring. You're not. Everybody has a really universally unique story to tell. So I think really just embracing the fact that you have that ability. And as an artist,
00:26:55
Speaker
that's kind of your job is to kind of tell a story to kind of show someone what your perspective is right or how you see the world so
00:27:02
Speaker
Yeah, do it. Absolutely. Great advice. That was like, up there top tier. I love that shaping nation for listening. How can you incorporate experiences from your life, maybe traumas, I know I said this earlier, but how can you incorporate that into your pottery? Make it tell a story, your own story, and your party is going to go a lot further. So as we're coming to a close, what is something you want to hammer home with my audience today?
00:27:29
Speaker
Hmm, I would say yeah, keep doing it. Just keep keep doing it. Like that's the biggest thing. That's where I see people kind of fall off. Like, you know, I've been doing this for 15 years after being an undergrad in grad school. There are a few people that like I see still making and but it's, you know, not as many people as it was in the beginning, right? Like they kind of dwindle away and people stop making. And I think
00:27:57
Speaker
Those are choices you can make. That's fine. But I think if you really are struggling and you really want to make things work, just keep doing it. Just keep practicing. My colleague Stewart, he's a sport nut and he always talks about like how athletes practice every almost every day to be good at what they're doing. Doctors call their
00:28:21
Speaker
work their practice because they're practicing and getting better every day. And artists should be seen in that same light. So just remember, like every day when you're in the studio, even if you're having a bad studio day, or if you're on the wheel and every pot is a flop, you can learn from that experience. Not every day has to be productive. Excellent advice. Jamie, it was so great chatting with you today.
Connect with Jamie Bates Sloane
00:28:44
Speaker
Where can my audience go and learn more about you? You can find me on Instagram at Jamie Bates Sloan.
00:28:52
Speaker
It's my full name, pretty easy. My website's the same, www.jamiebateslone.com. But yeah, those are the two places you can find me. And there's lots of places you can find my work. So if you find me on Instagram,
00:29:06
Speaker
Click on that link in my bio and you'll find a list of places you can find my work including on my website. Thanks for listening to this episode of Shaping Your Pottery. If you have questions about developing your voice or just pottery questions in general, send them to me my way. Go to shapingyourpottery.com forward slash contact to send me your questions.