Blog

There are a myriad of excuses why I don’t consistently update this blog. I tell my self a different one each time and they usually range from “I’m busy!” to “After this next thing…” and the list goes on.

There are many reasons however, that I often want to keep up with this blog even though I never seem to physically be able to. A lot of this has to do with my mother, who chronicled my life from when I was a kid, to my therapist who really pushed me to journal all through college. I like this blog because I can see my life through all the pottery and all the art. Its has all my memories and contemplation, and its a bit like talking to a old friend – one that isn’t there all the time, but talk like no time has passed. And there’s a little part of me who also loves that there is a blog, somewhere floating in the ether with all my thoughts, life and pieces of me that have carried through.

But, sometimes, I read back and I can see this gloss that is all over the posts and all the artifice that seems to echo. Recently, I’ve been going back and forth.

“Its a light-hearted blog about pottery.”

and…

“Its a light-hearted blog about pottery that you can never keep up with because maybe – just maybe – your life is too interwoven with pottery to just talk about the lighthearted stuff”

So here I go – talking about pottery, and telling you how ceramics have shaped my life even in its absence.

“It can take years to mold a dream. It takes only a fraction of a second for it to be shattered.”

A lot has changed in my life since I stopped doing pottery consistently.

I graduated! I got a job. The full time kind. I moved away. I said a lot of good-byes and see you soon. And I put the toolbox in my closet and let the guilty feelings brew for a bit.

There is a lot to be said about a hobby that you pour your life into. It brings so much joy, friendship and purpose into my life. It teaches me about discipline, working hard and letting things go. It teaches me how to move on and how to pick up the pieces.

And it teaches me how to cope. It teaches me how to cope a little to well.

When you pour your life into a hobby, you start to give up parts of you that you didn’t really know you had. When I took a breather for the first time, I thought that in a month I would be itching to get back into it.

Then a month went by. And then half a year flew by under my radar. The guilt grew and I couldn’t quite get back into a studio. I moved, found a studio and got off their waitlist, and yet, still could not quite get myself to commit.

It was the little things that I didn’t know I missed. The silence on the weekends knowing that I have nothing to do. The breather I could take when I got back from work/school/plans/friends. The blankness of my apartment without everything I needed to do for sales or Etsy right in front of my face.

But there were things, I also noticed, that I had leaned maybe a bit too hard on pottery that I had never noticed before.

The Nonexistent Judgement

When I first moved, I was really excited to be that person that I had always dreamed about. There is this section in my high school senior year scrapbook that required me to write a letter to myself and it says: “When you read this, you’ll be in your own apartment, living the dream we had always had.”

Uhh sure. But I am pretty sure that 18 year old me didn’t realize how bad the crippling social anxiety had gotten at the age of 22. I’m pretty sure I did something wrong because according to this letter, I should have fixed that by now.

And if you had asked me in college, I probably would’ve told you that I did fix the crippling social anxiety. I had friends and talked to strangers quite regularly and also just really didn’t think about normal interactions.

But then, last month, right before I walked into a bank, I thought “oh god, I’m not dressed nice enough”. And then again, I was trying to pick up a gym membership that I had just signed up for and spent the whole walk into the gym audibly talking myself through how to ask for the keyring barcode. Oh, and then last week, I tried to get a head massage and I was 5 minutes early, telling myself its ok to get one. No one cares and that the voice in my head was absurd. I’m paying people and I was nervous about getting judged. I think the hardest part is the voice that just says:

“Oh my god. Can you see that lost girl there masquerading as an adult? Can’t you just tell she has no clue what she is doing.”

For years, I had this confidence with pottery that just seeped through a lot of things. I always had it in my back pocket. It was a soothing thing: “If I am bad at this, at least I can make a wicked bowl”. But because pottery took up so much of my time, I had totally forgotten what it was like to anything new.

When I started college, I actually had my side gig already lined up. I was signed up to start teaching before I even started college. And then at the Mudfire, I don’t need to ask for help, I’m a pro, kinda. And I’ve never needed to ask for help when I probably should have. I never had time for the little things so I never over thought it.

But now, I’m new at a lot of things and I don’t have such a solid excuse to keep going all the time. I have all this time. Time to do things I have always wanted to try. And time to think deeply about all the things I wanted to try.

And simultaneously, there has never been so many new things in my life. DMVs are awful already, but when there is no dad or Caitlin standing next to me in line, I feel so self-conscious. And also, shockingly, I went through all of college taking friends to the grocery store that I think I could count on one hand the amount of times before I moved to California that I had shopped alone in a store.

To be honest, a lot of these are normal things that I rationally know everyone goes through. But for me, there was something I was good at that I used to be able to fall back on and now, it kind of felt like I was just floundering and flopping through life.

“The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living”

I can laugh at myself and cringe a little about my social anxiety, but for this one, I am a bit more vulnerable and a little more terrified, so please be patient.

Between 2020 and 2021, there was a lot of death around me. Besides COVID, which was rampant, I ended up losing people to totally non-COVID related issues which has impacted me deeply. For privacy issues, I’m going to keep some things vague, but do want to talk a little about grief and a pretty pivotal 2 years in my life.

I lost 2 family members which I had many complicated feelings around. My last living grandfather passed away due to persistent health issues and my uncle who I had been close with as a child had passed. It was hard to come to terms with their passing because although we had drifted in the years, My grandfather in a lot of ways symbolized the very rich heritage that I had grown up with was starting to fade- my other grandfather passed when I was young and I learned so much about him only after he was gone. This grandfather seemed to repeat that and in the years to come, there is a bittersweet feeling of knowing that his memory will live on, but I will have missed that connection once again.

My uncle had a complicated situation, but the hardest part was looking at the impact he had in my life and missing the person he was. “The modern day duke” he had once said was his ideal title. Hannibal Lecter in aesthetic only. He collected fine china patterns, boxed a lot, gave me my love for whiskey that have made many an ex tear up and just…jokes. There is a lot to miss about him and most of all, the feeling I have associated with his passing is guilt. Guilt that I didn’t do enough at the end, so maybe I don’t deserve to grieve him. But, him I see all the time. I went to friend of mine who had this amazing bottle of GlenLiviet and all I could think about was that Christmas when I was 13 or 14 and everyone yelled at him when he poured me a shot. So I guiltily grieve him and see him in everything.

Then I think, there is also guilt that I grieve for people that I didn’t really know or didn’t get to know. These are the deaths that probably left the biggest impact, which I know is weird but let me explain. For these, I am going to be even more vague and overly cautious because for the most part, I don’t think it is my story to tell.

The first one was a murder in my town which was very shocking as nothing ever happens in the town I grew up in. I had vaguely known them through school and they were close to my age – some older and some younger but I had known them. Though I mostly knew the others, she was the one haunted me. An artist, making it out of high school and pursuing her dream. Younger than me. In her, I grieve her dreams, for I know that they were bright and colorful as she was. And I look at her art and feel that the world is maybe a bit hollower without her.

Lastly, there was a college student that was only about a year older than me. We had met only in passing and only briefly. It was only after the fact that I learned a lot more about him. But I knew his friend as we had researched together. He was walking and there was a car that ran a stop light.

I don’t really know how to conclude that. But, I learned he was a bright researcher, an optimist and come a long way to study here. He was gifted in many things. While he has started to haunt me too, I grieve for his mother. I think of her constantly and know that however hollow my words are, I hope she is okay.

The effect of watching the how uncontrollable and unpredictable life can be is hard already, but losing people that are peers and my age made approach life differently. I started to feel my own mortality and feel lost in the vastness and chaos of it all. There is one thing to make lists, and plan everything. And its another thing to be haunted by the fact that nothing could matter. Or trying to find what matters. What is the meaning of life, or what do we do if nothing is really in our hands after all.

People told me, in my 20s, I’m going to feel invincible. Invincible and stupid and living life to the fullest. I had always told myself that I have one shot at my 20s and I was going to seize every opportunity and just go.

But instead, there has been a significant amount of my 20s in my bed, curled up, with the irrational fear of death, irrational fear of losing people close to me, losing my family and also maybe the fear of not getting to live my life before I lose it.

This fear manifests in many different ways. I went from being the person who could’ve told you that I wanted to be moving and going to suddenly becoming a person who after calling my parents, will sit and beat myself up about moving too far and missing too much. I went from loving spending time with my family to fearing that time is just flying by and contemplating what I will miss when they are gone and missing the moment altogether.

It seemed like I was grasping to what I thought was important before 2020 and then afterwards I learned that nothing mattered. My values had shifted overnight and I was spinning. I’m still kind of spinning. I’m not sure it will ever stop spinning, but I do know I should try to at least learn to cope with the spinning.

Maybe this is why I also picked up the blog. I need something to keep me grounded and just pause in the moment. Breathe and enjoy the moment and also just learn to take it one step at a time again. All I know is that if I keep fearing what I will miss, I’m going to miss it all.

My mom, the wisest person and the one who knows me best says, “It takes time, but you will move on someday.”

The End of the Taylor Swift year and finding “Someday”

So it as close to midnight as it can get on Nov. 17th – the last night of 22. There is a lot of 22 to reflect on, but I think I also better balance it with some forward looking 23.

22 was the year of looking forward. It was the year of looking for change, and adventure and optimism. It was a year of fun memories with college friends, fun dates with my boyfriend, celebrating with family and starting something new. It was the year my world started over and reality collided with my expectations. It was a year of tough goodbyes and not nearly enough hellos. It was a year of giving things up, taking a break, and learning to be more openminded. It was a year of being together with friends, and feeling fulfilled, while also a year of learning how to live alone, be alone and enjoy the silence. It year of fun and laughter; it was a year of a lot of bittersweet feelings and lots and lots of tears. It was a year of so much fear, and also so much enthusiasm for the what’s to come.

It was a year that felt like a decade, and a year that felt like it passed by in a blink of an eye.

So then, its really fitting that as much as I am not ready to move on to 23, I am ready to let go of 22.

Which leads me to think of what I think 23 will be like; what ideas and life will come at me in 23? If I could write 23…

I think I will probably be spinning for a little longer. I think its hard to find myself when it seems like a lot of what made me “Leila” doesn’t seem so ready at the finger tips anymore. 23, I would really like to pick up some of the pieces from the process of grief and live a bit, just for myself

I want to be grateful, 23. I want to cherish what I have; I want to give back to those who have always been here, even in the times where it was very evident I was lost. 23, I would like to embrace being lost and just see where life ends up with me. I want to relearn where my values are, what has become important and what I have learned to let go.

23, I would like to expand my horizons. I would like to look forward more, instead of always looking back. I would like to be able to take a deep breath and actually move, instead of taking a deep breath and standing still. My biggest wish would to flow with life, as if I was just kayaking along, rather than being the rock at the bottom of a busy stream, watching as all the life rushes by but not really participating. I want to be challenged in my beliefs, and understand the world I live in better. I want to see in color and not in black and white.

I want to learn how to be in the moment, to not worry so much about 24, or 25, or 30, or even 60. I want to learn to be in a room – see my friends and the moment in real time. I want to learn how to let that moment be a moment, instead of worrying about how it will be a memory before it is one.

So, cheers to 23. May you be a complex and worth it. Preferably less scary. And hopefully, someone 22 can look at and be proud of.

And, may you write it all down.

Here we go. 22 to 23.

Well hi there. Welcome to my blog!

If you are reading this, you probably found me from my Etsy and as the title implies, March will be my last update for an indefinite amount of time and if you were curious, here’s why!

Hitting Pause and Life Updates

If you have followed me for some time, or just found me, you might know that I am a college student who has been doing Etsy for the last 2 years. When I started my Etsy shop, I was in my 3rd year of college, and my studio at Georgia Tech had just shut down for renovations. Because of this I ended up finding a studio off campus and transitioned from teaching to selling.

So in 2020, I started my Etsy shop, thinking that I wouldn’t sell a thing. I’ll circle back about Etsy a bit later, but its now 2022 , I’ve sold more than I would’ve ever thought on Etsy and I’m graduating!

Last November, I interviewed for my dream job in California, and in January, I found out that I got it. I am so excited to make the casual 2,500 mile cross country move from Atlanta to San Francisco to finally become a real engineer working in technical ceramics. I’m super excited, really grateful and it feels like a dream come true.

But, with that, I am also terrified and nervous about starting over again. Between looking at apartments, moving companies, game planning on how to ship my car and where to put my plants, the blank page is really daunting. And this is definitely the number 1 reason that I am putting a bit of a stop on Etsy for the time being, and don’t have a specific time that I will be returning. I think I know where I am going to live, and I am in the process of applying to different studios in the Bay Area. This whole process, while super exciting, has been really scary since I am often applying blindly to a studio and hoping that they have space for me. It’s also terrifying to think that for the last 2 years, I have finally nailed down what I want to sell, and my favorite glaze combos, and now I kind of have to start all over again.

The second reason I am hitting pause on Etsy is because of all the people that are currently in my life. Saying goodbye is really hard, and saying goodbye to a whole community of people that have been with me for 4 years has been really tough. I used to go to the studio 2x a week to make sure I could make monthly updates on Etsy. This has dropped to maybe going once every week or once every week and a half. I can’t really make products, take and edit photos, upload and ship everything out very consistently nowadays. Without getting too sappy, I have been in this “semester of yes” since February and have said yes to as many things as possible to maximize the limited time I have left with these people that I love so much.

The third reason is kind of similar to the previous one, but I also have been making a lot of things for myself and people in my life. While I have clay and glazes that I like, I have been making stuff for my really amazing lab group (and stressing about what to make for my research professor), goodbye gifts for friends and little requests from my mom and my boyfriend. I also have been making myself a set of dinnerware for myself which has been one of the hardest things I’ve every made. This has taken up the limited time that I am in studio, but I do have fun projects I want to document and write about – so maybe those posts here in the future!

The fourth and last reason has to do with Etsy itself. When I started Etsy, I really didn’t think I would sell a single thing. My first sell on Etsy was from my friend (Thanks Lauren!) and then when I got my second sale, it a big shock that it was from someone I didn’t know. At that point, I was trying to recoup anything in terms of money and was just having fun. When I passed 100 sales, I was still pretty sure it was a fluke, but I started taking it much more seriously and started to take better quality pictures, having better glaze combinations and also putting more money into Etsy ads.

But, people I knew in the pottery world had warned me about Etsy and how the percentage that I make off of Etsy is not as great as it seemed to be. In January of this year, Etsy announced that they had a record year in sales, and then promptly raised their commission fee from 3.5% to 5%. This meant that I now paid a fee for shipping labels, a fee for transactions, a listing fee, their ad fee and their commission fee that has now increased. With all of that, I was really barely making anything off of Etsy and many people had told me it was time to start thinking about transitioning off the platform.

On the other hand, I have been starting to sell here and there in person and to people that I know, and the amount of money and time that I save was astonishing to me. From small collective sales, holiday sales and selling on Facebook to people on campus, it has really opened my eyes to the percentage that Etsy takes off every sale I make.

I think I know that while in college, running my own website, ads, and everything else is not feasible. Etsy is not even profitable enough to be my job in college, its actually truly only a side gig that I do. With the majority of my time spent on school and research, there has been little time for me to dedicate to the administrative side of running a small pottery operation.

What’s next?

So the first thing on my list is to graduate, and hopefully sell off the remainder of my stock here in Atlanta. In the short term, I am wrapping up projects for people and I’m really optimistic in documenting the the last months I have at Mudfire. I am also still going to apply to studios in the Bay, and also planning the move and spending time with loved ones.

I have a few more blog posts in the works. I have a wrap up of 2021 that was supposed to be the post before this, but I have more pictures than I thought so its taking a bit to consolidate. I also have a breakdown of some of the projects that I have been working on in 2022 and then will be probably be back in Texas for a bit, probably hanging out with old pottery friends.

As for Etsy, I will make my way back on there soon. Hopefully, before the end of this year, but I will really be back soon-ish. The end goal is to eventually transition off of Etsy, but that takes time and investment and hopefully those two things will be more plentiful once I start working full-time. If you see anything that you want on my Etsy in the meantime though, my DMs on Instagram are always open and I do have a few things I will hopefully be slowly selling from my “back catalog”.

Thanks is not enough

I was writing this in my research lab, and my labmate was like “Woah this is really long”, so sorry that this was a bit of a long winded post. I really do need to take a second and say thank you for everyone who has bought from me, or saw my stuff. People that I’ve met in person or bought stuff from me off of Facebook have been super incredible and I’m always blown away. I got some really encouraging messages in my Instagram DMs these last 2 years and I have all these feelings that I really can’t put into words. So all I can offer is thanks, though thanks is not enough.

The staff at Mudfire and the people I have met in the pottery world have been fantastic. Long talks about all the ins and outs of business made me realize the limitations of my current situation and gain infinite appreciation for pottery folks. I really think I’ve made so much progress on my craft these last 1.5ish years at Mudfire. These last years really flew by fast.

Mudfire also taught me a really key idea about starting over. There’s a youtuber I watched that said “being in your twenties is being able to accept that your life is in a constant state of transition”. I am the first to say that I am not good at change (and my boyfriend would be the second) so when the studio at Georgia Tech shut down, I was devastated. But being at Mudfire made me realize that taking that leap of faith and starting over is possible, and so now, 2 years later, I have more faith that no matter what comes, it’ll be ok. My stuff, my craft, it won’t be “this” anymore, but it’ll transition too and hopefully y’all will stick around and see what I make next 🙂

Thanks being apart of a really fun journey. I’ll be back on Etsy hopefully sometime this year, but I’ll be here in the meantime if you want to stick around. Thanks for reading ❤

Holy crap. Do I still remember how to do this? The last time I wrote a blog post, I was a junior in high school and now…I am a junior in college. Time truly flies.

I didn’t think that I would pick this website back up in all honesty. I kind of forgot I had it until I really started to do Etsy for the first time. (Shameless Etsy plug https://www.etsy.com/shop/LeilasCeramics?ref=seller-platform-mcnav) I also truly don’t think anyone reads blogs. It’s pretty funny, but when I told my roommate I might give blogging another try, she laughed at me and told me no one likes to read anymore. I think that’s true to a certain extent, but my mom pointed out to me that pottery has kind of interweaved itself into every part of my life and I kind of want a written record of what I am doing, so I guess I am back to blogging.

I think part of the reason why I quit blogging was it was so time consuming. Also that I would find myself literally trying to make every post perfect and I don’t think that was the point of blogging. Although, I think I can give myself a pass, I was 17 and had no clue what blog was since I had grown up way past the age of myspace and tumblr. But I have heard of enough myths and seen enough movies get an idea of what a blog is now.

I really want to write about my pottery and the processes that get me there. I think previously, I tried to only write about ceramics and that was it, but for me, its so intertwined into my life that if I only write about purely pottery, it gets just a little boring.

So what have a been up to? I’m in college now. I graduated from Allen, if by a miracle and a half you are reading from the last post. I left Texas and moved to Georgia and I go to Georgia Tech (Go Jackets). I study Materials Science and Engineering and just geek about ceramics. I research… not ceramics, but I think I might propose a research topic about ceramics…probably not good to get into it now.

I taught pottery for beginners at Georgia Tech for two years. I had a moderate amount of fun at the pottery center there until they closed down for renovations. I was moderately devastated, but if I was honest with myself, I was ready for a break. Not to say the pottery center at Tech wasn’t great, but I found myself being entertained by life and friends and the next think I knew, it got harder and harder to go and create and it felt like such a chore. That was new to me because I taught and all my energy and motivation to create something for myself just go zapped and I found myself miserable when I taught, miserable when I created and the work that I was producing to be extremely subpar.

Then corona happened and the studio shut down about 3 months early. I found myself at home with nothing to do and no one to teach. I reached out to the place where it all began and the next thing I know I’m throwing, having fun and pushing myself in a way I had not in a long time. Sona Knox is an amazing woman who knows me better than I know myself and she told me that I should keep creating and that was all the encouragement I needed. Here are some mugs I made for her. I miss her dogs so much. Here are a pictures of the art puppies I grew up with.

It’s a new style right? I kind of took it and ran with it. Oh yeah, so then I moved back to Atlanta because subleasing is a pain in the ass and school and whatnot and I was studio-less. That break that I felt ready for before corona suddenly felt like something I was no longer ready for. I think part of me is truly scared if I don’t keep creating, I will one day just never find the time or energy or money to go back to creating. So I found mudfire.

This studio is everything I have wanted and a little bit more. Without saying too much about it, I think it was the next step. I felt pushed and motivated to step up my pottery game and do something more. (I just read that last sentence outloud and boy do I sound like a nerd).

So here we are now. It is 1 am (sorry mom), Niki is playing softly in my ear (Spotify wrapped did a number on my soul) and I am writing. And thinking about how I want to revamp my website. Oh I also accumulated a lot of new stuff so I have an Etsy page now. But, I freaking promise there are so many things I can say about Etsy because I probably spend too much time pondering hypothetical Etsy questions.

What am I going to do with this website? I think I am going to talk about my process and pots. And also the process of developing my style, because I am still kind of developing my style and I can’t wait to just ramble about pots. And I hope none of my friends find this page because they have this knee jerk reaction to read stuff I’ve written out loud to me and I hate it. So much. But, I am so excited to hopefully maintain this website.

Here’s a video of me throwing at Mudfire.

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It’s a miracle but I survived Junior Year (barely). I have so much that has happened and so much that is up and coming and I thought I would just give a brief summary about my life since November of last year.

MAST was fun, although I didn’t see a lot, I got to meet many people including this cool lady who bough one of my bowls to make a drinking fountain for her cats. I got to create a bunch and both my auction pieces sold.

In December to about April, it was an intense hustle to create artwork for my portfolio for Advanced Placement 3D Art, which I have now submitted and posted the portfolio online so you can see what I have been doing. Scores come out in July so in the meantime, I’m slightly dreading the days and wish I could fast forward to July all at the same time.

Then in April, I attended Arts in Bloom which was so much fun and I have condensed so much. I probably sold 2 boxes of things. It was a great festival and I am so excited for next year.

After the show I started working on launching my online store which will be coming very soon. I am wrapping up the last piece and am close to launching.

In June, I am teaching 4 back to back to back to back summer camps for Jump Into Art and it’s been an exhausting but super fun first week. During this time I also started teaching a Friday Nights adults class from 6-9pm for all levels. Private lessons too.

I can’t wait for all the things happening!

 

 

 

Hi everyone! The McKinney Art Studio Tour is this weekend and I’m in it. Wow. Wow. Junior year is hard and I had little to no time to do anything but I have been prepping for MAST. MAST is this weekend: November 11 & 12. Please come and support your local artists. 

I am going to be at the McKinney Art House and all the stuff is in my contact. There is food…I hope that sways you. Anyways, there is so much going on and every artist has put forth so much effort into this and I can’t wait for it. Please come and look around and spread the word! 

Here is the link to the website : http://mckinneyartstudiotour.com/

Even if you can’t come, here is the website for the online silent auction. I am putting pictures of my pieces here so you can see what I have been working on.  http://www.biddingowl.com/MAST

I was doing an assignment for English and I was tasked to write an essay for a college application. I wrote about pottery and the journey about how I get here and I thought it would be worth posting on here to see how I got into art and pottery. When I was writing this I got teary eyed and reminiscent so there’s that. But here it is if you are interested:

Growing up, my father and I used to sit on couch and watch cartoons animated by Studio Ghibli, a well-known Japanese animation studio who created great movies such as My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service. My father would insist on me watching the films in Japanese even though neither of us understood a single word of the language. His explanation to this was that he did not want the subtitles to distract from the art and storyline.

What my father could not predict was how much influence art would later have on my life. When I moved to a new city, I had a tough time transitioning. My mother saw this and thought it would be a good time to enroll me into art class at a studio in McKinney so that I would feel more enthusiastic about transitioning to a new city.

That studio would be my second home and the owner of that little studio, Sona Knox, would not only be my mentor but a close friend who has pushed me to be a better artist. She opened the doors to a whole world of pottery and ceramics. Over the course of the past seven years, I would learn sculpting and throwing as well as firing techniques such as rakuing.

Starting out, I went to classes for fun. I went three hours a week, every week and would always make my mother wait for me after class because I could never keep track of time while I was there. While I was there, I met many great artists who had so much passion for their art that if they even shared a drop of it with me; I could create for a lifetime.

The big turning point of pottery was when I hit four and a half years. My long time mentor had finally decided to retire and she offered me a spot as a studio potter. This meant instead of paying her for classes, I paid her for rent and instead of her teaching me, she trusted me to push myself. I really went from student to artist when Sona took me to my first show. I had been to shows before but this time, I got to show off my skills to others and I really got noticed.

My first job ever was helping at an art camp. Magda Dia, the employer chose me because of my skill at throwing on the wheel. I was so proud of myself; I gotten my first paycheck and it was the first time I could pay for my supplies, rent and make a profit. I would later go from a helper to a full time teacher within the next two years.

Teaching pottery is an incredible experience. Art is difficult to teach; you have to teach enough to allow students to create but not set too many guildlines to destroy the creativity. Watching my students get so excited about the next project or feeling their anticipation right before they get their piece out of the kiln is a mixture of pride and happiness. Teaching children is not only fun, but it opened my eyes to see what it really means to have endless energy and believing in the impossible. However, teaching adults is my biggest challenge and my greatest sense of pride. Teaching adults is a lot harder than teaching children, children can imagine for days but adults are practical. Doing multistep projects are easier so the things that are created are unspeakably beautiful.

In June of 2015, I was approached by an artist to be a vendor at a local festival. She wanted me to sell my work and do a solo sale. I was speechless and swamped by paperwork. To sell pottery, you must have a sales tax license and after I applied for the seven or eight things needed to acquire this license, I had a business and was officially self-employed.

Note: 650 words is not enough to fit 6 years of pottery into.

There were so many things that pottery has brought me. But the biggest thing is the sense of accomplishment. When I was doing pottery in middle school, I volunteered at this Art Gallery tour called MAST( McKinney Art Studio Tour) and my memories of volunteering consists of Sona making fondue and Rocket and Daisy, Sona’s two golden retrievers, running around and getting pet by everyone, sitting in the cold trying to check everyone in and sitting and wishing that I could be in the show one day.

Chronologically there are so many details and so many things that happened at the right time or the right place, namely, opportunities that appeared and nice friends who would drive me around everywhere because I don’t have my license. There were so many shows and parties I went to that helped me meet the right people and long story short I ended up getting offered to be in the show.

I won’t talk about my first show because in all honesty it was just another show, but on a more elevated level. I sold a lot and ate a lot and hung out with my dear Brittney, who is a fellow artist, but it was really a great show. This year, I am once again in it.

As much as I love McKinney and the people in McKinney, I have to credit some of my success to Laura Helms, my art 1 teacher. I was always hesitant to take art in school because to get a grade on something that depends on my creativity and just art is so subjective. It didn’t sit right. However, I think the marking of a great teacher is someone who can push past these things and teach a great curriculum. She really pushed me into art contests and gave me constructive criticism on my pieces and for that I feel like I have grown as an artist.

Writing this college essay, makes me so reminiscent of everything that has been so blessed to have happened to me. And it is absolutely crazy that it’s not even near over. Pottery is definitely something that I will be doing until the day I physically can’t anymore and I aspire to bring art into everyday life.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, there have been so many people that I haven’t said thank you to enough. First and foremost, Sona and her husband Jim who have let me do crazy thing in their art house, make messes and do shows. I really don’t think I could ever say thank you enough. You have brought opportunities to me that I could never have dreamt of and taught me so so much over the past couple of years. There is literally no way I could ever repay you for that. Brittney, who I have gotten to know super well over the past two or three years, she is definitely my partner in crime. I got to go to shows and joke about driving your car and I know that if I ever go to an artist party, we can eat cheese and I can pretend to drink your wine and maybe fall asleep on your shoulder. Magda, thank you so much for offering me my first job. I still have the first paycheck from working a birthday party. It just shows so much has happened and thank you for giving me an opportunity to teach. Noriko and JB, I think I credit the two of you for my business. Without second Saturdays, I would have never had to apply for it. The endless opportunities you offer me are… I can’t even find the words. Tim, you have awed me and inspired me beyond belief There are just so many people, Cate and Renee who has been role models and who I got to observe teaching and had the pleasure of helping, Wendolin who I beat in a watermelon seed spitting contest but still loves me, Brigit Hauser who really told me to sit and think about pursuing art as a career, Lisa who taught me to think out of the box… the list goes on and on.

But I do need to thank my parents, mainly my mother who has dedicated so much time driving me to and from the Art House, and being so proud of my stuff. Endless support my parents put behind me is incredible. She really does make all the difference. Going to shows and dragging her friends, finding me commissions, she really does do it all. All of it. Everyday. Thanks mom, I love you.

So lately I have been having a ton of fun making time lapse videos on my phone. It’s a ton of fun to look at progress and also kinda weird to see what it looks like from the other side. I have the most ghetto setup (I stick my phone in clay and hope it holds up) but my phone is really nice so it makes up for some of the quality. Here are just some of my projects and I do have an instagram that is just dedicated to these sort of things: @rollingindirt

I have these cool ideas for my pieces that I need to submit for my class but I decided to throw some of my things in bulk and threw about 10 things in one go so here are some videos. The song is Closer by The Chainsmokers ft Hasley. and it was about 3.5 pounds per piece with Georgies Black Clay.

I originally made this piece first, which explains the camera falling when I wedged too violently. This is my favourite clay. It was the first clay I threw with years ago in which I thought to myself, “This is it, I could throw with nothing but this and I would be happy”. This is the B-Mix Clay from California and it is almost like fake porcelain except not as buttery. Porcelain is great; I especially love trimming with porcelain but throwing with it is difficult. It bends way too easily for my liking and I find that B-Mix is usually harder and rougher and allows me to pull more aggressively without ripping the wall straight off as well as puts up a good fight when centering.

Here is the same thing with a taller piece. The one draw back of Bmix is I try not to make big bowls or flatter items with this clay. The same goes with the black clay because of the lack of grog in the clay makes it prone to cracking and collapses when throwing and firing. There is a easy solution to that and it is to go buy some grog and wedge it into the clay before you throw. I love raku firing with this B-Mix but the temperature shock often times will crack the vessel so I buy the B-Mix with grog already mixed in to prevent that.

Well that’s my thought dump along with some videos of me messing around in the studio. Weirder posts coming soon~

Much Love,

Leila

 

When I started, I would critique my pieces and be very harsh on myself but my teacher always told me that it takes 80 pieces to make one perfect piece. I can safely say that I have made a lot of pieces but only a handful do I find have no flaws or love completely.

When I was at a workshop, I heard her talk about how she makes her workshopees do boot camp in which they throw 20 cylinders in an hour (5 mins a piece). I really wanted to do it and since I’m leaving for Seattle on Monday, I did this rather than start anything new. I can say this was a lot of fun and will definitely do this again. I gave myself 25 pieces of clay, a sponge, a metal rib and a wire.

I made 24 cylinders total and this is a great way to figure out how fast and how well I can throw cylinder. So this is a timeline to see when I hit my stride and fatigue over the course of an hour. Every one of these is roughly a pound of clay, although some are a little less and some are a little more.

My stride was 2 to around 8 or 9 but I started to fall off the boat at 9-10 but caught second wind at 13 to 16 and then hit my second fatigue. My only good piece after that was 23, and I totally blotched the last piece but I was trying to make the walls too thin. I faced a lot of common throwing difficulties and errors during this time because I was throwing for speed and just the very basic shape rather than something pristine that I would keep forever.

 This is my best cylinder that I made during the hour. I spent about 90 seconds on every cup and in total i spend about 55 mins (I got up to bring another piece in). I was incredulous that I could make a cylinder in 5 minutes yet it took me way less time.

Ok, the basic cylinder is the lifeline of pottery.  There is no other shape as crucial or as done more often than this cylinder. Everything is shaped from a cylinder or bent from a cylinder.This is my 3rd cylinder and it is a pretty good representation of a solid cylinder. the walls should be even all the way down and the bottom should be flat and compressed. the trim should have a bit of a thickness to it and that is to allow durability. The slight Thickness of the bottom helps the walls stay firm and tall. When doing taller pieces I always keep the bottom thick to allow for more stability. Mainly, next time I want to do this, I would love to have all mine look exactly like this.

This is my fifth cup that I threw and it shows a couple of throwing mistakes that I made. The most obvious mistake is the weird indent that was made into the wall. This is caused by a thin spot. When I was pulling I realised that the pressure on the bottom was too hard so I released the pressure causing an indent. Although this one was pretty minor and can be easily over looked, especially from the outside. However, since I only lingered there for a second so it wasn’t a big deal.

The second weirdness that happened was the uneven heights of the walls. The left wall is much taller than the right wall and that is caused by one of two things usually. The first one being that the clay wasn’t centered before it was opened or the second thing being that the clay was centered but when I opened I missed the center slightly. This is an easy fix, I would just needle tool the top part until the rim is even.

Thin spots are a bit of a harder fix, because thin spots have about a thousand different outcomes. The most common ones are the one above and this one. 

This is a torsion when the top of the cup weighs way more than the thin spot causing stress and a slight collapse (just like what high school does to me). The best thing to do in this situation is take a metal rib and run it along the sides until it kind of unfolds itself. A tall metal rib makes everything better because it strengthens the walls and pulls the moisture out of clay.

This multiple cylinder thing was very fun and I definitely do recommend people trying it. After I did get back from Seattle, I did film a short video of me throwing cups on repetition so enjoy 🙂

Much Love,

Leila

 

Next year, I am taking the AP 3D Studio Art which requires pieces of Concentration (which is done individually and follows a theme) along with pieces of Breadth which the teacher gives a theme such as repetition and must create a piece that represents that.

I recently finished sculpting my first piece for my concentration and although nothing is fired yet, I have finally finished adding things on to it. I think the best thing about this concentration portfolio is that I get to move away from creating work that must be usable and focusing more on a sculptural side. It has really been a while since I got to sit down and really get creative.

My theme is duality, which is the balance of everything. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing or you can always see goodness even in the depths of evil and other things like that has been my main focus.

My first piece is Contrasting Koi Fish. I have added scales to the fish but this is the basic gist to it.

So the first thing into making this was that I threw the bowl on the wheel using Georgie’s Black Clay from Oregon. I wanted the focus to be on the Koi fish rather than the actual vessel and the black clay gives beautiful results with dark, earth colors. The only thing about the black clay is moderation is key. The black clay has virtually no grit in it so drying slowly over the course of many many days is the way to go.

The two fish were sculpted in BMix which is almost like faux porcelain but since porcelain is a pain to work with and is super expensive right now, I opted for BMix and the Red Stoneware. I was originally was going to do one black and the other white but the vessel was already black.

The flower was added as a final touch sort of thing because without it, the piece seemed a little dull and without a purpose. The flower gives it a more elegant touch and ties the outside of the tray/bowl with the inside. The flower was made from white stoneware and red stoneware.

When working with a piece like this, I usually just judge to see what ties everything together. Balancing symmetry with asymmetry allows the audience to not be bored with the repetition. Since this picture I have added scales on the fish and have left it out to be bone dry. I pray for no cracks and none of the petals to fall off.

    Commissions

I didn’t realize how long this post is going but I also worked on commissions. It’s finally summer and I can update a little more about what I have been up to. This nice lady wanted these super tall vases for her mantle and she focused more on color rather than shape. She wanted two of them, one to be tall and thin and the other to be a bit more variety.

The smart thing to do would have been to test shrinkage but I kind of winged it and I might have to redo the first piece. This piece in the picture is the second piece and for sure this is making the final pass. I ran out of red stoneware so by the time I started this the first piece was already finished. The lady wanted both the pieces to be 16 inches tall and with the first piece i got it to be about 17 inches and then it shrunk to about 14 inches (Leila Fail). This piece two the right is about 20 inches so it will make the cut for 16 inches.

This piece is 2 pieces put together. The first piece is 10 pounds and the second piece is only around 4 or 5 pounds. I threw the first part and immediately threw the second part and added it on top. I then shaped both and hid the seam and set it outside to dry.

The only good thing about Texas summers is that I can finish a whole piece in one day. I made it first thing in the morning and had it sit outside until a tad bit under leatherhard. The only thing about that is the Amaco Plastibats tend to warp in direct sunlight so I got to play the fun game of find the shade. It gave me a heart attack because this thing can lean super easily.

Trimming something like this can be a challenge but since it is sitting tall on a mantle, it doesn’t need to thin, nice, refined bottom. The bottom would be better flat and have a bit of heft in it so that it can stand tall and sturdy. In this picture, this picture is already trimmed. After throwing, leave it on the bad and you can go back and just run a loop tool along the side until it is to your liking. To guarantee that my piece won’t loosen and pop off, I gave it a bit of skirt to suction it to the bat. I trimmed all that off later. After all of that, then I cut it off and put it on a board. Later, when it is bone dry, I can take a shammy, (A shamwow cut to fit a bat) and clean up the rough bottom edge when needed.

Finished results will hopefully be up soon, but it just depends on kiln cycles 🙂

-Leila

 

 

Here is a video timelapse of throwing two pieces together.