Friday, November 30, 2018

Perspectives

As I stand here watching you crossing the field
Something of my singularity is revealed
For the moon above you stays stuck in that tree
It doesn’t follow you.  It only follows me.

Saturday, November 24, 2018

Black Dogs


I once had a conversation about depression with a good friend. He was worried about me. He said that the "black dog" had visited him from time to time. Most of the time, maybe a "black puppy". A melancholy. Tolerable. Even useful to the creative mind.

But the art world is geared toward feeding the darkest of dogs. I think it's a false sense – a vestige of what used to be, shared mostly by folks who are not in the arts -- that the arts are a search for beauty. That may have once been true. It is a rapidly diminishing reality. 

What the art world values today tends more toward the negative, the naughty, the cynical, the dark. I remember listening to “Tales of a Red Clay Rambler” podcast interview Ben Carter did with Stephen Hill. Carter said one of the most telling things about contemporary culture and the arts…and he did so in the most off-handed manner that it belied a truth deep and accepted, but a truth that seems to have crept up on us unawares sometime in the last century. 

The observation Ben Carter made in his interview with Hill was this (and I paraphrase): “You seem to be one of the few well known ceramists who actually, intentionally tries to make beautiful pots.”

Wow.

Such an honest evaluation. And how true.

But we’re surrounded with negativity in the art world (not so much in the craft world where the community of potters has somewhat successfully fended off “art”). We have been unwittingly forced as creative people to believe that there is no meaningful distinction to be made between the twee of Thomas Kinkade and the grandeur of Frederic Edwin Church. To the contemporary critic, both are compressed – flattened -- into one naïve “pursuit of beauty”. And “good art” doesn’t go there. Art has moved on. Art explored beauty and found it wanting.

But if our compulsion is toward hope, if we want to pursue the positive, if we remain – counter to culture – hoping to believe it possible to grasp some truth in beauty, we’re probably going to need some help. Some support.
And we’re probably going to need to pick our feet up out of the mire from time to time and find some high and dry ground from which to gain fresh perspectives – especially when the coincidence of the dark world so perfectly coincides with social media.

My friend’s " black puppy" metaphor is pretty good. I’ve appropriated it for its usefulness. It pretty much describes my not infrequent melancholy.
But I've also got a vile temper that's easily provoked when my sense of entitlement to a good life gets threatened. As long as I can keep feeding that delusion of entitlement I'll probably be safe from dangerous depression. Maybe.

Family is, for me, not the thing to lean on. My family has suffered me the most. Depending on me has proven an exercise in pedaling a bicycle that has no chain. Still, for some reason -- possibly a dearth of alternatives – that family somehow continues to furiously pedal our tandem, in spite of an obvious lack of forward progress.

Over the past few years the dawning realization is this: I have lived a fairly solitary existence insofar as my livelihood didn't involve co-workers of any kind, rather, it involved days and months of solitary shop work. I'm a social guy but I happen to love that solitude -- my own music, books, thoughts. But that extravagance of solitude came with a downside: When I needed the help of "networking" it wasn't there. Social climbing -- even if but for the sake of financial security -- favors and always will favor who you know and not what you know.

That's one reason I've leaned a little too heavily on my connections with friends on the internet forums, social media etc. I felt a little less vulnerable and a little more connected to the possibility that I had the ear of at least somebody with life experience that might help me through mine.
Of course, I've also learned that most of that connectivity is pretty delusional too. Social media isn't a terribly honest communication. At its best it's friendly. But at its worst, that friendly is nothing more than telling us what we want to hear.

For instance, I’m often complimented on my facebook postings. That's one of those delusions I liked to have fed by social media. My smarter me doesn't listen, but there's still at least a vestigial adolescent in me that craves affirmation in the valueless pursuits -- music, art, writing -- that define me.
Anyway, the social internet is of great value if you can find a small group – especially one that crosses often into the 3D world – and especially one that fosters differing opinions and eschews our tribal instincts to cloister. Such groups are harder – harder to find and harder on our egos. But they often get honest. I love that honesty when I'm not hating it and I hate it when I don't love it. 

The slough of despond that the art world is constantly shoving us into doesn’t end well, and the honest hand that reaches down to help us out of it is quite often not welcome. It might be to our advantage to maintain the bridges we’ll need to go over it. It will always be there. The helping hands might not be.

Saturday, November 17, 2018

Hand-Me-Downs


I've been the recipient of an out-of-the-blue act of kindness from a stranger.

The opening of the stranger's email began:

"Carolanne told me David Shaner was one of the potters who earned your respect."

...and what followed was the attachment of a cookbook of David Shaner recipes -- a collection passed on from the man himself.

It made my day. What a thoughtful kindness. It afforded me a new and encompassing sense of connectedness to the world of potters. It's a remarkable fraternity.

Oh, the "stranger" I'm referring to -- the fellow who sent me that email -- wasn't a stranger to me. I've known who Jack Troy was since I was a teenager reading Ceramics Monthly in my college library. I bought "Salt Fired Ceramics" in around 1980 and from there grew to appreciate a potter -- Mr Troy -- uncommonly able to communicate in written word the joys and trials of working with clay.

But I had no idea Mr Troy knew who I was, much less that he might know that I considered myself a debtor to the life's work of David Shaner. Apparently the internet has made the world just small enough to make such knowing possible.

But Mr Troy's generosity didn't stop there with that email.. A few weeks later I got a package in the mail. In it were two of Jack's books -- one I didn't even realize had been published called "inscapes" -- a collection of thoughts that David Shaner found meaningful enough to collect, all compiled and edited by Jack Troy.

I would never claim some personal connection to David Shaner. I never even met the man. But his were among the first pots to ever inspire me as a teenage potter. I had a photo of Mr Shaner hanging in my first 8' X 16' pottery shed, and carried it with me to my next studio.

I couldn't begin to count the number of pots I've made with David Shaner glazes selling their worth. Such pots were a collaboration in which I clearly drew the long straw.

But though I never met Mr Shaner, through Jack Troy's book I was allowed a glimpse into the man. That glimpse confirmed a kinship. Okay, a kinship as asymmetrical as the pots we made "together", but a kinship profoundly meaningful to me.

If you have any way to obtain a copy of Jack Troy's "inscapes", I highly recommend the book. You can easily read it in one sitting. But that won't be the last time you read it. I guarantee it.

I owe Jack Troy a huge debt of gratitude for introducing me to one of my lifelong heroes.

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Mr Obvious




Funny how you can play the same chords for years and never hear the obvious song in the changes. 

You can eat peanut butter and you can eat dill pickles and you can eat the two separately for years and never guess how perfect they are together between bread.

I've used this clay and this glaze for years and never thought about letting the clay show through.

Friday, September 28, 2018

And I Quoth

RAVIN'
by Edgar Plastic Kaolin

Once upon a midnight dreary
Eyes rimmed red, bloodshot, and bleary
Again my kiln is in no hurry
Waiting on the cones once more
So far I’ve barely bent cone 4
Only this and nothing more

Nodding off just kills my neck it
Dawns on me I ought to check it
Pull the peep hole from the back it
Shows a slightly bent cone four
Still a slightly bent cone four
Only this and nothing more

Maybe I’ll adjust the damper
This kiln's causing me to hanker
For a kiln I need not pamper
Computer-controlled so to ensure
I’d never again be stuck at four
Just cone four and nothing more

I’ll admit, I’m mildly pissed off
A month’s production will be kissed off
If this rocket never lifts off
But stays right here, stuck at cone four
Only four, and nothing more
It’s no wonder I stay poor

Sunday, September 23, 2018

Sixty Minute Man

Quick thought: Can you make more than you can sell, or can you sell more than you can make?




That's a good question -- maybe the best question ever asked -- and you're the only person in 40 years who has ever asked it. It really has been one of the hardest parts about navigating this business. A concrete answer has been one of the most vexing things to come up with in my entire business life as a potter.

I could probably write nearly a book-length explanation, but to sum it up as well as I can, however incompletely: I've always had more market than product.

That's really being in the catbird seat of business, idn't it?


Well, no.

It's not.  It's because I've always shaded toward the near side of the invisible but abrupt line in pottery that divides "appropriately affordable" and "Priced like precious art".

In my 40 years I have seen more potters fail by jumping to the wrong conclusion about their raised prices. That is, as they raised their prices the pots still sold.....but they never did the math to see if, in the long run they were:

1. still making an adequate profit from that pot in, say, a year's time (they were pricing the pot as a one-off rather than a product. They were looking at each sale as an auction, not as a retail product.) And because they weren't looking long term, they failed to detect the lost of income per item. It was hard to detect because they still sold the item. It didn't stop. It slowed. Maybe imperceptibly unless they had some device in place to catch such things.

2. Considering the differing markets that make up a typical pottery business. We sell in multiple markets -- not just regionally, but also types of market. 

For example, almost every potter I know has to put together a show schedule of varied shows from "A" shows (those juried shows that are nearly impossible to get into, but when you do they afford a potter the very best in markets and a premium price is almost expected), "B" shows (those juried shows that a potter may not get into every year, but of which there are many alternatives such that doubling up on jurying for several on a weekend will likely net you at least one entry. Those are where your price is probably going to be more realistically set for a general public), and "C" level shows (maybe a local show that, due to the lack of overhead, they still are worth it for at least a few shows in a schedule. Sometimes these shows turn out surprisingly great. But often, just as the "A" price would prohibit sales at a "B" show, "B" prices would probably slow sales at a "C" show).


3. ....and then there's internet sales.

Anyway, as I saw the accidental attrition that hit my fellow potters as they started believing their own press, I decided there wasn't a season that I could really afford not to sell well. So my prices have always been on the conservative side.

Even saying that, though, I'm still fuzzy on it because I look at my current prices and, yes, most of the time my contemporaries think I'm underpriced (and some are even a little angry about it. Competition, you know. I outsell most of them most of the time)....but my prices are what I would have considered "precious" just 20 years ago. I'm priced at the level at which 20 years ago I saw the first exit of overpriced potters.

But it's mostly guesswork. And the hard and fast rules that apply to retail have a bearing, but they're not nearly as easily applied when:

1. you aren't just the retailer -- you are the manufacturer.

2. what you make isn't -- I never remember the word for something "duplicatable" as opposed to something made one at a time -- like the difference between being able to write a book (a one-time endeavor) but then getting royalties from the copies vs. making each individual pot one piece at a time.

3. you are in a field where notoriety (small group fame) can influence price.


It would be easy, for instance, to look at my situation of perpetually selling more than I can make and simply conclude that I need to raise my prices. And there's a cold-and-calculating aspect to that too. That is, if you aren't getting enough for the work then you simply shouldn't be doing either that particular body of work or that career.

Easy said. Not so easily done. There aren't a whole lot of other offers out there. I'm looking, but have been for some time now.

Some of the advice has been to take a job -- any job. I get that. Declare bankruptcy. Sell the house. Rent. Kill the dog and cat. Send the wife off to live with her sister. I get it. I've listened to Dave Ramsey.

Maybe it will come to that. I don't know right now. I'm navigating in the dark. Without a rudder. The other tough reality is waking up at 62 and realizing that my entire life has been dedicated to skills that don't make money -- even if I happened to be better at those skills than the average Joe. That's a tough one. Especially for a cocky guy like me. I'm suddenly the frat boy who is getting his comeuppance at the end of the revenge of the nerds movie. I don't know Jack, but I've always thought I was smart. Guess again.

Additionally, I know I'm going to have to sell this house -- in spite of the fact that when I lose this house, I lose the ability to make a living as a potter (this is where the kiln is).

And like most of my problems, it isn't quite a simple one. For instance, I may or may not be upside down on it. And not knowing that makes it difficult to know exactly how to approach selling it.

See, on the one hand I could paint the very best picture -- if this house was anywhere else in the county (any place other than the industrial park in which it sits) it would easily be worth north of $200K (rural Indiana housing market isn't like big city real estate prices. A million dollars really buys you something around here). And it is one of the most unique properties in the whole county -- it is zoned I-3 BUT it also has a variance for commercial...AND....it is grandfathered in as a residence. That means unlike almost any other acre in all of Warsaw, a buyer could come in here and do any kind of business they wanted AND live here.

Additionally, it is a very attractive property with its historical house, decorative fences, mature trees, nature conservancy across the street. It's got curb appeal.

BUT...

Knowing that the next occupant of this property might very well be an industry that levels the buildings and rebuilds, we've felt somewhat hesitant to improve the place. Add to that the fact that the house is going through the 20 year thing -- needing new furnace, roof, water heater, kitchen....it's just not that attractive to look at as a ready-to-move-into residence.

I don't know how to solve that. Since I'm in debt I can't really do the improvements anyway....but if I can't then, sadly, I lose even more in the sale.

But, yes. We're going to have to sell the place. We can't afford to live here. If I owned it outright I wouldn't even be worried. In fact, if I'd gotten this place paid off before the crash of 2008, I'd be looking at a pretty comfortable retirement of making a reasonable number of pots per year and playing music at the Goshen Jam on the weekends. But that's wishful thinking. That didn't happen. The pots still sell well but the amount of money needed to maintain this level of debt load is just not possible.

Friday, September 21, 2018

Taking a Flyer



With a HUGE helping hand from Nancy Gallagher (who virtually did all the layout work) and my friends who helped with proofing and advice -- Bonnie Blandford, Julie Kradel, Jon Hecker, Don Ament, L.J. Mattingly. And to Sara Laitala who got the ball rolling on the whole thing (whether she knew it or not).
I just got these from the local printing company.

Thursday, September 20, 2018

Blowin' Away


You ride the wind right up until 
it suddenly dawns on you that you're chasing it.

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

We're IN With The IN Crowd


Dar and I had recently been discussing the fact that we're pretty happy living in Indiana. Oh, we don't have anything really tying us to the area except for a lot of inertia.

We don't have family in Warsaw. There are a few friends we'd miss if we moved away, but being self-employed potters has kept us relatively isolated -- not lots of free time for socializin'

Besides that, though, Indiana
is a safe place to live. You could say that Indiana lacks the spectacular extremes. We don't have mountains. Our "coast" is Lake Michigan, not an ocean. We aren't the hottest in summer or the coldest in winter.

We do have pleasant hills and hardwood forests with dazzling autumn colors. We do have prairie with its wide open spaces and big skyscapes.

But we don't have dangerous, poisonous, vicious animals. One of the few places Dar and I have considered moving is western North Carolina. But we intend to run (optimistically) or walk (realistically) our dogs until the day we die. And I confess it's an intimidating thought to round a bend with a dog on leash and come face to face with a bear.

So, I'm thinking Indiana is a safe and happy place to stay.

Until this morning. While running in the dark along the greenway I heard the rustling of some small animal re-positioning itself on the ground about four feet from me. I'd darn near stepped on it. Flashes of white were all I could detect in the darkness.

I am an old man but I instantly turned into Usain Bolt. Nothing like the threat of a skunk to get you moving in the morning. I went from 0 to 60 instantly.


Today I got lucky. But Indiana is a very dangerous State to live in.


Sunday, September 16, 2018

Doppler Gangers




Rolling Stone Magazine posted yet another "10 Greatest Albums Of The Rock Era" lists.  Nobody agrees with it.

There are only so many ways to express the reality that it is nearly impossible for any popular art form to register the same to any generation other than the one that produced it. 

If it does, it is with a doppler effect of distortion advancing ahead and trailing behind it. Even if a next generation embraces the art, it won't be for the same reasons. The art won't elicit identical feelings down the line. 

And it will be re- and re- and re- interpreted if the original art said much of anything at all to begin with

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

The Scales Fall Off

Sunday afternoon I was set up at an art fair in Milwaukee and talking pots with fellow potter, Brian Beam.  For a long time it has vexed me that I lacked a way of explaining what I find so visually pleasing about Jeff Unzicker's large pieces that I don't find similarly appealing in equally large pots.

Thinking out loud with Brian, I think I finally found a way of explaining it. It's the same thing I find so appealing about Jane Graber's work -- as ironic as that may sound if you are aware of both Jane's and Jeff's work.

See, they represent total opposite ends of the size spectrum. While Jeff's pots are monumental, Jane's are miniature. 

But what I find so appealing about both of their pots is that they are proportioned so perfectly that scale is somewhat incidental to the aesthetic appeal. They'd be good pots at any size.  

And neither making a piece huge nor making it tiny will magically transform a poorly considered shape into a beautiful piece of pottery.


Friday, August 10, 2018

A Novel Consideration


If Ross Poldark had been a potter
He would have, of course, lacked
The time to ride horseback
(To the swelling orchestral soundtrack)
Up and down the Cornwall coast waters

If Ross Poldark had been a potter
I can hear fair Demelzam
As she ups and tells ‘im
The fate that befells him
“You’re workin’ harder than you oughter”

If Ross Poldark worked with hands in clays
He’d have been quite enthused
If his mine would be used
To find cornwall stone fused
With the copper to color his glazes

If Ross Poldark made pottery too
Fair Elizabeth might ask
Putting Ross to the task
To make her a flask
“But, Ross, do you have it in blue?”

If pottery was Ross Poldark’s work
The need would be rare
(Though we like him to bare
His chest full of hair)
For Ross to go and strip off his shirt

If clay tested Ross Poldark’s mettle
His hat would be cool
For holding his tools
But he’d still have to fool
With a wheel that he had to pedal


Thursday, August 2, 2018

Straight Rows/Crooked Branches


The jury is still out on whether or not it saved me time. It can't be proven one way or the other. I can't have chosen one road and simultaneously know what might have happened had I chosen the other.

But as I headed toward Minnesota last weekend, I couldn't help but notice that the oncoming (eastbound and southbound) lanes of the highways I traveled were parking lots. Tens of miles long traffic jams.

I determined to travel home on blue highways only.

And even if I thus lost the time battle, I won the battle to fill my life and my eyes with more beauty than I can now convey.

Henderson MN might be the most beautiful small town I've ever driven through. At least, its main drag is in the running for that title. Especially in the dawn hours with light fog filling the river town with added atmosphere.

I bypassed Chicago by going south -- latitudinally level with home - and driving, first through the winding county roads that thread back and forth through the Kankakee River valley...

...and then on straight-as-an-arrow county roads, at once walled off by head-high corn, and then opening up to ten mile vistas of green. Off in the distance every sneaker creek gives itself away by growing tall white sycamores to lace it.

And there are the culvert-size "bridges" and old rail crossings that come up unexpectedly, launching the van nearly airborne.

All the homes tell stories to an imagination like mine. There are those of new construction that tell me that though I haven't seen a town in 50 miles, I'm surely close to one...

...and the hundred year old places that remind me that the road I'm now racing down at 60mph was once -- and not that long ago -- not much more than a dirt trail.

Take the long way home. You won't regret it.

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Home Court Advantage


 Got an early start on the day -- out in the shop at 5 ayem in the morning making vases. After 40 years of doing this you'd think I'd have learned something. I have. I learned that after 40 years I can still have a bad day at something I've done a million times.

I couldn't throw the vases at my boss's house on her wheel with her lighting and her stool. Making anything else I can sort of adjust to her equipment. But the vase form is just too demanding -- especially in porcelain. Porcelain de-laminates. If pulled to fast, it separates into "sheets" of clay that come off in your hands. But if you play it too safe, you can't get the height. Or you get a twist.

Her wheel has a pedal with a very un-smooth throw. Imagine a car with an accelerator pedal that sticks. You're in a parking lot and you are inching into your space but you need to accelerate just a tad....except that the pedal sticks so that the force needed to un-stick it is too much and you run into the car ahead.

It's like that without the hitting-the-car-in-front-of-you thing. If you're sensing a twist in the clay, you decelerate the wheel immediately but gradually. A sticking pedal decelerates it too completely and then the compensation for that is in speeding back up too rapidly.

I tried nine times and failed. That's the most failure since the months in 1976 when I was first learning.

So I got out early.

   My wheel. 
       My stool. 
           My lighting.


Monday, June 18, 2018

What If


But then, what if this?

What if yours is the very voice listened for?
What if it is this very fact: You can't carry the tune?
And your drummer isn't quite in time?
What if it is your sound that, though you try,
Never comes out twice the same?
What if it’s your part in the whole
By which he enjoys your congregation?

Oh, I see.
You thought it was an offering
Spotless. Without blemish
Then perhaps you’ve not yet heard
This bit of good news
The offering was already given and accepted
Join in the gift
We’re unwrapping it now

But then, what if this?

What of your inability to paint inside the lines?
Or your inability to escape them?
In all your color-blind
Can’t-draw-a-straight-line skills
Or can only draw them straight foibles?
What if it’s your part in the whole
By which he enjoys his creation?

Oh, I see.
You thought it was an offering
Spotless. Without blemish
Then perhaps you’ve not yet heard
This bit of good news
The offering was already given and accepted
Join in the gift
We’re unwrapping it now

But then, what if this?

What if you don’t throw hard?
Or can’t shoot straight?
Or won’t run long? ...or much longer, anyway?
Or can’t jump far?
Shank ‘em? Toss up air balls? Choke?
But what if he enjoys watching you try
As much as you do?
What if it’s your part on the team
By which he enjoys your vocation?

Oh, I see.
You thought it was an offering
Spotless. Without blemish
Then perhaps you’ve not yet heard
This bit of good news
The offering was already given and accepted
Join in the gift
We’re unwrapping it

Thursday, May 31, 2018

Square Pegs & Pots

Observe 
A true horseman
Expert in the saddle
In his nonchalance

He appears born to it
Clearly doing just what
He oughter

But 
Take, for instance,
A ship in a bottle
You just know
It didn’t sail into there
So how did I end up
A potter?

Monday, May 28, 2018

Sitting In The Catbird Seat

 It's quiet in the shop at 5:30 ayem-in-the-morning. Except that it's not this morning. I opened the front windows to the social media chattering, whistling, popping, and general vocal mayhem that is the catbirds nesting in the crab apple tree that hangs over the shop.


It's nice to have company.

To Dance


He was a graceless man. 

The neighborhood kids called him "Plug". It fit him. He was stubby like a fireplug. If he dressed well, I never saw it. And he was too much of a character actor to ever be called "handsome". He passed his anachronistic military haircut on to his sons -- one of those sons was my friend growing up.

He shouted. Or he growled. That's because it's hard to shout around the stub of a cigar.
His wife tamed the family. Good thing, too. There were daughters.

Growing up, one rarely speculates the romance that brought our parents generation together. The world starts the day we are born and everything that came before just was.

And then I saw them dance. Plug and the wife out on the floor at a family wedding. The transformation was almost shocking. How could Plug and the wife suddenly become Fred and Ginger? How could they move so beautifully together? 


Dancing is an intimacy that even the most staid and modest are not embarrassed by. We know what's being acted out and yet we witness it with joy and without a blush. 

Plug will always be Plug. I'll still remember him puttering around his lawn. But I know now that he's not without grace.

 Abundant grace.

When Soft Happens

  
The clay I'm throwing today is so soft that I can plunge my hand into a 25lb slug of it and as quickly as I withdraw my hand the clay fills the void.

I inadvertently set a 25lb bag of this clay over a crack in the concrete floor of my shop for a few seconds. By the time I reached for it again it had slipped almost entirely into the crack. If it wasn't for that little twist tie that closes the bag, I might not have recovered the clay at all.

When I threw it down on the wedging table it splashed.


 I can only assume that when the clay factory was mixing this batch of clay up they did so as your typical one-part-per-million holistic apothecary might add his placebo into solution. I'm sure they added clay into the water when they were making this batch. I mean, I assume they did. It's not JUST water. It's at least cloudy.

The only way I've been able to throw shapes out of it at all is by joining it in hypostatic union (a term I appropriated from my college theology classes for its useful ambiguity. Don't worry, though. The theologians won't be offended at my pilfering their term. They don't understand what it means either)...
....anyway, I joined the clay in hypostatic union with a cloud of dust that I keep swirling above my wheel.

So, this lump of clay is lying on a psychiatrist's couch and he says, "Hey doc, I can't help but feel I'm being manipulated."

I'm torn with my choices regarding this wet clay. I may have to leave it to air dry for a while and then wedge it back up. Or I might put it in a very large tub and soak in it for a while while I ponder the problem.

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Care & Cleaning Instructions for Pete's Shirt


The discussion on pricing continues.  Tony added this post into the mix.

 
Most potters I know who are trying to sustain their life in the clay world aren’t wondering that a mug can sell for $50 or even $100…or even $1,000.  They know that a shirt can sell for $1 (Salvation Army), $25 (L.L.Bean) or $1,000 (Purchased from the Elvis Presley estate auction) .  And they know that they’d treat each of those shirts with commensurate care.
So, they’re not wondering that a mug can sell for a lot of money.  What they are wondering is more specific:

1.  What makes a mug worth $50?
 
2. And they are asking question #1 with a mind toward the follow-up question: “Can I make a mug that sells for $50?”
 
3. After answering questions 1 & 2:  If I know what might make a mug sell for $50, and I do make that mug that sells for $50, am I getting paid a reasonable sum – not for the value of that one mug – that one piece -- but toward a goal of making a reasonable living from the profits gained by selling a mug for $50. 
 
4. In other words (question #3), “Can I sell MUGS (plural) for $50 and make a living from those mugs?  Can I sustain a market for $50 mugs for a reasonably extended period of my clay career?
 
5.  And will making $50 mugs advance my career?  Will I make only those mugs or will I make other things?

6.  And if I’m making other things of which mugs will be but a part of my inventory…am or will I be able to pay myself equally (or nearly enough so) for, say, my pitchers, or my bowls, or my doo-dads, or my what’s-its?
 
Most potters will never be able to avail themselves of the stratospheric “collectible” market.  Their phones aren’t jingling with calls from Charlie Cummings or Garth Clark to put on a $50 mug exhibit.  Most potters aren’t going to be asked to present a workshop at NCECA or Wooster or Ella Sharp or anywhere else for that matter. 

In fact, though there are any number of potters who aspire to that end ("...oh, please, please, please Charlie...won't you give me a call?!"), I suspect there are just as many or more who aspire to the seclusion of their potteries and their kilns and their production, and who relish the interaction with the open market of pottery consumers  – those who want to live and use the stuff.

And most potter’s experience in the world of potters-selling-to-other-potters looks a bit more like potters-trading-with-other-potters.  It’s a zero-sum game, not a business model. 
I’m one of the lucky ones and I thank God daily for that.  I couldn’t appreciate the kindness of my fellow potters more than I do when they honor me by buying my pots.  They’ve pulled my butt out of the fire several times with timely purchases, even. 

But in my world of clay, as much as I love my fellow potters, I don’t see them as a sustainable market for my work. In fact, I mostly see them as partners-in-life who I absolutely need to survive this perilous but utterly fulfilling life in clay.  

No potter is an island entire of himself.