[Clayart] My clay story

[vincepitelka at gmail.com]

Hi Ivy - 
I can understand how cathartic it was getting all that down on paper.
Thank-you for sharing it with us.  I enjoyed every word of it.  I've always
felt sorry for people who retire and don't know what to do with themselves,
and it must be nice looking forward to scaling back your work and then
retiring at some point in the future, knowing that you'll be able to immerse
yourself in ceramics to your heart's content.  
- Vince

Vince Pitelka
Potter, Writer, Teacher
Chapel Hill, NC
vincepitelka at gmail.com 
www.vincepitelka.com 
https://chathamartistsguild.org/ 

-----Original Message-----
From: Clayart <clayart-bounces at lists.clayartforum.com> On Behalf Of Ivy
Glasgow via Clayart
Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2025 12:20 AM
To: clayart at lists.clayartforum.com
Cc: Ivy Glasgow <studio at ivyglasgow.com>
Subject: [Clayart] My clay story

I will share this lurker's clay story, which is also most of my life story.
There are some false starts and waiting periods here, so this is not the
happiest tale. I make my living as a technical writer now, so this won't be
the shortest story either. But we all needed some reading material this
week, right?

1970-something. I couldn't tell you when I first felt the joy of making clay
objects and then seeing their transformation through fire. All I can tell
you is that before I was in first grade, I was already hooked for life. I
would run out in the rain and liquify the clay soil of the backyard with my
bare feet and then form my new clay into lumpy things. My dad contributed to
my interest by allowing me to "fire" my little backyard mud snowmen in the
coals when he barbecued. (My mother must have been incredibly patient with
both of us and our messes.)

At a very early age, maybe 5, I begged my parents into sending me to every
community clay class that they could find. I tried but didn't stick with the
gymnastics, soccer, ice skating or other extracurriculars. Just clay. What
luck, we were able to find at least a few months of clay class every year,
in different venues. The diversity of these classes was remarkable and
formed my understanding of the versatility of ceramic art.

In Bay Village at the crafts center, we made little things like ashtrays and
little animals. I just loved having real clay in my hands. I was in awe of
the slab roller when I was barely tall enough to see its table. If we asked
nicely, the teachers would roll out beautifully burlap-textured slabs for
us. I never succeeded in making the tall cylinders with my little hands, but
I loved trying. We were allowed to use the kick wheels, though with my
juvenile legs it wasn't practical for me.

In one class in a very patient woman's basement, 8 or so of us third-graders
wove big clay baskets and made little critters. She was so dedicated to
teaching us the craft, that she hosted a pit firing as our end-of-class
celebration. Awesome.

In classes the Beck Center, we got prompts on what to make of unglazed terra
cotta. More little critters and some abstract representations of things that
were close to the heart. This was mostly hand-building with a few carving
and stamping tools, a slab roller, and hand-held extruders. We didn't get to
use the electric wheels; they were reserved for the Big Kids.

There were other formal classes that I can't remember. Raku, and kick
wheels, it's been too long.

My grandmother once allowed me to assist with painting her little Mayco
bisque creatures, mice and pigs and little baskets. After our shared
disappointment with my messy and chaotic color schemes, that idea was
discontinued!

Sadly, we had very little clay curriculum in school. We kids did things like
macaroni art and seed art, but almost nothing with clay.

1980-ish. When I was about 11, my dad found a used kiln and an electric
pottery wheel somewhere in Michigan, and moved them into our basement for my
further clay pursuits.

This bodacious homemade "electric wheel" - I sure hope an old timer on
Clayart will recognize its description and immediately know who made it! It
was constructed of a massive steel flywheel, a tractor seat, and a
home-welded metal frame. The frame was short like an electric wheel, not
tall like a kick wheel. The motor was big and fast, mounted to on a metal
arm below the seat. Push down on the arm with your foot, and a rubber wheel
would contact the flywheel and accelerate it. Release the arm, the motor
would fall away, and the momentum of the flywheel would carry the wheel
along. Maybe if you were skilled enough and tuned the machine to eliminate
wobbles, it would have worked. I wasn't, so I never made more than an
ashtray with it. No idea what the folks did with it later- perhaps it is
still kicking around the Midwest somewhere.

I'm not passionate about lumpy ashtrays, so hand-building was my joy. I
liked making free-spirited closed forms with spiraling 'hair' and attempting
(and somewhat succeeding) with ideas like inserting stained glass windows
and copper pipes through the closed forms. I still have some of these
around. I love that they remind me of the folks who told me that I
"couldn't" do this or that this was "impossible". Their unbounded creativity
(in hindsight) amazes me at this point.

1980s. I took classes at the art institute while in high school. I went
through all their high school classes and finally was allowed to enroll in
college level ceramics one summer. What a revelation that was, with real
curriculum, tools, and glazes. That class didn't participate in firings, so
getting back our finished high-fired and raku pieces was like Christmas
morning.

1988. My goal was to study ceramics in college. I wanted to go to Alfred! On
the other hand, my parents very much wanted me to pursue something that
would be identifiable as a professional career and pay a decent salary. My
dad was pretty insistent that I follow in his footsteps and become a
materials engineer. While there's no doubt that it would have been cool to
work at NASA like he did, 16-year-old me found engineering impossibly dorky
and I dismissed it out of hand. Our lose-lose compromise was architecture.
(If only I had known that I could have gone into ceramic chemistry at
Alfred, I probably would have done that for the win-win.)

1990. So off to college in So Cal. What I didn't know is that architecture
is an all-consuming major and profession. I barely had time to breathe
during architecture school, much less to double-major in art. Though the art
school shared space with architecture, I only managed to fit in five or so
art classes during the five year program, and none of them were ceramics.

I confess, a few times I sneaked into the ceramics room at night and made
random things. I planted them like cowbirds on the class firing shelves next
to the objects of much higher artistic value. They fired my pieces anyways.
What fun to go undetected amongst the "real" art.

1995. Upon graduation, I was driven to succeed in my chosen career! I wanted
to be the youngest licensed architect ever. I completed my series of exams
and the interview before my 27th birthday, which is a tremendous
accomplishment that I'm still proud of. I applied the same energy to my
career, trying to excel, coveting that starring role as Junior Designer, and
never quite reaching that mark. I pretended not to notice the rampant sexism
that held me back, and pressed forward with my career, doing more and more.
(I was so damn exhausted, y'all.)

2004 By this time I was fully disillusioned with my career, ground down by
the sexism and had a permanent spasm in my back and neck. I realized that I
would never be a recognized Designer at a firm, never be on a magazine
cover, and I was ready to call it quits. I was good enough to be a
nuts-and-bolts production architect, seeing as how my resignation made my
boss cry, but I wasn't at the top of the talent pool, so I wasn't satisfied.

2005. If you remember 2005, I was lucky enough to sell my first house at the
top of the market. I headed off to the wilds of Eastern Oregon to find
myself. I really needed the break and the reset. About six months in, the
spasm in my neck finally released, I was well rested and felt about two
inches taller. I got busy gardening and renovating my house and set up a
studio.

I might not have found myself out there, but I did find Clayart! I got going
with clay puttering, but didn't really have a direction. I was just making
QLT's and 'stuff' and selling it out of my house. I learned about glaze
chemistry through Clayart and books like MC6G and Robin Hopper's, and began
formulating colors, but I wasn't really passionate about one branch or
another of the ceramics world.

In the course of renovating my home, I could not find tiles that I liked. I
decided that I must not be the only one who wanted fresh designs and
modernist tiles, and so I set off to make a go of it as a tile maker. I
worked up my designs, glazes, samples, and started making display boards to
shop around to the tile showrooms. I set up a website and my current email
address studio at ivyglasgow.com<mailto:studio at ivyglasgow.com> to create a
professional image. Started sending out postcards to showrooms and I got a
few bites. I could see the glimmerings of success ahead of me.

2007. Several showrooms had agreed to include me in their offerings and a
mortar manufacturer wanted to sponsor me in creating my display boards. I
was included in the Lark 500 Tiles book. WOW- what amazing validations of
both my craftsmanship and my design skills. I had really, really needed
that. Of course, right about then, I ran out of money. I simply couldn't
float myself through till the tile business took off.

So ultimately I "found myself" by realizing that being an architect was A-OK
for supporting myself, I just needed to accept that I wouldn't be the
Designer or the top dog. I unsubscribed from the shiny architecture
magazines and resolved to try not to work myself to the point of burnout.

2008. I went back to the city and joined a big firm. Good money, interesting
projects, and I was well-respected enough. Of course, the studio was left
behind at the country house. I took a wheel-throwing class at a local studio
and finally learned to make vessels. It was a great couple of years of
learning that culminated with the privilege of participating in a firing at
the noborigama in Grass Valley.

2010. Life happened. I got divorced, ran out of classes to take, lost the
country house with the studio, fell in love again, lost a friend to suicide,
sold the city house, moved again, got busy with work again, lost a friend to
cancer, and could barely keep up with life, let alone making pottery.

2012. I found space in a local collective studio and set up my equipment
there. I was enjoying it at first, but the experience soured over time. Some
criticized me sharply for being a hobbyist and for selling work at the
annual show, which made it hard for me to enjoy myself there anymore. I
bailed and got even more hate for taking my own slab roller with me.

2017. I set up a studio in my current house but barely had time to use it.

2020. So many people had cool 'pandemic projects' at home but I was too busy
with work to do that. I had a big, high-profile project at my firm, and I
spent nearly 2 years on it.

2021. Fourteen-ish years into my 'new' job, I'd climbed to a high rank in my
office. As I became a manager, then a principal, there were new challenges
to take on, which took more of my time.  Meanwhile, I got farther and
farther from the technical/ production work that nourished me. I was looking
for another change.

2022. Just over two years ago, I reached a point of confidence that allowed
me to leave the firm and start my own part-time business writing
specifications and doing sustainability consulting. Two of my favorite parts
of the technical side of the business. Now I work for architects, mostly on
large projects.

2023. Consulting part-time was supposed to free up my time enough to allow
me to activate my studio and return to the joy of making things. But running
a business is a big new challenge for me. I've been more successful than I
planned to be- I've even had to hire an admin assistant. My partner is now
fully retired and we are free to travel the world, so we have done a lot of
that with our free time in the past two years.

Now. I long to make more ceramics but rarely have/make the time. Not to say
I've made nothing in the last two years. I made a bunch of "ollas" with
custom lids for our garden. There are owls and Shrek heads and ducks and
wizard hats that are cheery to see between the vegetables. I've gotten
really excited about making lamps and I'm working my way through replacing
all of the lamps in our home.  I currently only fire my big kiln about twice
a year; I'd love to do more, but two firings is immeasurably better than no
firings.

The future. Over the next ten-ish years I plan to ramp down my consulting
business and eventually close up shop. Over that time, I will ramp up with
ceramics work. I will probably not try tile making as a business again,
unless I am doing an Ann Sacks-like thing where I design tiles and then
license them to a manufacturer. I am past 'needing' to sell things, so I
plan to make and sell (if there are buyers) lamps, ollas, mugs and other
things that bring me joy when I make them. One wrinkle is that we may move
out of the country; but I can't let that stop me. There is clay and pottery
everywhere on Earth. Maybe I can't take the studio with me, but I will take
the artist, and that's the important part.

Today. Putting all this on digital paper is cathartic and inspiring; I am
both unburdening myself and making a public commitment to do the things I
love. If I had it to do all over again, I would do things very differently.
That's impossible of course, so I'm happy to say I'm in a pretty good place
now with many opportunities ahead.

I have boundless gratitude for Mel and the Clayart community. I may not have
hands in the mud every day, but I get to vicariously enjoy all your clay
experiences and continue to quietly learn from you.

Thanks to all of you.

Ivy Glasgow
Email: studio at ivyglasgow.com<mailto:studio at ivyglasgow.com>




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