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Lacy Corlis | Episode 716

Lacy Corlis is a potter living in Hood River, Oregon. Lacy’s father introduced her to this craft as a young girl. She loves creating functional pottery using detailed sgraffito and brightly colored glaze combinations. Lacy finds inspiration in nature and emotions.

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Are you using Reels on Instagram in terms of marketing or getting the word out?

I have just started trying to use Reels more. I mostly just do it to show pieces that are finished in anticipation to my sale. I’ve done a few things on TicToc as well, but the videos? It’s a whole new learning curve, and I feel like I just got the hang of taking a good, quality photo for Instagram. So it’s not something I do as often as I should.

When you are using Instagram, are you using it more as a branding tool or more for sales?

That’s a really great question. I think that using Instagram and focusing in on your branding and creating good content results in you getting sales. That’s really what my focus is- trying to create regular, quality content on there.

When you mention that you interact with everyone when you are doing sales, how is your interaction when you are leading up to a sale or when you’ve got no sale on the horizon, are you doing any interaction then?

Yes, I try to do interaction everyday if I can. When I first started being committed to Instagram, I told myself that you need to be on there twenty minutes a day. That is really helpful to be engaged with other potters who I’ve connected with. There is a great community and resources of ideas and sharing… Also just sharing that engagement which helps everybody involved. I’m making comments on their page, they’re making comments on my page… It helps us all grow as a community. I think that is really helpful to do is to start reaching out to people in the pottery community or in the art community. Then once you have customers who are talking with you regularly just helps thing run more smoothly and helps make more sales in the long run.

When I look at your bio, you don’t have a lot in there, just enough to be intriguing. Why be sparsely intriguing?

I guess that is just kind of my personality. I’m kind of an introvert, I don’t over share things in general and I think that also gives me a lot of room to do what I want in there. I play with mud and maybe people have come to know my style, but who knows… I may change it up in a year and I might do something completely different. I don’t want to be put into a slot that I can’t get out of. I like that part of clay where you get to make your own rules. That’s kind of what I’ve done on Instagram.

So you do the announcements, you do the sell outs and all that, but do you custom orders?

I do take custom orders and I actually really love doing them. I hear on so many pottery forums that people loath custom orders. But it’s something that I’ve created my own rule set on to where I accept custom orders that I want to work on or that I think are in my wheelhouse. I love doing detailed nature scenes, or ideas where people give me a broad theme and I get to do critters, plants, and animals… and make it my own. So I’ll accept a custom order on the terms that I will create a piece for you, with you in mind. Then I will present it to them before a sale and if it is something that they decide they don’t like, or they don’t have the finances at the time, then I will just include in my sale and it was just a fun piece that I got to work on and they gave me inspiration.

Do you ever have people reject the work that you make?

I have never had a custom piece rejected. I have had a couple people who were on a wait list pass for financial reasons, but never have I done a custom carved piece that someone hasn’t not ended up purchasing.

What’s your favorite hobby?

I would say traveling. It has been pretty limited right now, but I try to take a little time every year to do a great trip where I can just be in nature. I’ve been to some fantastic places like the Galapagos, and the jungles of Borneo, and the Amazon… I just love seeing what the world has to offer.

Book

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

Contact

Instagram: @l.c.ceramics