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Michelle Rmadan | Episode 1237
Michelle “Meesh” Ramadan is a potter chasing joy, color, and expressive play in clay. After recently moving from her home studio in Melrose, MA to Montpellier, France, Michelle is navigating the adventure of rebuilding her ceramics practice and letting curiosity lead the way. Michelle loves teaching, throwing big bowls, tiny vases, and sculpting whimsical pinch-pot sculptures.
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You are starting over from scratch. Not that you are like going back to being a newbie, but you are definitely starting over from scratch. As you’re starting to over now as a potter, how are you going about learning the local ceramic culture?
So one of the first things that I’ve been doing is meeting the potters in the city. I will, a lot of them have their own storefronts, and I will pop in, say hello, and just ask a whole lot of questions.
Do you think that you’re gonna have to change your style of ceramics to be able to meet the cultural market or the local market?
Oh, that’s a good question. I think that I’m going to have to adapt to the clay and the glazes that I’m going to be using. I’ve been doing a lot of experiments to see how close I can get to my preferred style. I do think that there is a lot of appeal for my style. I’ve been getting some compliments so far, so I’m hoping I’ll find my audience.
When you do find a studio where it’s going to be your own place, have you decided what kind of studio you’re going to make? Is it going to be production, a teaching studio? Is it going to be a hybrid type of a place? What are you thinking?
The vision for the studio is that it’s going to be a, what they call here an atelier boutique, which is a teaching studio and a working studio, and also a boutique where you can purchase items. And it’s going to be a hybrid in the sense that it’s going to have both flameworking and pottery.
Is finding the right space, is that a hard task?
It is exceptionally difficult to find a place to rent a studio in France. The real estate market is so slow. They very rarely get back to you. And because of this pay to enter fee that you have to pay the tenant in order to be able to get a lease. The cost of entry is pretty high too. Anything around 40K just to be able to rent a place.
How about equipment? Is equipment going to be a difficult thing to come by?
Initially, I’m going to be sharing equipment and renting equipment from a potter friend of mine. And I just went shopping for a pottery wheel today, secondhand. And I’m hoping as much as possible to get things secondhand at first so that I can save up for other items later on.
When you had your business in the United States, there’s a very specific set of rules and regulations we have to go by. What’s one thing that is completely different in France for running a business that’s definitely foreign to the United States?
So one of the things that I’ve been learning to navigate is what actual business structure to register with in France. There are different kinds of levels and they have different impacts on your business. And I’ve been working with the, what’s called the Chambre de Metie d’Artisana. So it is an organization in the city that helps artisans open their business, run their businesses to try to find what business structure is most suitable for me. And because the costs of ceramics are so high, equipment, et cetera, I’m going to have to pick a structure that actually accounts for my expenses, because there are some structures that don’t account for expenses, so you pay taxes. without taking, not on your profits, but on everything. And I wanted to make sure that I could actually have a business that functioned, that I would have some money at the end of the year. So that’s been a learning curve for sure, is figuring out how to navigate the business side of things in a new country.
How does knowing your taxing structure impact your pricing strategy?
Okay. Well, one of the things that I’ve been doing, part of my research and meeting with potters, and I have a notebook and I just have questions and answers, questions and answers, is really doing my own market research and identifying what are other artists doing here? What is the market like in France? And pricing accordingly. So really, that’s been the biggest that’s the piece that’s going to drive my pricing. I really have to think about what are people paying for a mug, for example. I know that in the States, I could sell my mugs for 60, sometimes 70. And a lot of the artists here tell me that that’s just too high and that’s not going to work in this particular market. So I have to adjust for that. And I think I’m going to have to do a lot of experiments that way.
Contact
Instagram: @meeshpottery
Blog: meeshpottery.com/blog