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Naomi Peterson | Episode 1250
Naomi Peterson creates cute objects that invite consideration beyond the inanimate. Naomi mixes bright colors and soft patterns with hard materials to investigate the emotive potential of functional things. Using her traditional ceramic background as a lens to view material and process, Naomi builds forms layer by layer, often integrating analog and digital methods. Naomi is a full-time ceramic artist based in Houston, TX.
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Do you ever use Procreate to design the body of the work, also like the body of your pottery?
You know, very, very rarely. will often sketch in my sketchbook because I do love physically sketching. But more often recently, I’ve been sketching in 3D, making my objects out of clay and kind of just running with it, making multiple pieces and kind of creating iterations from those repeated forms.
It sounds like what you said was in the interview in The Potters Cast before we hit the Mud Meets The Bat Round that you like to take a photograph of a bisque piece and that’s when you start doing your design work for your surface design. When it comes to surface, with all the colors you do, has this allowed you to become even more bold because you can pre-plan it?
Definitely, yeah. I will use many, many, many layers of, on just one form. And I’ll catch myself not using the first or the second or the third iteration in Procreate, but usually, maybe the 6th or the 7th. It takes a few times to feel like the piece is actually feeling good color-wise and like there’s a good transition between the layers.
So are you using Procreate also to be able to test out those color combinations for the complementary and contrasting colors? Is that kind of part of the big idea there?
Yeah, it kind of really is just whatever I’m feeling. It’s not really trying to make them complementary or contrasting or even monochrome, but if it feels good, if I’m liking what’s happening visually, I’ll kind of run with it. But it’s I’m never trying to make it fit within a set palette, although that would make it probably a lot easier in some cases.
Does doing this work with Procreate help you to understand a flow for a collection that you’re trying to make?
Oh, yes. I find that it’s easiest when I’m making a bunch of cups. I really want all of my cups to be a little bit different, have their own personalities. It’s kind of like having a variety cupcake box in my mind. So I’ll take a sketch or a picture of my cup base and then I’ll superimpose attachments or colors, patterns, so that I’m collecting and creating a bunch of different ideas around, say, the cup. But I don’t usually do that for other forms, like, say, jars or more sculptural forms.
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Is there ever a time when Procreate falls short because it doesn’t quite do the 3D as well as you’d hope to?
Yeah, and I do feel like it really depends on the form. So I’ll often feel like, oh, shoot, I’m not capturing what this kind of looks like on the interior, and that’s needing to relate to the exterior in some way. And so in that case, I’ll have to go back and take a couple different shots of the, say, not just the profile, but maybe the three quarter view and maybe some other views just to be able to try to capture the 3D-ness, like the dimensionality of the form. But it is a 2D medium. I don’t foresee trying to paint with like an Oculus, those.
Do you feel as Procreate has made you a better potter or has it made you a better designer?
That’s a good question. You know, I kind of feel like both. And I say that because there have been instances where I’ve collaborated with other artists and it’s such a great tool to help me figure out how am I going to approach these forms that are not fully my own. Or if I’m making a piece that is for a specific purpose, like I had a commission that was recreating a cake from a bakery that no longer exists. And so it’s like, how am I going to get kind of these details and also these colors, but in my own style, which is what they requested. And it’s been such a great tool for that to not only plan, but also to give me the plan as far as design, but also give me the confidence to be like, okay, I’m going to draw it out and then I’m going to make it.
Book
Red Rising by Pierce Brown
Contact
Instagram: @n.ceramic