Her Work Got Copied | Lisa Neimeth | Episode 542

Lisa Neimeth | Episode 542

Clay has been in Lisa Neimeth’s life since studying ceramics in college. Lisa is constantly taking note of colors in nature, food, magazines, newspapers, fashion, street art, and graffiti and she loves seeing colors put together unexpectedly. Lisa’s plates can inspire and tell a story so they are evocative in the traditional “art” sense—but are completely functional. Lisa also loves the notion of high-end craft and taking time to carefully make everyday items. It is the way things used to be made—by hand and with great care and craft. That care of Lisa’s encourages an appreciation of the everyday.

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I want to ask you. What’s happening in New Mexico?

Well, New Mexico has been a place that I loved for a long, long time and we purchased some land about 12 years ago and we finally this past year build a small house on this property, which is super exciting and it is just about finished. It is in Abiquiu, New Mexico, which is about an hour north of Santa Fe. People have probably heard of it because it is where Georgia O’Keeffe lived and she had her home there, so a lot of people go there on pilgrimages to see her work. It’s also an incredible area of Santa Clara Pueblo,which has an incredible ceramic history. So there is just a lot going on there in that way. So we built this house and in addition I wanted to have a place to work so there was a space available behind the little general store in the town, which is not really a town, it’s just a tiny area. So I have taken that space which is going to become my studio there. It is a huge open space which I will be able to clean properly. To work in a bigger space will be so luxurious. So that is exciting and it is a much more public thing than I work in now. I mean someone has to beat down my front door to come to my studio. But there, I will just be there behind the store and it’s the only store in town so everybody goes there. So I imagine it will be a lot more public, which is kind of an exciting idea to me. I would like to have people able to come in and offer workshops and more importantly something that I have wanted to do for a long time is to provide a space for other artists to come and work, like a residency.

How would you pull off a residency in situation like that?

Well, I think I would invite, or put the word out to people who were interested in that area and in having an opportunity to be in a place like that and explore their work. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in clay, but it could be in whatever medium they choose, but there will be obviously clay facilities there. I have already had people ask me about it , I did a residency a couple of years ago and I loved that idea of bringing people to a place and see what they create. They won’t have to pay or anything, just provide a space and create an experience for them and just see what happens. Just see what happens with people’s work and they could share it and maybe they could do a little talk and a little showing at the end of it. I don’t know, we’ll see, it will evolve, depending on who’s there. And there’s a lot of artists in that area as well so maybe just giving some people an opportunity to show some work where they don’t normally do that or they don’t know how to do it. There are a lot of people who don’t understand how to market their work, so maybe providing that opportunity too to other people.

So is part of the residency you would like to be involved in not to just expand the quality of work but also to expand the marketability or the marketing of their work?

Yes, to give them a more public place to show their work or talk about their work. Because there is certainly an art presence up there and in Santa Fe. I just think there is a lot of people that don’t know how to go about that. It would be nice to help uncover that whole arena for them

How would you go about the application process?

I think initially I would probably just put it out there on Instagram. There are a couple of young women who have put out this very cool book, Piney Wood Atlas , I think it’s called. It is really cool and a good thing for people to know about, because they explore all these small, obscure residencies that are offered all over the country and they write about them and they tell you how to apply and some of them are in very odd place, and just interesting. So for sure I thought I would let them know about it, that they could talk about it as a thing that people could apply to. It probably wouldn’t take too much to get the word out. I just think it would be really interested to move in that direction a little bit.

How will you balance your time between San Francisco and New Mexico?

Good Question. I don’t know. I really don’t know. My daughter is just graduating from high school and she’s my younger child so I am kind of released from some of those tethers here, which is kind of nice to not be linked to the academic calendar. So it all remains to be seen. I don’t know. I have no idea.

You are setting up a secondary residence in New Mexico. Why not just move all the way?

I am not ready to leave San Francisco. I’m not ready to leave the city here, yeah, I’m not quite ready yet. That could completely change with more time there, I don’t know. But I still really do like a city. I love both. I love the combination so to me if I could pull off doing both that would be great, that would be awesome.

If you had to get rid of all your tools, what tool would you absolutely keep in your studio?

It’s funny someone was just asking me about tools yesterday and I was saying a lot of tools are things I find, like sticks and crazy old plastic things. But as far as a legit ceramic tool, it’s a wooden tool, I don’t even know how to describe it, it has the little divots on one end. It is just like a pencil almost, so you can create texture with it, you can smooth with it, you could cut with it if you needed to. If I was on a desert island with a ceramic studio this would be the one I would keep. It is the one I use the most, I think, for creating texture and stuff.