Doing What Makes Her Happy | Marianne Tolosa | Episode 595

Marianne Tolosa | Episode 595

Working out of her home studio in Virginia, Marianne Tolosa creates almost exclusively mugs inspired by the garden. There is an inherent intimacy to objects that have been made by hand, and Marianne’s work is created with the hope of bringing quiet beauty, meditation, and joy into a person’s coffee or tea ritual.

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How did you know that it was time to make a change from what you were doing to a new approach?

Yeah, so I started to have lots of weird physical symptoms. I started to have to wear a brace for my wrist and I was having eye stress and I was having to get glasses and the left side of my body, the way that I held myself when I was working was starting to get cramped up a lot., especially my left knee. I was starting to limp. I was like, This is too much on my body. There are lots of potters, especially Kristen Kieffer comes to mind, who focus on ergonomics when potting and I had not heard any of that yet. I was not taking care of myself well enough in the repeat, repeat, repeat, of the actions I was in carving mishima or throwing mug after mug after mug or wedging clay after clay after clay. I just wasn’t taking care of myself. So the physical stuff started happening kind of simultaneously with the creative burnout so it kind of felt like everything collided at once. I though, You need to change something.

We are made up of mind, body, and spirit. Body being one of them. Is it important for you to be making happiness real in your life that you focus on all three of those aspects of your life?

Absolutely. I feel like we should be using the word joy instead of happiness. Because I feel like happiness to me seems more like a circumstantial thing, whereas joy is more of an inner thing. At least for me personally. So I agree with what you said, you have to make all three a priority to have that inner joy and peace.

In Ben Carter’s book he as a whole section about how to keep you r body in shape. Besides just cutting out the production work did you implement anything else that was good for your body like exercise, better sleep, things like that?

At first no. Not at all. I am not very good with sleep. I am a night owl but I still work a nine to five type of schedule. So going to bed early and waking up early has always been an issue for me. But part of realigning has been realigning my schedule so going to bed at midnight and not getting up until 8 -then I get a full 7 to 9 hours of sleep. Instead of having to wake up at 7 o’clock to the office on time, even though I was staying up late making pottery. And changing my diet actually, more than exercise, was the main thing for me. I have had a lot of stomach issues and had chronic migraines which are caused by preservatives and sugars in my diet. So just trying to find ways to eat things that my body wants but are still good for me. Cutting out sugar has been a big one. Sugar is terrible for you, but so delicious.

What was the biggest challenge or hurdle for making changes?

The physical or the whole thing?

The whole gig.

I would say adjusting my expectations of myself and letting go mentally of what I thought success was supposed to be. So having told myself for years what I want to do is sell through retailers because that means success and I want Anthropologie to pick up my line of pottery or whatever. Having told myself things like that for a long time there is a big mind shift to thinking, I am okay with working small. I am okay with having a smaller platform. I don’t need 120 people to like my mugs if 12 people really love my mugs. I still struggle with comparison. I think a lot of people struggle with wanting recognition, especially artists. We create because it is a piece of our soul that is being expressed. We are expressing beauty through ourselves. Now that I have switched my mindset it’s great and the pressure is much less and the joy is much greater.

Did you have to have a new way of rewarding yourself when you stopped doing large production?

I don’t think so. I think my big reward was all of a sudden my creative muscles could be flexed and worked and expressed they way that they hadn’t been for several years. So the joy that comes from doing what you are created to do, which for me was to work slowly and intently and methodically. That was reward enough. I mean that sounds so corny but just being able to make what I want to make and in the process that I want to make it, it is so, so wonderful.

There’s that science of flow. Was before mechanical and once you got back to creative process do you feel like you were more in a state of flow?

Yeah! It is a very organic feeling. There is a method to the quick production that is kind of fun, you know, you see a pile of wedged clay building and you see a line up of mugs that look identical and think, Oh this is very satisfying to look at. But when I am slowly examining a pot and thinking it needs a random line carved right there and I just carve that line, there is equal satisfaction and happiness in that.

Do you also find that the process of just reflecting on one task at a time is more of a source of that joy?

Yeah and I think that there is an interesting process to and I am 39 years old so I lived in the pre-internet age as well as in the internet age, so when I was younger, maybe 15 or 16, if I wanted to do something fun I would read a book, or I would stare at a dandelion, really boring things. I feel like in a way doing this more slowly is recapturing that childhood joy and fascination of the things that are right around me as apposed to always looking for the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, which I feel like social media and the internet has trained me to do. Oh,that link is boring. Next. Now I have to sit with a piece and look at it for four freaking hours, which is so boring sometimes but also so soothing and healing and great.

What is your favorite part of the process in the making?

Hmm. It changes. Right now, throwing the actual form because I am starting to use a lot of variation in my forms. I mean, I do exclusively mugs so there isn’t that much variation that you can have in what a mug looks like. But instead of doing all latte mugs or all straight sided mugs, some are bulged at the bottom, some are round at the bottom and the top, like a figure eight almost. Some are very skinny at the bottom and bulge out. So it really depends on the piece. So I am loving that. And I am really loving the glazing. I am taking a glaze class right now and I just took one this fall. It was really kind of kismet actually, I ordered a new Skutt kiln. I was actually downsizing because I am making less work now. The sent me the wrong kiln which was computerized and I thought I have always wanted to try crystalline glazes. So I went online to check for classes in crystalline glazes and it turns out there was one near by me and it was starting a week later. So I immediately jumped into this crystalline class and that is what I did all last fall. And that strated a whole fire to me of what can I do next.