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Hillary Kane | Episode 601
For Hillary Kane, travel and work have led her to claim residence in several continents and many different countries. Inevitably, the landscape and light, culture and customs of each has impacted Hillary’s own artwork and continues to be a vital source of inspiration. Educated in the United States and France, Hillary now resides between Bali, Indonesia and the U.S. Hillary focuses her creativity in both clay and paint, enjoying the dynamic of two very different mediums and their possible confluence. Wood-fired ceramics in particular has led Hillary to partake in many international symposia, residencies, and conferences, as well as to pioneer several wood-firing kilns in Bali. As co-founder and creative director of Gaya Ceramic Arts Center, Hillary has spent the last decade steering its growth: hosting resident artists, instructors, and participants from the world over, while ever continuing with the creative process herself. Most importantly, Hillary and her husband have been enjoying the overwhelmingly creative journey of raising their twin daughters.
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When you were creating a vision with others for the center how far into the future were you looking?
I guess we were really trying it out. So when first started, like I said, I met them really by chance, and they were just incredibly generous and saying, Come and do some work in the studio. Kind of thing. I almost built, you would say, a residency for myself just informally with them. But then we just started talking with these ideas and I think one thing I really admire about both of them is that they are people of action. So when we were talking about the possibility of educational aspect to Gaya and this and that it wasn’t like, Let’s plan it out and talk and talk. Marcello just said, Let’s build a small upstairs studio. And then the next week we were building. I think that is really in his character and I think it is in my character too. When I have a dream and it’s coming closer and closer to solidifying in my vision I just want to go out and make it happen and try it as it’s being made rather than talking too long about it.
How did you define your purpose for the Gaya Arts Center?
Like the mission and vision kind of thing?
Yes.
I think we defined it as really wanting to expand and continue education in the ceramic arts but in combination with offering an experience that was about place and about discovery and therefore creating an environment of inspiration.
How did you describe to yourself what success would look like?
I mean I think my whole life I have been really good at living on a shoestring so it certainly wasn’t financial. I think success for us was an increasing number of artists approaching us asking if they could offer a workshop with us. It was increasing numbers of participants coming to join workshops. It was the caliber of resident artists that we were getting. You know, all of this was very little by little and didn’t necessarily mean that everything we offered was full but it felt like there was this gaining speed and gaining outreach happening.
Did you have to put a lot of time into thinking about what the structure of the actual business would look like?
In the sense of what we were going to offer, I actually feel like we got pretty clear on that from the get go, and again like I said, I think the three of us started this out feeling like, rather than offering beginner classes over and over to newbies trying clay for the first time, we felt like we wanted to offer something that is going to be inspiring us as well. So really the workshop structure grew from that pretty clearly. And then we thought a resident artist program was going to be such an aspect of what we do that will bring inspiration ten fold to the picture for all of us and that has absolutely been that. Then the third portion of our structure is what I call our community studio aspect. That is something that began very, very small and that is for people that want a weekly drop-in class, a private class, access to the studio when there is a workshop not going on. That aspect has grown and grown as well. Maybe almost to my surprise.
How much did you glean ideas from other programs in order to design your program?
There were certain things that we were drawing inspiration from but I think as we were playing it out in real time here in Bali, it become very clear, for example, I thought we could offer a two week program or we could offer a one week program and it become very clear that especially because people, by and large, are travelling distances to read here and then departing that two weeks was really minimum because we needed to go through the entire ceramic process, start to finish, in that time. So there was no, come back a week later or come pick up your fired goods or bring your bisque ware and then do this and that, here in house, like you could have if it was a neighboring state in the United States if you were going to drive 2 hours to go to a workshop for four days or something like that. There was an initial gleaning of ideas from places that we really admired where we had spent time. Snd then it was like, Okay, how do we make this fit the picture here in Bali.
Back when you first started, was it awkward to do a workshop for one or two people?
That was when we were running all the workshops so we were the instructors. I think it was like at that moment of a kind of high of pouring all your energy and heart into this crazy possibility. So maybe those people had an amazing time because we were just pouring ourselves out to them. That was the act of dreaming big where you dream big and then you get into the nitty gritty of running the daily grind. And sometimes running the daily grind you are like, Woah, this is heavy. But the dreaming big is kind of like in the excitement of it all. I would say in the early days when the workshops were low subscribed,.
Contact
Instagram: @hkane.studio