Clay Turned My Black & White World to Color | Abby Lorenz | Episode 605

Abby Lorenz | Episode 605

Abby is a production potter specializing in wheel-thrown homewares. “From my heart to your home”. After a long career as a professional photographer, Abby began pottery 2 1/2 years ago and found peace and healing in the quiet solitude of working with her hands. Abby began her career in Salem, MA and is (at the time of this publication) is in the process of relocating to Duluth, MN where she is moving into her first dedicated workshop and studio space.

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Your Instagram is titled Courage Goods Pottery. Where does Courage Goods come from?

That is straight from doctor Brene Brown and her Ted Talk , Power of Vulnerability. And her book The Gift of Imperfection. I mean it is directly referenced from her.

In your feed you have a message board that says, create something today, even if it sucks.

That’s not an original thought, but it was something that inspired me. It is a watercolor artist based in California. Her Instagram is Mon Voir Co. Her name is Jenna Rainey. But that was something that I really started to encourage myself to do early on with pottery because it is something that I need to do. I need to make something every day even if it sucks because I get really uncomfortable with the discomfort of not being good at something. I will pick up a new hobby and drop it real quick because I can’t stand the discomfort of that early stage of not being good at it. It’s something a lot of perfectionists really struggle with. So that was something that spoke to me. I thought, Okay, this is something I need to practice. I need to just make anything. Throw a really bad pot, do something even if it sucks just to keep the momentum going, just to keep the energy moving forward.

Scrolling down on the message board you wrote, If I woke up tomorrow morning with my head sewn to the carpet I wouldn’t be more surprised than I am right now. What was that about?

Okay, that was my Christmas decoration styled wall and that is the best line from the ultimate Christmas movie ever: Christmas Vacation. It is when Eddie shows up at the house after Clark gets the lights turned on and they are celebrating. He is going from person to person hugging them and all of a sudden he throws his arms around cousin Eddie who just showed up out of nowhere and he just says, Are you surprised? And he goes, Surprised, Eddie, if I woke up tomorrow morning with my head sewn to the carpet I wouldn’t be more surprised than I am right now. And it’s just hysterical and makes no sense but also makes the most sense in the world. It’s my favorite line from the movie so it was just for that Christmas display that year.

Your next sign says, I don’t know what I am doing, but I’m doing it.

That is probably my number one guiding mantra of all my little self-help daily mantras that I remind myself of, that is probably number one. And that is probably the one that has pushed me forward. The other one I like is, Start before you are ready, but the one you just said is from a something I saw on Instagram an it was meant to be kind of self deprecating and making fun of oneself, but I was like, That is actually brilliant. That is actually a great attitude to have when you are trying to move forward with a new job, a new family, a new whatever, a new relationship. I love the idea of, I don’t know what I am doing, but I am just doing this. And that was when I was really starting to focus on pottery as a career and not just a hobby. It was something that I really embraced and I think it has been impactful and motivational for me in the last two and a half years.

What does the deer with the triangle mean for your logo and the x’s mean?

So what you can’t see is I have a lot of tattoos and people will, and it is a natural question and I don’t reject it, a lot of people ask what does your tattoo mean? And I never know what to say because most of my tattoos don’t necessarily have a deep, powerful, symbolic meaning, they just feel beautiful to look at. I don’t necessarily have a specific symbolism behind a lot of that stuff, it is just something that I look at it and it makes me feel good. And there is something about it that feels right in my heart. I designed that half by myself, it was from a pack of graphics that you can rearrange and make your own. So I didn’t design that from scratch, it came from a kind of kit and I rearranged it a little bit and made it my own. There was something about that deer head that was powerful and focused and it just spoke to me and I chose it.

On your website, on one of your tabs, you call yourself a maker. Do you prefer to call yourself a maker as opposed to a potter?

I have not found a word that I am entirely comfortable with. It took me years and a lot of work with my therapist to be able to come right out and say, I am a photographer. It took me a long time. That was over ten years ago. It took me a long time to have the confidence to say that outright. But photographer has a very clear cut meaning. I love being a potter. I love being a ceramicist. I don’t know, I have yet to figure out exactly the right word for what I do and what I am. I feel like potter doesn’t sound like a strong enough word to me. I am very words oriented. I was a writer before I did anything else. Potter doesn’t sound quite right, ceramicist doesn’t sound quite right, artist is too vague. I feel like maker isn’t quite it either but I feel like it is the closest.

You have a quote on your website that says, As long as we are creating we are cultivating meaning. How do you mean that?

It is from doctor Brene Brown again. She is all over my pottery and she’s all over my photography website too. so she is a big presence in my life. She is for a lot of people. She does a lot of work talking about the importance of creating and practicing creativity and the rewards that it gives us as human beings and feeling gratified and expressing oneself. She has another quote about Unused creativity metastasizes in you and created depression and rage inside of you. How unused creativity that you don’t express can kind of turn very negative inside of you. She also talks about what can come of creating and shared meaning with people when you share your artwork with people. Going back to the first pottery class I ever took at Clay Dreaming with all of my amazing friends at the clay studio, I never felt as if I had more sense of meaning or purpose. I wasn’t selling pottery then, but just being in there and creating and being around other people who are creating for the purpose of just creating and feeling good. That line spoke to me a lot for that reason.

You have in bold on your maker page, you say, My someday dream is a cabin on a lake in Minnesota preferably with a creaky screen door that goes Bang! when it swings shut. Is it important to have a someday dream?

Is it important to have a some day dream? Not necessarily for every body because some people might be currently living that, they might not necessarily feel like they have to have a thing that they are working toward. I always knew that my heart belonged back in the Midwest and in Minnesota and so I would often talk in future fantasy talk about my someday house and my someday life and my someday dream. I guess it was sort of like a day dream but it was my someday dream, that is the life that I will live. For me, I think it was important. For me it was, to have that dream and I am working toward it and I am getting closer to it. I don’t necessarily have a cabin on the lake but I have a house 2 blocks from Lake Superior now and that’s pretty close.