“I Thank Myself” | Tarragon Smith | Episode 764

Tarragon Smith | Episode 764

Tarragon Smith was born and raised in Canada, but is currently living in the UK. Tarragon’s background is in fine art with a BFA and MA in fine art. Through a natural progression Tarragon has moved into ceramics and makes esoteric functional ware and non-functional ware. Tarragon also teaches adult evening classes.

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Do you make room in your life to be thoughtful and to think things through?

I do. I do make room in my life for that. Don’t we all? I make room in my life to be thoughtful, but I also think that the way I lead my life that I don’t have to try too hard. Because I work alone and because I do activities alone and my leisure time is spent thinking about my profession, in a way, the answer is yes, yes I do.

I was speaking to someone recently that said in Iceland there was a push to shut down social media for one day a week in the month of July. I don’t know if the story is accurate or not, but it did make me think about quality of life. Do you do anything like that where you take breaks from social media for a day at a time?

Nope. Not at all. I get into these discussions with people about social media, especially Instagram because I use it a lot, and it seems like the background of these conversation is that people don’t like social media because it harasses their insecurities- the more they are on it, the more they find their insecurities bubbling up to the surface. So they make a conscious effort to step away from it for their own well being. I don’t have these insecurities. Social media I use as a business platform and I am happy to do it. It is part of my pottery-selling work. It doesn’t bring me down so I don’t feel the need because I don’t feel oppressed by it.

I asked you about room for thinking and you said that it’s kind of like a lifestyle so it’s not that difficult for you. Is that critical for you in order to develop an idea in your work?

I think so. If you talk to artists, a lot of them will say that boredom is part of the process. You need to bored. If you are in your studio and you’re not working and you’re bored, don’t get down on yourself because it is in boredom that a lot of your ideas come to us. And it’s not something that you can force so just let the waves of boredom sweep over you, let yourself do nothing. Basically it is let yourself relax. Your brain will start to be active without you having to think about it. I think that is when a lot of the best ideas come.

Does that mean that it is important to be comfortable with being uncomfortable?

Yes, I suppose. I have to be comfortable with being uncertain quite a lot. You could say that that is close to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. There is a lot of uncertainty in the creative life, isn’t there? It doesn’t really matter what you’re doing. You have to live through that uncertainty otherwise you’ll bury yourself.

And uncertainty coupled with problem solving are the ingredients used for creativity. Is that correct?

Yeah, I’d go with that. Uncertainty, problem solving, articulation of abstract idea…

Do you feel that could be as creative if you didn’t have a standard of thoughtfulness and were busy all the time?

No. I don’t think I could be. Which is a pity. I wish I could say yes to that. If I had any doubt about it, this past year has taught me that being overly busy is slightly crippling to creativity. Ideas are one thing, but action is another, and creativity is an idea that has to be put into practice some way. That takes time. Time is very important.

What’s one thing that you wish your past self would have given to you today?

That’s a difficult question isn’t it? I don’t know if this is really answering your question, but what I would have liked my past self to give me was own up to some certain hard truths sooner than I did. You could say I was quite stubborn in a way. I persisted with my painting career, if you could call it that, longer than I should have. I should have come to pottery sooner.