Being Resourceful When Resources Are Tight | April Adewole | Episode 983

April Adewole | Episode 983

April Adewole is an artist and owner of Adewole Arts in San Pedro, California. April has been working with clay for 10 years and currently teaches out of her retail studio space, the Clay Kitchen. April sells functional and art pottery in the attached gallery space and online.

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Have you always been a-things-will-work-themselves-out kind of a person?

That sounds so optimistic I am going to say no. (laughter) I am not a happy, magic, rosy kind of person. I am more like whatever is going to happen is going to happen. Like I can make all of these plans but really what’s going to happen is what’s going to happen. I need the outline of what we have to do and then we can fill in as many details as we can as we try to get there.

How do you know when it’s time to be “realistic” and when you have to be adventurous?

I don’t know, I think you always have to be kind of really adventurous. You have to take it in life, this thing is real and is happening. It is an adventure. Every single decision you make something is going to happen. You have no idea how good it’s going to be or how terrible until you make that decision. You just have to bite the bullet and do it.

I am reading a book and the author said, It’s not so important what the decision is, but that you make a decision. Do you feel like that is kind of the way you approach things then?

Most definitely. Like when I decided I was going to make the studio space over there, I went for it. I was like Okay, I am making a studio space. And then I thought about all the things that I would want in a studio and what that meant for me.

How important is the help of other people for you to be able to get to where you are now?

It’s super important. I am nothing without everybody that has helped me along the way. Every time I do one of these crazy things there’s someone who I am able to tap or maybe someone who whispered, Hey, you need to make a move. People have appeared when I have needed people to appear and it’s been pretty magical. I think that’s my super power. I am a magical being and I attract magical people. Good people always find their way to me and that’s a blessing.

They say saying yes to one thing is saying no to everything else and I am curious about that, How do you know when to say yes to an opportunity?

When you are wondering why you are saying no. Like sometimes an opportunity presents itself and you’re like, That sounds amazing. I would love to do that, but you immediately think no. And you think no because of all these other little reasons. This isn’t ready or I want to make sure I do this first. You know when you start talking yourself out of that thing. So if I am talking myself out of it then I know it’s something I just need to go ahead and go for and I will figure it out.

What has you really excited in the studio right now? What is the piece you are working on that you can’t wait to get back to?

I can’t wait, but there’s a little trepidation there too. So I am playing with this clay body from Aardvark. It’s obsidian. It’s my favorite clay body and I like it because of the color of the clay. So it’s not something I completely cover up when I use it and I want to go bigger. And the bigger, of course, is the direction my kiln does not go so that firing has been an issue so I want to get back in and play with it but looking at it realistically, where am I going to fire these pieces because laying them down on their side is not doing them any favors. So it is really a question of looking at how to make what I really want to make versus what I’ve made because it has been more accessible.