How to Find Purpose for the Stay at Home Order | Melissa Weiss

Melissa Weiss | Episode 624

Melissa Weiss is a studio potter in Asheville, NC. She has been working with clay for 15 years. She makes her living selling her one of a kind handmade functional pottery online, at shows and teaching workshops.She makes her work with various techniques mainly carving in the Kurinuki style, coil building, slab work and wheel throwing. She digs and makes her own iron rich stoneware from clay she digs on her land in the Arkansas Ozarks. Melissa has not had a formal education in ceramics. She is self taught with the guidance of many other potters.

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How did you realize life was out of balance and it was worth re-evaluating it besides the complete stand still, was there anything that was a tell tale sign before hand before the shutdown?

I don’t know if it is going to be as black and white or as dramatic as that because I wasn’t unhappy, I wasn’t miserable, and there is a part of me that really likes to have deadlines and be a little too busy than humanly possible. I kind of thrive in that way. Like I am a really hard worker and I really like my work. So I feel like there is a part of me that does really like it, so I wasn’t unhappy and I wasn’t miserable. But when life ceased to be that way I found this happiness and this calm in a way that felt more profound, more important. And physically, I have had three surgeries in the past few years, I now have inflammatory arthritis in my elbow from overuse and I was thinking about it if this year went on like last year and next year and next year, what would my body be like? Would I even be able to make pots working the way I was? So that was something to think about. And just realizing that I have a lot of other interests that bring different needed things to how I think about the world. You eventually bring it all back to pottery anyway.

Is it important to listen to your body, like the aches or the pains?

I mean, I guess so. It’s just hard because there is a part where I did have to do that much and say yes to many things to make it possible for me to be a potter full time. So I am at a point now where I can sell pots online. Don’t know if that will last forever but it is happening right now. So because of the fact that I have traveled all over and done all these shows and had this Instagram for so long, I have gotten my pots out enough where I can sell pots online. If this was a few years ago, I couldn’t have. So I would be in a very different position.

How will you choose which opportunities are yeses and which opportunities are nos?

Well a lot of it is me choosing not to apply for certain things, but that also would have been different before. I am not as interested in applying and attending the bigger shows that I was doing. So simply just not applying for them. I don’t really know, I think it’s not even a yes or no situation it’s just how far away is it? You know what I mean? There’s just a lot of factors to consider and I think I will just consider them a lot more heavily now.

Do you find that when you have slowed down that you are having more ideas about things you’d like to create or is this more of a time for you to catch a fresh breath?

I feel like the things I am getting out of this aren’t necessarily ceramic related. For some reason I don’t struggle with inspiration for what to make. Ever since I started making pottery that has never been an issue. And I don’t really know why, it’s nice, I just always have things I want to make and I have new ideas. The biggest time that happened was when I got rejected from a show I did every year. I was just like, Crisis, oh no! It’s over. Should I start looking for a job. I got really dramatic and I panicked a little bit and thought, I have to make some new stuff. I had already been thinking about bringing in some color so I spent all summer testing and got so inspired and excited. So I feel like I might have been in a place where I didn’t realize I was a little bit bored because I still liked what I was doing. But it kind of snuck up on me as I was just making the things that I had been making for so long. And right now I am not making as many pots, I am carving pots and I will keep decorating, but it’s just the other things. I have 12 fertilized eggs in the incubator right now that are going to hatch in a week. And we built a chicken coop and we also went and got 10 baby chicks. Today I baked a pie and just those things that there’s never time for. There is just so much time for it now.