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Lindsay Langsdale | Episode 1259
Lindsay Langsdale is a San Francisco ceramic artist and educator whose colorful and highly textured work explores storytelling, humor, and imagined characters. Lindsay is the owner and operator of Brick and Mortar Studios and General Manager of Ruby’s Clay Studio. Lindsay’s playful sculptural and functional ceramics celebrate curiosity, individuality, and the wonderfully strange.
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Your work is unique and beautiful and all those things that we’ve already talked about, but do you have stories that go with your work?
Oh, yes, sometimes. My show actually that I just had had a slip transfer wall hanging and a tea set that went with it. And each of those groups had a small story about becoming and changing and they were adapted from journal entries over the last five years of my life.
When you start a piece, does it already have a story or are you going to add the story as you make it?
That’s a good question. I actually, it depends. Sometimes I just let the piece become what it’s gonna become and then I add a name to it afterwards and a story. Or sometimes I think about, I wanna make a triceratops and so I make a triceratops and it just happens to be a triceratops.
When you start a piece, How much of the piece is actually pre-planned versus it just kind of develops as you go?
I think my functional pieces are the most planned because they’re made from templates that I’ve developed to do repeatability. For like the sculpture work, like the heads that hang off the wall, I like to have those a little bit more freeform. It helps me have a little bit more freedom in my practice.
You said that you color your clay first. Is it possible to make the work without actually using colored clay? Like could you do it all with underglaze?
Yeah, I actually started out using underglazes. So I used velvet underglazes. I found that it took away from my texture. So sometimes I also, instead of just doing the color clay, I’ll do plain white porcelain, and then I’ll use my washes as the main color component at bisque. So I’ll layer different washes to get a different effect.
When you’re making, are you thinking about making people smile as you work?
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s one of the most rewarding things to hear somebody say that you made them smile and laugh. I think part of my work is to bring joy to people, and I hope it works.
Do you find yourself smiling as you work?
It depends on if it’s A hundred mugs or a sculpture?
Your work doesn’t look sophisticated, but it is really sophisticated when it comes to technicality. So it gives this wonderful sense of playfulness and silliness. How do you keep the technical side of the ceramics from killing the fantasy of the final piece?
Oh, I like that question. I really think that I treat most things like a sculpture and I want it to feel like it’s actual fabric. So I let it blump and I let it do its own thing where it needs to. The one like teapots, I make sure that they pour well and that comes from just researching different types of spouts and kind of just playing around with how something looks and how something functions and trying to make the decision on if I want it to function better or I want it to look better at the time. Yeah, it’s hard to reconcile sometimes, but if I’m making a teapot, it needs to teapot.
Book
Paperclay: Art and Practice by Rosette Gault
Contact
Instagram: @lin.lang