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Lauren Karle | Episode 357
Lauren Karle is a potter and social artist inspired by people – their food, traditions, and place. Lauren’s goal is to have her work serve a purpose beyond its utilitarian function by designing it for who and how it will be used. Lauren’s aesthetic is inspired by the two and a half years she lived in Guatemala and her work evolves with both the people she meets and the places she goes. Lauren currently lives in rural New Mexico making, writing, teaching, collaborating, and always learning.
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Instagram question: What are your top 5 favorite movies for the studio? Do you watch anything when you are in the studio?
No. I really don’t. I listen actually to a lot of podcasts and I really like audiobooks. When I am planning and designing and thinking I have to have silence but then when my hands are making and it’s muscle memory then I love to listen to things.
Instagram question: What is your favorite podcast to listen to while working?
Well The Potterscast. Aside from The Potterscast and Red Clay Rambler, I feel like they keep me up to date with what’s going on in a lot of different corners of the world. I also really love This American Life. I really like Freakonomics. Invisibilia in another great podcast.
Instagram question: Can you recommend any daily practices that spark or focus your creative process?
When I wake up in the morning I make my way to the studio, usually between 8 and 9 but I’m not on a rigid schedule. When I wake up is my best thinking time. So before I get out of bed I just kind of envision what I am going to do that day. A lot of my best ideas come lying, relaxing, you know, just kind of picturing, envisioning I guess.
Instagram question: What is one non-ceramic item in your studio that you couldn’t live without?
That’s a great question. Probably my tea. I drink a lot of tea and it warms you from the inside out and it makes me feel very present. It is a non-ceramic item but it really influences my work.
Would you consider yourself an extrovert or an introvert?
Definitely an extrovert. Although I have to say, living where I have for the last three years has made me more OK being alone. I have had to learn that. Now being in a school and I’m talking to people all the time, I’m like, Woah. This is tiring to interact with people all day, every day. So I think managing energy is going to be something that I have to learn to balance. But I love people.
Instagram question: What’s the best advice you have ever gotten?
That’s a hard one. I feel like that is something I will have to think about because I have gotten so much good advice. Everything I know I have learned from different people and I am really grateful for all the people that have taught me, shared with me, come into my life, from ceramics and non-ceramics, from family to friends. I have received so much valuable advice about life and art and everything.
Instagram question: What was the best workshop you have ever attended?
I would say the one that has made the biggest impact in my making has been at Charlie Cummings Workshop at Aeromont. I think I learned the headspace that I have to create for myself no matter what situation, even if I have a deadline, to be able to just play. And I think that is what attending workshops give you is that release of pressure and that sense of experimentation and adventure through making.
Book
Light at the Edge of the World by Wade Davis
Contact:
Instagram: @lauren.karle