A Wandering Conversation Around Clay | Jessica Phillips

Jessica Phillips | Episode 599

Jessica’s early years were spent in Upstate New York. The daughter of an engineer and a photographer, Jessica grew up in her father’s workshop and her mother’s darkroom. Jessica earned a BA in Studio Art at UT Austin and has worked in graphic design and ceramics for over 20 years.

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You have a message with your ceramics. Do you find that you have to explain what the message is or do you find that some people just catch the message right off?

I think it depends on the piece and depends on what I am trying to convey. I am sure sometimes I am trying to convey just a broad feeling, and honestly of someone kind of senses that I think is successful. Something that I really like to do with the work I create is let someone have a perception of it if they see it kind of in a vacuum or without any context or even from far away, but then when you come closer to it and kind of see details, I have kind of introduced some typography into some of my work. I like the idea of as you get closer to it and becoming more intimate with it and starting to explore what it could mean. I don’t mind ambiguity. I think there is something to be said for people to be able to interpret things their own way. That being said, I have done a lot of artists talks and people often say, I liked your piece to start with but now that I know what you were thinking it is even more exciting. There is something there that you kind of peel back the layers of the onion and I think that’s really fun.

Do you hope to change people’s lives through your work?

What I would love to think that my work can do is to bring calm and peace to them. For me that is what I create for myself by making it, so just the idea that it could make people slow down for a minute and just live in the moment they are in and take a deep breath and have that feeling of calm. I would love to convey that to everyone.

You mentioned you had some doubt about when to launch. What are some things that helped you move past your doubt and take the steps that you took?

I would say that I knew that I would be making this work either way because it wasn’t something I was making for other people, it was almost a compulsion at times. I feel like I am always going to be creating things because I am always going to be making these things. I guess it also thought I don’t have any thing to lose. If I say worst case scenario, everyone hates it, then I close the door and walk back inside and say, That was fun but let’s try something different. (laughter) I don’t know. I guess I just knew I was going to be making and I thought I should just put it out there and see what happens.

Are you much into music?

I do love music.

If you were to have a theme song for your work, what would it be?

Gosh, that’s hard to choose. The other problem is I listen to Spotify and I know the songs but I don’t know the titles. (laughter) Because I am just busy working and I think, I love that song. I was on a big Radiohead kick for a long time. I love all their music so I am sure it would be one of theirs.

Knowing that ceramics last so long, what do you want to be remembered by if you had one piece to last forever and people were to dig it up in a thousand years? Which piece, or which series of pieces would you want them to find?

That is a good question and it is something I do spend a lot of time thinking about. I think anyone who works with clay cannot help but think about the archival nature of it. Could it be a group of pieces tied together?

Yes, that’s perfectly good. It’s your answer, not mine.

It would be one of my sets of bottles that are all smooshed together and tied up. I think that would be it.

A very common question is who inspired you, but I would like to ask, who have you inspired?

Wow, that is also a good question. I hope that I have inspired my children. That may be the easy answer too but I would like to think that they are watching me living my life in a way that makes sense and I try to express a lot of gratitude everyday for the things I am able to do. I would like to think that they are also inspired by that.

Do you ever find yourself overwhelmed with too many ideas?

Absolutely. It’s funny, because it wasn’t the case when I was younger. It’s weird, I would say the last five years, I do this thing where I send myself an email when I think of something. And then every few weeks I add them to a document and print them and I have these huge binders full of pages and pages of things that I want to create and ideas that I have. Some of them are really bad but some of them are really exciting and I feel like I have so much stuff I want to make that I have years and years of stuff ahead of me to make.

What on Netflix has got you excited right now?

I’ve been watching Dark. That’s really good. Oh, that’s Amazon Prime. Does that count?

Yes, that counts too.

I love anything that has to do with time travel. I’m a big sci-fi dork.

I don’t think I have heard of that one.

Oh yeah, it is German and really cool. They just finished the second season. It is really good.