An Artist Doing Wholesale and Wanting More | Kat Pino

Kat Pino | Episode 698

Kat (Katherijne) Pino, a ceramic artist from The Netherlands, has been living in Vancouver since 2016. Kat design and make contemporary dinnerware and home goods with a focus on functionality and simplicity.

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Do you enjoy the push of being a wholesaler? When you get an order you just need to put your head down and get the word done. Do you like that approach to making?

I do not. I do need it. I work well with deadlines and it’s easier to me to meet a deadline when someone else imposes it on me. Then when I do so myself.

So volume drives the orders. Does that bother you?

It does bother me. Absolutely. Because 2 and half years starting this it’s something that happened to me, being in some stores, but I never consciously chose to be a wholesale potter. I would rather sell directly and do more custom orders that lands me 100 percent of the income.

Does it bother you as an artist to be consumed with a market driven approach to making and selling?

Yes, because I think it should come from within. I prefer people to want to buy my work because it’s my work and the style is my identity instead of the other way around. There’s so much speckled clay at this moment. Everyone likes speckled white stuff and I just want to steer away from it because of that. I feel that as an artist the drive should come from within. What you want to create should come from within, I feel, and not be market driven at all.

Is that to say that knowing what the market wants and making towards that is wrong?

It’s not wrong. It helped me for the last 2 and a half years to just get my name out there. So no I don’t think it’s wrong to be market driven but for me personally I would rather not be market driven.

What is the escape route then as an artist who wants to do more than just wholesale?

I think for me it would be…the reason I am a little bit struggling with this question is because I don’t want to disrespect wholesale or the market because where I am today is because of those stores that are willing to buy my stuff. Even if it for fifty percent. And they are doing their best to launch my name and let everybody know about Katpino ceramics so I am grateful for wholesale and for that. But it means also that I am trapped inside this box of making, making, making, as a little factory just to please a customer, to please a store. And I need them at the moment because I need the income, obviously. Then on the other hand this creativity, this wish for making free work is growing stronger and stronger.