Collaboration Between Artists | Isaac Shue & Amanda Fungue

Isaac Shue & Amanda Fungue | Episode 609

Isaac Shue is living a life of clay! As a teacher, Isaac is teaching our next generation of ceramicists by day and then working the studio life by night! Amanda Fungue color and plant lover and is seeking fun, small-batch pottery and art! Together they have collaborated together to make some amazing work. In this conversation we talk about the ins and outs of collaboration.

Amanda’s Work

Isaac’s Work

SPONSORS

You can help support the show!

diamondcoretools.com

Number 1 brand in America for a reason. Skutt.com

For all your ceramic needs go to Georgies.com

Amanda’s Work

Amanda, how do you decide who to collaborate with?

Amanda: I either get approached by them or if I like their style enough, I like to think it’s like a puzzle. Will my work with their work? Can we make it work? It is really kind of like, who is going to say yes. Some people you look up to them so much, I really want to work with them. It’s just asking and see if we can make it a go. So it is just taking that chance.

Isaac’s Work

Issac, when you are approached, why would you say yes. Why would you want to bring your creativity to someone else’s piece and combine them together?

I think a lot of it is just the ceramic community and building that strength of numbers. If we really want to succeed in our own business we have to build each other up and help each other out and get people buying ceramics which is getting pretty popular again. And if they want me to be a part of that for them, I am thrilled, it’s exciting to me that some body would like my stuff enough that they would want it to be with theirs forever. I don’t think there is anybody that I would say no to. It is interesting, every different form, every different style that you see creates a new challenge. And I don’t think there is anyone out there that wouldn’t bring a new challenge. Which is what I am looking for. I am looking to grow my own art on my own techniques and that is not always happen on my own form. That is only going to happen by trying new things.

Amanda’s Work

Amanda, how do you actually word the invitation or the request to do a collaboration?

So, I am pretty straight forward. I mean, I get that from being in the military and from being the youngest of five kids. You have to just say what you think and I don’t mince words a lot so, I go into life with the worst thing that is going to happen is that someone is just going to say no. So if that is the worst thing that is going to happen then , what do I have to lose? I mean they are either going to say yes or no. I don’t take it personally. I just say, Hey, would you be interested? and they are either going to say yes or they are going to say no.

Isaac’s Work

Isaac, when you are doing this do you have a specific goal you are trying to achieve besides getting your lines on there?

Not initially,no. For me it’s fun, you know. It’s fun having somebody else’s work. It is fun seeing somebody else’s work naked. If you can say that on the air. You like kind of putting their style on to that mug. So, not really. I get each one with a clean slate. I get a mug with skulls in one place and think what would be happening with lines and skulls in that area. So I try not to have a predetermined what I am going to do with that person’s style because each one is so unique and each one is so different. I don’t want to give it’s destiny before I meet that individual piece.

Amanda’s Work

Amanda, for you, how important is communication and emails back and forth during the process?

I think it is important in a lot of ways. But at the same time, getting fundamentals like clay bodies. The basics of just ceramics and just going and playing. I think for me collaboration is just letting go of the control and putting it into someone’s hands So when I receive a piece from someone and work on their piece, I treat it the same way. It’s just letting the process just happen. I find it more heady at the beginning and at the end than the actual creation portion.

Isaac’s Work

Isaac, how has handling various artists work and having to figure out how to do this, you know, collaborate and put your creativity on their work. How has that changed you as an artist?

When you ask that the first thing I think about is how it has changed me as a teacher because that is what I do daily with kids and how it makes them see my teaching, my techniques to what they are going to produce.

It has made me grow because when you get comfortable you stop producing good work. And when you get comfortable you are usually working on your own work. It is not changing. so when I get these different forms I am learning how a straight line is going to react to a different form. For example, a lot of my work I am doing right now has flat sides that are straight surfaces, which is helping that line stay straight. Amanda’s mugs that she sent me were definitely not flat, straight surface. They have a lot of belly in them, I guess, which is creating that roundness, making it a lot more difficult to keep that hand going straight on those three hundred lines that are on each mug. So it is teaching me a steadier hand, it is teaching me to see form differently. I think all of that makes you better at what you are trying to do.

Amanda’s Work

This a question for both of you. Does collaboration bring up any kind of sense of insecurity?

Amanda: I think that the toughest collaboration I did so far has been with Elan Pottery, Leigh Anne. When I took a scalpel to her mug my hand was shaking because she is like a super star. So when she asked me to collaborate with her it was literally nerve racking. So the insecurities…questioning it…no, because as some point I always feel like an impostor anyway because I don’t have a degree and my foundation hasn’t been in pottery. I have taught myself so much and just feeling like I am trying to figure it out along the way thinking, Man someone is going to figure this out, that I have no clue what I am doing. So I have that impostor feeling about my pottery because it hasn’t been something that I have been formally educated in like all of my other mediums that I work in. But I think I am letting that go more and more as I get older and stop caring so much about what people think and just doing it because it makes me feel good.

Isaac: Yeah, I piggy back on what she said a lot. I had a Facebook account for my pottery for a long time and I knew about Instagram and I knew that is where a lot of the artists were hanging out but it took me years to get the nerve up because I didn’t want other artists to see