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Michelle Miolla | Episode 578
Michelle Miolla is a potter living in the mountains of North Carolina in a town called Vilas, right outside of Boone. Michelle has her BFA in clay from Appalachian State University. Michelle primarily handbuilds, but also loves to throw on the wheel. Michelle also bartends at Appalachian Mountain Brewery, Boone’s first brewery!
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Now that you are finished school, how important is having a job while you are figuring out what your next steps are?
It’s pretty important because it kind of takes a bit of stress off of the making for me. I want to keep making and I want to want to keep making. I don’t want to have to keep making, if that makes any sense. So having the financial stability of a side job is just important for me mentally to feel like clay is something that I am continuing to do because I want to do it.
Is it important to have the mentality that it is a side job and not your main job even though it is your main source of income?
Yes.
So is that a mental trick you play on yourself?
Yes, absolutely. I play lots of mental tricks on myself and they all seem to work.
You have designed your life to having easy access to your studio. Was that easy access important to you?
Yes, one hundred percent. I just feel like not having to gather all these things, my lunch together or just making sure I have parking, having all that to worry about is stress I don’t want to have. So just being able to walk downstairs whenever, take a break if I need to, If I am feeling really tired taking a 20 minute break upstairs, take a nap, come back downstairs, it’s just such a good thing. Being able to fire my kiln overnight and setting an alarm to make sure it turns off all of those things are just so great and so stress relieving for all those little particular parts of ceramics that we don’t often think about.
Is it important to be networking with friends and “using” your relationships to promote your business
Absolutely. Relationships are very important to me especially in this clay community. All of us support each other. Nobody is ever competing against each other here, we are always plugging each other here and there and on our Instagrams sharing each others things. I just think that really plants a seed for something great to grow,between relationships between us and relationships between people that buy our work. When you feel like you are friends with the people who do the same things as you do, you really can grow a lot.
Do you have a schedule that you try to keep up with your studio life?
I do. So my job at the brewery is not ever a set schedule so those days change a lot from month to month. So I get that schedule and I typically only work about 2 or 3 days a week there, so the days I have off I make sure that I get down here for at least four or five hours, sometimes they turn into twelve hour days, but starting in November, which will be the first full month that I have had my wheel and kiln and everything, I am going to start logging my hours and being more specific about it. Right now I am just kind of feeling it out and seeing how it goes.
Do you have a favorite tool?
Good question! Yes, and it’s nothing special. It’s just this little carving tool. I probably bought it from a cheap art store or something, it is not a fain Dolan tool or anything. It is just a little point carving tool that I use for a lot of my pots on the bottom. They have this carved stripe design on them. That is probably my favorite tool for that.
When you are not in the studio what is your favorite things to do?
Good question, those times are very slim. Like I said before relationships are really important to me and I just like spending time with people. I do live in a very beautiful place so spending time with people hiking is a wonderful thing. It is soon to be winter time so we are all going to be curled up inside doing puzzles and games and all that fun stuff, but I do really enjoy spending time with people.
Book
Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy and Liberation
Contact
Instagram: @miolla_ceramics