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Will Talbot | Episode 386
Will Talbot comes by his love for pottery honestly. Growing up in a family of sculptors, architects, and potters, Will has spent a lifetime saturated with a love for the form. Will’s pottery is inspired by textures and forms he finds in nature, and the fluidity and flexibility of the medium.
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You seem to have confidence coming out of your pores. Where does confidence come from for you?
That is a good questions. I am not entirely sure. I was a very shy kid and then I kind of grew into being a little bit more confident. Not sure why that is. I think it is because I liked being alone. I spent a lot of time by myself and I think I figured myself out to a degree and that kind of built that confidence up.
Explain why community for you is critical.
I think it is an extra support network, like on Periscope, people are bouncing ideas off of each other. There is a kind of excitement that fuels a bit of work. It is a big motivational thing for me.
You said you have been doing some teaching. As an artist what kind of things do you need to do to make sure you have a consistent paycheck coming in?
I think it is switching up different ideas and experimenting with new things. If I am teaching a class it is not going to be the exact same thing every single class. We are going to vary it up so there is a constant excitement and engagement. So that is kind of the big one. The biggest one too is just being really excited about things. If you are super engaged it is going to bring them back. And no matter what you are doing they are going to be really excited.
Your world view is shaped by being brought up by artists. How have you noticed your world view is different from others being brought up in non-artist families?
A lot of my friends don’t come from artistic families but they are still musicians. My best friend is a drummer and his dad is a psychologist. It is hard to say because I have surrounded myself with people who are more artistic and have something that they are passionate about. I had a supportive family to help push whatever I was doing whether it was welding, sculpture, pottery, whatever I was doing, which not all my friends had.
What is your favorite marketing tool for getting the word out about you?
I guess it’s Instagram. I need to find someone to kind of help me out with this because I am not good at that kind of stuff. Pretty much what I have been doing is I like talking to people in person and engaging with people. What I have been mostly doing is carrying one of my cups every where I go, with some tea. People often ask if I made my cup and I offer for them to come to the studio and buy one. This works really well, really well. But I don’t know what I am doing at all. I’m just kind of winging it.
Teachers often say they learn more from their students than they actually teach. What is one thing you have learned from your students?
That’s a good one. I trim my feet differently on my pots. There was a guy I had at one of my craft centers who I was trying to teach a specific thing and he could not get it. The second time he did it, I looked at it and said, That is so much better than what I have been doing. Let’s stop doing every thing that I have been teaching you and just do what you have been doing and keep going. Things like that happen pretty regularly.
Book
The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura
Contact:
Instagram: @bellhillpottery