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Mairi Stone | Episode 707
Mairi Stone’s work is all about trying to express her love and reverence for the beauty of the earth. The oceans are a major inspiration but the whole of nature’s forms, textures, and colours influences her. Mairi uses porcelain paperclay and often fuse glass into the pieces.
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How important is to be in the career or in the hobby, just showing up and being there, to be able to have luck find you? Just being present and setting yourself up for being found?
This is it, isn’t it? That’s the thing, you are putting yourself in a place to be found. Some can say, It was lucky you were found but then as you said earlier, you put yourself in the position to be found. And also I suppose what strikes me here, I don’t know if this fits into the question…sometimes people say, Oh, but you have been so lucky. I didn’t get that opportunity. But then the thing is they don’t realize that actually they didn’t really follow it up. You know, so for instance, a very lovely lady who creates very lovely things but doesn’t put them in the right market so she still sells for the less than what they would actually be worth and they are really not getting to the people who would really appreciate it and shall we say, pay what they are worth. So she could say to me, You have been so lucky. But I would say, Maybe if you got onto Instagram or did this or the other. But that is so much work. (Laughter) and there we go.
How important is setting up the plans with an escape hatch? So in other words, how important is it to plan for success but also to have an escape hatch so you have a way to get out when it’s not working out?
Okay, so the way I am reading that question is, I think, I have this thing, I never have plans but I have ideas and we will see which ones will work out. So I am starting off, I am playing with clay, I have my hobby and I’m thinking, Oh, I really hope I will be able to earn a living doing this. If I don’t , that’s fine too. I will go off and do something else. I have other life skills. So I think, certainly in my head it helps to have a goal and an idea and focus on that but equally not so concrete around that as a solid plan so if it doesn’t work or if you need to bend or change then you can. I think that helps and it is certainly the way I work.
Do you need to recognize then that nothing is 100 percent guaranteed?
Oh for sure, because I mean, even now, I am very lucky to be in the position I am. Who knows, what if Instagram disappears? That would be a huge chunk out of my working life, and I would have to work around it in a different way. So you can never rely fully on anything either because you don’t know what is going to happen. So yes, flexibility is, I think in anything in life is huge.
Does being lucky require a little bit of taking the chance?
I think it does. for instance, again I am not sure if it fits in but, so I was working in stoneware mostly in the early days I was wholesaling that and then I discovered paper clay and I discovered porcelain paper clay and it meant I could fulfill all my texturing dreams and whatever. So one year I decided, right, I will stop all my wholesaling and I am going to give the next six months to getting this porcelain going. I mean, I took it to the big craft fair and it had sold out immediately. So I was quite confident. But again, it is about taking a leap of faith and was that luck? I don’t know. I was just going for it hoping for the best and it worked.
Does it take optimism? Do you need to approach even loss with a sense of optimism?
I don’t know, but I am a very optimistic person and what you said would describe me. I am very much like, Look if that didn’t work well then there is something else to be done. So I agree with you.
How important is luck to keeping yourself busy and just keeping going to the next thing?
I don’t really know. I say that because I think there are times when it is important to be idle. You do have to keep going and keep making for sure, it creates luck. But again we use this word but it could easily be exchanged for hard work.
How does having the right people around you help you be successful?
That’s a very round question too isn’t it for anyone in life, you gotta have the right people around you. You know you need also on the whole for your friends to be optimistic because they are going to bring you down and if you are down you are not going to do anything.
Book
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
Contact
Instagram: @mairi_stone