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Nicola Hart | Episode 699
Nicola Hart is originally from New Zealand but moved to Australia after finishing her studies in graphic design. Nicola worked as a designer and art director and then had time at home with her three children. Around ten years ago Nicola started doing night classes in ceramics at her local community centre and fell in love with hand building in clay! Nicola now works from her home in Sydney, where ceramics has turned from a hobby into a small business. Nicola is fascinated with organic shapes, and ceramics that are unique and perfectly imperfect.
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As a hand builder is it important to slow down and keep the process slow?
I don’t think I intentionally slow down but there is an amazing therapeutic quality to hand building for me. Where, you know, you go into that zone of making and you are thoroughly absorbed by what you are doing and using your hands I really feel that as humans it’s just such a basic tool that we have been doing for however long, millennia and it just feels so fundamental to use my hands and to be able to make something out of so few tools. I really use very little tools and most of it is hand-formed. The process itself forces me to work slowly because of the way I make and I can’t rush it because then it is a disaster, always. I can never rush what I am doing. I have to work at a certain pace and that’s what the clay asks you to do.
Because the clay is dictating the schedule do you have works in progress as you go through the process of making?
Oh yeah, I really have all different stages going at once. I am sure most potters are the same. But then I do go in cycles where you just got to have a good chunk of glazing to get the work finished and done and you have to have a good couple of days or a week of making to get a batch of work done. I work on things, after I have made the initial shape then I am working on it a little bit every day. I am taking it out, I am looking at it, seeing how dry it is, working the edges again, cleaning it and then putting to rest again until it firms up a little bit more, and then I do details. On my porcelain plates I do the pinhole details and it has to be done at exactly the right point in the drying process. So yes, I have things at all different stages and every morning I usually come and check the work from the day before, take the plastic off, check the shapes, all those sorts of things before I can move on to new work.
How do you actually schedule your day then?
I try to fit in as much as possible, Paul. (laughter) My studio is at home. I have a little custom built studio in the back of my garden, which is good and bad of course. Most people that work at home would tell you that. It’s great because I can be down there loading the kiln at ten o’clock at night and it’s bad because from my kitchen bench I can see my little house and a lot of the time I would much rather be there making than cooking dinner. I only have one son now at school so while he is at school I really try to use my time and be making. I am getting better at planning my time but the problem is the time just disappears. You go into the studio and you feel like you’ve got all day and all of sudden it is 11 o’clock then 2 o’clock then 4 o’clock. It happens to me every time.
In general do you have a flow of a work week that you like to put into place?
Only that I will have one week of making, and one week of glazing and finishing. So I try and cycle it that way.
Do you have a working calendar for the year? Do you plan for the holidays and the seasons?
I do have already booked for next year a few events and a gallery show that I have coming up that I have to get ready for so there are certain deadlines that I have to work towards. But I am not good as I should be at time tabling and doing all those sorts of things. I am good at writing lists, I write a lot of lists. Lists are really good. I have a week list and a daily list but I am not so good about thinking month to month.
When you go back to New Zealand do people say you are starting to sound more Australian?
Yes, they do! I can’t win, Paul. Back there I am Australian and here I am very definitely a New Zealander. I’m torn between two places. All of my family are in New Zealand but my husband is Australian and my three boys are very definitely Australian. So like many people in the world, torn between two places.
Book
Lucy M Lewis by Susan Peterson
Contact
Instagram: @nicolahartstudios