Some Of The Whys Of Being Discovered | Raina Lee | Episode 830

Raina Lee | Episode 830

Raina Lee is an artist based in Los Angeles and works in clay and experimental glazes. Raina’s practice draws from ceramics history, archeology, and burial objects, and objects from her family’s past. Raina began in clay making functional works and has recently started making sculptural pieces.

SPONSORS

You can help support the show!

GRPotteryForms.com

diamondcoretools.com

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

For all your ceramic needs go to Georgies.com

Why is it important to you as an artist to find an audience for your work?

I think with ceramics, you know, just as I found with making punk rock zines, you just want to find your people. You want to find your community. You want to find people who have a shared outlook to you and that’s really what I am looking for the with the sort of aesthetics I am interested in, the ceramics history and ancient artifacts that I like. I think the main reason is just so I can find a community with a similar idea or similar value or similar background because you are just trying to connect with people with your work. I mean that’s one way of looking at it.

Do you think having a broader community becomes a bit of a collaboration for promotions?

Of course. I would highly recommend collaborating, whether it’s different ceramicists or different artists or different people across media or even collaborating with a writer. I think the most interesting work can come out of a collaboration but you can also get the work into different “eyeballs” that would have never seen the work in the first place. I think collaboration is an instrumental part of promoting the work and getting it into the world.

You don’t use many hashtags on your Instagram. How are you being found?

I try to do events in the real world. I try to connect with real people. I try to have real conversations and when there is an opportunity to have face time with new friends or new events I go. There’s only so much you can do on Instagram. There are definitely people who are Instagram famous but I think nothing can replicate human relationships and meeting people in person. And that’s a little bit of why, you know, I am not great at hashtags, it takes a lot of time but I don’t necessarily think it helps in that way where you can go meet people in real life.

Then how do you view social media in relationship to your art?

I see it as just a snapshot of what I am doing and again, I am interested in educating people who might not know about ceramics or the processes that are involved in making this very technical, very skilled work. And most of what I am interested in doing on Instagram is education and introducing people to this kind of work and this medium.

Is that why your posts are wordy, is that part of the education process?

Yeah, because a lot of the time we see beautiful photos on Pinterest or Instagram and you don’t know where it comes from or you don’t know what it’s about and I don’t know if necessarily the heavy text and the over-explanatory text helps promote the work on Instagram but that’s what I want to know when I look at a post. I want to know all about it and where it came from and where the idea is from. I am basically posting what I would like to see.

What is a way of getting your art into the world that you have found to be very effective?

I can’t stress enough just being in the world and either doing in person events or in person sales. I would say there’s nothing that can replicate having people look at your work in person and to meet you. So a lot of it is relationships and I think if you are in the world it brings your work to new people because they also want to connect.