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Craig Underhill | Episode 668
Scottish born Craig Underhill lives in Cornwall, England where he create slab-built vessels. Using his “three-dimensional canvasses”, Craig marks, adds textures, and colors his work creating delicious abstract surfaces. Inspired by his surrounding landscapes, Craig’s work brings an echo of the sea, sky, and textures of land to our attention.
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Was it important to answer the question of why you wanted a full-time artist before you jumped into this?
I think I always wanted to be a full-time artist. I think the reason I have been teaching, it was financial help. It was a financial necessity really. And I suppose I was fortunate that I was dong a job that was so closely related to making my own work. I was basically sharing what I was learning as a ceramics artist with other people. Which is…that’s a pretty good combination of jobs to have because they are closely related. But I suppose if I had the choice years ago I would have become a full-time artist and not done the teaching but because I had to do the teaching from a financial point of view, I made sure that I was going to get a lot out of it and that I was going to do as well as I could. And somehow it would help me as well and it has been a help to me. I suppose teaching means that you have to analyse what you do as a ceramics artist. You have to break it down so you can explain it to other people and when you break it down you sort of understand your own work and process better. So that has benefited me as a ceramic artist. So teaching has helped me and hopefully I have helped other people through teaching.
It sounds like what you are saying is that having the full-time job was in a way building a runway. Having said that, could it be that if necessity is the mother of invention, you could have launched earlier without the other job?
I suppose I could of given up. I’m not good at taking big financial risks. So the teaching, it gave something to me artistically, it also gave me a regular income and that was very helpful and it gave quite a lot of security and it helped pay bills. But I got to a point where I was increasing the sales of my work and was selling my work for a bit more money than I had been and it became apparent that I was less reliant on teaching for the income. So it was easier to give it up because financially I wasn’t so reliant on it.
How did you know you were really ready?
Oh gosh, I’ve just got my head so full of things I want to do with ceramics. I think when I was teaching three days a week there was things that I was telling myself I couldn’t do or I hadn’t got time to do it properly so they were all just kind of put on hold. And now that’s gone so what it’s bought me is time, you know, it’s given me time to do the things I wanted to do in my own work, further explorations, maybe working in different types of clay, maybe making work that might be displayed outside, you know all those options and opportunities.
Did you develop a business plan before you took this jump?
No, I didn’t.
It depends. Did I have something written down? No, nothing like that. But I have thought about it a lot, about the finances, what it would give me, what I was losing. I had given that a lot of consideration. So no, no formal business plan but a great deal of consideration.
At what point, percentage wise, did it make the decision easier for you when your ceramic sales hit a certain percentage of your total income?
Fifty-fifty. When I was earning as much from making ceramics as I was from teaching then you think, Well I could be spending more time making ceramics. The money I was losing from teaching is less significant.
How are you selling your work now?
Gosh, this year has been crazy. The pandemic has changed everything. If you would have asked me before COVID 19 I would say I am selling at ceramics fairs. I might do about four or five of those a year. I am selling through galleries. I am doing a few auctions. I have a few visitors that come to the studio and buy work and I was selling a little bit from my website. Since I’ve been here, since COVID 19, selling on the internet has become hugely important. All of the fair that I would have done this year have been cancelled. Galleries have been shut so posting work on Instagram and keeping my website up to date with work that’s for sale has become really important.
Question 8
One thing that’s become apparent is that planning is impossible. I think it’s just a matter of monitoring all the time, isn’t it, and looking for what’s happening and looking for clues about what’s happening and trying to react to that. And at the moment I normally have a year plan in the studio with all my things written in of what I am doing for twelve months. There is not need for one now. I don’t need that because there is nothing planned for twelve months. No one is talking about next year’s fairs, yet. At the moment everything I make is going on Instagram and going online.
Based upon what we talked about you said that you are not a functional potter, and seeing that many potters base their projections on making mugs, why don’t you make mugs?
I do sell some mugs. This is something that has come from putting my work online. I had somebody, in America actually, that asked could I make them a mug. So I thought, well there’s an interesting challenge. Something I said earlier was saying yes to things and taking new challenges, so I said Yes, I am going to make some mugs and it was quite fun to do actually. And I didn’t really want to call them mugs. To me they are small pots with handles. They were very popular, people loved them and each one was different. They weren’t necessarily very functional but I enjoyed making them. I made one lot and they sold and I made another lot. Now I’m not going to make loads and loads of them but I don’t mind making a few. They are quite interesting. Working on that scale is quite interesting.
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Instagram: @craigunderhill7