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Terry Hildebrand | Episode 719
Born in Manitoba, Terry Hildebrand graduated with an MFA from the UofMinnesota in 2014. Terry received a BFA from UofManitoba in 2007. Between Universities Terry was the ceramics technician at UManitoba. After school Terry taught at Medicine Hat College and participated in residencies at Medalta and the Banff Center until they moved back home in 2018. Terry and his partner are full time artists based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
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Do you have one piece you base your sales on?
Yeah, the mug is standard currency so if I think about it, if I can throw ten mugs in an hour and finish up the bottoms in half an hour and take another hour and half for all the handles and then fire them and whatever. So ten mugs in three hours. That’s three and a third mugs in an hour. If I can sell them for fifty dollars a piece that’s one hundred and fifty dollars an hour. The gallery takes fifty percent so that’s seventy five dollars and hour. You know, that’s a way of thinking with mugs it’s currency but you also have to include shipping and all of that jazz. So maybe you are only getting fifty dollars an hour but besides that I would say discipline is currency as well. Work in your studio and work, work, work and if you can’t sell your work and it’s all stock piling, go out and sell, sell, sell if you can. If you can’t , like me, I am pretty lucky, I got my MFA and I can go teach, teach, teach. Or if I can’t teach at the university I could go to a community center if I really had to scramble for cash. We are strange that way, I guess you could call us blessed. It hasn’t been a huge issue. We worry about money but it hasn’t consumed us.
Do you tend to be a goal setter like knowing you need to make this many pieces of plates, bowls, cups? Do you set goals?
Informally I do. Often it is galleries that give me a list of stuff they are running low on. And that list I will keep in mind and it’s my goal, goal, goal. The rest of the time I am either working on new shapes or I am just in the mood to throw mugs for a day, or throw plates, or maybe I want to design some of the bases that I use on my pieces, or the 3D printed ones. There’s many things to do with goals. Informal goals, you know. There are exhibitions that need to be looked at and that’s a completely different goal. If I have a show in Ontario in a year, I am making different work for that than I am selling on your favorite Etsy site.
Does that mean you create a schedule for yourself on a regular basis? Like a weekly schedule or a monthly schedule?
No, I wouldn’t say I do a formal schedule like that. I have it on the back of my mind, yes. And I have goal points, like bisque ware needs to be done by then. This is my last wet clay day to have it ready for this exhibition. Or if I am having a show somewhere, that’s the last wet clay day. So I can make whatever I want until that day cut off and then move on to bisque and glazing and firing.
Is being frugal an essential part of being an artist and surviving as an artist?
No, if you can make 500,000 dollars a year you can spend 500,000 a year. If you want to make 100,000 dollars a year and spend 20,000 dollars a year, you can invest 80,000 dollars a year. And the years after you will be making more and so it’s not necessary to be frugal but I think in the future one can be better off if you are.
Are multiple stream of income an important thing to be thinking through?
It’s important to think about, not everybody needs it. For us, I guess our old age retirement plan is sell off the houses once we are older and then keep working in the studio I guess. Yeah, multiple streams is nice. A three corded rope is stronger than one corded.
Does having a fellow artist as a partner, does that make a big difference in terms of understanding each other’s struggles?
I think so. It would be fine to be married to a doctor who could completely support me, well I am not saying that my wife can’t, she does quite well in her printmaking world but yeah, when there’s a deadline, she will be like, Well, yeah, have few more hours in the morning. I will take Max for a little longer. I get it. And vis versa. When she has something coming up I will take Max for a little longer.
What does it look like for you to support your wife as a printmaker?
Time I think and emotional support, right? Like we both have our stresses in our art communities. So when something environmental comes up that freaks her out, I’m there for her and she is there for me when something freaks me out. I like to cook. She likes to cook. One month I will be doing more cooking and one month she does more cooking. Maybe she needs a massage. Hey, I got potters hands. (laughter) It’s a benefit to be a partner with a potter, right?
Book
Discworld Series by Terry Pratchet
Contact
Instagram: @terry.hildebrand