Music to Pottery - My Big Move
It was always music. For ages - forever, it was music. There wasn’t much else to do, it was the middle of nowhere in Scotland, nobody minded if I made a load of noise, so I did. I even got alright at it after a while and people said encouraging things, so I felt quite good about making a load of guitar noise and then added saxophone noise, and I kept them both going - jazz noises on saxophone, non-jazz noises on guitar - great fun, met loads of people, hung out with grown ups when I was still a kid because I could make grown up noises, loved it. So in school I really went for the saxophone thing in a big way until one day I got into The Royal Academy of Music to do 4 years of jazz saxophone, and that was great too, but terrifying. I nearly pulled out at the end of my first year because it was just too scary - I felt everyone else was surely finding it easier than me!? There was stuff I just couldn’t keep track of - rhythmic things that would confuse me and I would never find my way back in, densities of harmonic superimposition that would go way beyond those I could understand or enjoy. Fast-forward 25 years and those same things can get the better of me, still make me feel like I’m not really built for music in the way some other people are - they’re exhilarated by those layers and absorb them into their own musical concepts without fear or feelings of being left behind. But now, it’s all fine - I’ve written and recorded music of my own in the last 10 years that felt really personal and sincere and didn’t mean I had to confront the possibility I wasn’t truly built for music (I know, there’s a lot of different music out there…). So I love doing music when I’m in the right kind of relaxed setting, but the reality dawned that I’m kind of happiest just making it on my own, in private, nobody helping or listening as I work, then when I’m finished and it’s recorded I don’t feel any need to perform it to a big crowd - I’m just not that extrovert or bold. I only need a handful of people to have a listen, and one or two of them to maybe say “I like that guitar part” or “that coda’s really neat”, and I’m done - I’m content! But that’s not how to make music sustainably for a living - it doesn’t work. You have to do “other” things…
Fast forward to pottery - it kind of does work that way. I can spend my days quietly honing skills and working ideas up until I’m happy with the way they emerge from the kiln, then when I take those finished pieces to market there only needs to be an alignment, a connection between my concept and the one right person in the right moment casting their eyes over my table for us to have an understanding, our aesthetic ideals either meet or harmonise - we can then do a simple transaction where the money I ask in return for my time, skill and materials sounds fair to the person on the other side of the table, and they take something away with them into their home which they will enjoy using, perhaps daily - perhaps for years, perhaps for the rest of their life and on.... And if I can make a few of those connections over the course of a day, I can feed my kids - amazing! I’m not a natural performer, but I am a people-pleaser to a certain extent. It always bothered me playing gigs where even one audience member was visibly seeming not to enjoy the music - it’d ruin my night! I’d be trying so hard to find what they might want to hear. In pottery, I do want people to like what I make, of course, but I feel like it’s quite easy for me to be authentic in what I make - I only make things I would like to use in my own home, and those items seem to have been well received, which is a relief!
The transition from music to pottery started in the summer of 2021. I had quite quickly, almost darkly, decided it might be time for me to exit music. I say darkly because it felt very very strange to suddenly be entertaining a serious thought without any obvious catalyst - it was as though it had been brewing in my head without my knowledge. Pottery, I had always appreciated and held in high, fond regard, but even having been to a pottery taster day (with Phoebe Smith) a couple of years previous to this, I had never thought it should be my job. The idea to begin an intensive self-training just kind of arrived in my head - I didn’t have much plan, except I knew that if I sold all of my music recording gear I could create a bit of a financial buffer to allow me to try to transition. But I’d still never thrown a pot, except that one guided bowl with Phoebe. Which I didn’t even centre the clay for, she did…
So I signed up to a group pottery studio at a place called Maze Studios in Bristol. The day I went to look around the studios and choose my desk space, I was gazing in wonder at a whole world I knew a bit about from books, but had never physically experienced. The big old kilns, slab roller, room full of assorted throwing wheels, artists shelves full of dusty glazy tests, unglazed bisque, sculptural forms at various stages of completion - I’d never seen a working pottery. The quiet, contemplative, creative but also kind of private atmosphere was just heavenly - so right for me and how I like to work. But what work?! I knew nothing!! On some level I just knew, trusted myself, that my appreciation could channel through my hands - I’d always loved shape, form, colour and texture so I just needed to get the materials to agree to comply in some way to help me reach the ideas I had in my head. I worked in the recording studio every day I could to keep money coming in, picked the kids up from nursery and made them dinner, put them to bed with Viv, my wife, then with her blessing, understanding and encouragement I would go to the pottery and learn each night until late. Everything. I would absorb everything I could glean from conversations with other potters around the studio, read books, watch tutorial videos, I took a lesson in throwing with Renee one week, a turning lesson with her the following week, Jeramiah showed me how to make my own glaze from raw ingredients, and I was off - hooked! I loved the autonomy, the freedom, the fact my fingers could draw lines in the air that would become the contours of the walls. I loved the variety of the kiln results, I learned to expect surprises - you can’t love everything that comes out of a kiln… At the wheel I get to play artist/craftsman, I can have a colour/tonal/textural idea, research the possibilities in glaze recipe books then play chemist to create a few potential glazes, play baker with the kiln, play chatty market trader on Sunday! The variety within the work is enormous and that suits me. By the winter I was being asked to make pieces for a florist that were beyond me, large volumes for a homeware shop, a wholesale order for a cafe - I took the challenges and made them my goals. But this work meant I needed to leave Maze and set up my own studio. Luckily, two other potters were in the same position so in spring of 2022 the three of us set up the pottery we all currently work at in Lawrence Hill in Bristol. I’ve never felt more fulfilled in terms of being totally (frighteningly) responsible for all stages of production - the sense of ownership over the process is quite immense when everything from the seed of the idea through the working method to the finished article is taken into account. There’s a craft and an art and a huge weight of history behind the creation of these simple vessels that we all use every day, and whoever decided I should be doing this now, I’m very grateful - it’s an honour to be part of it.