Pressurized Pots

Day; 22. Sunny but windy and cold. Temperature on outside kiln; 25

Life Changing realization last night in bed;  I can never make enough pieces/work in the studio to make a really good living, (you know one with days off and vacations, stuff like that) unless I triple my prices that is... Tempting to do so, but how many  run-of-the-mill folks out there can pay $90. for a mug?  Or $100 for a small serving bowl? Pretty few and far between really. But I can raise my prices can't I? And I must, the question really is how much? My work is so labor-intensive I probably make about 50 cents/hour. I've never wanted to really do the math,  always afraid that I might become terminally depressed and never go back in there...

But the dawning realization is this; after 20 years of shows,  I am still broke and have way too much on my Visa card. Every year I tell my husband this will change and every year it stays the same. This year he asked me not to tell him my plans for getting through the winter so I have kept all my scurrying around to myself. What I have finally admitted to myself is that I am only one person and can only make so much work, there is just no more to wring out of me. I can only put so much pressure on my pots before  they become warped and unhappy. The work is starting (always was?) to suffer from all the hurrying from kiln  to kiln.

The truth is I need to find a few more income streams that do not involve firing and glazing stoneware; returning to teaching and writing keeps surfacing.  After grad school in 1993 I did a lot more teaching than I do now, I thought I didn't have to anymore, I thought I could just stay in my studio and make stuff. But I can't, not anymore. Maybe in a 30-year old body but not in a 57-year old body. And the show circuit just isn't what it used to be, the good old days have come and gone. Selling and shopping locally is more viable now, for both the artisan and the customer.  Spending $1800 and four days to do a national show, has very rapidly diminishing returns when you factor in hotel, food, gas. You have to sell a lot of mugs to make a profit on something like that. Or make large ceramic sculpture and charge hundreds of dollars for it. Not my thing.

So,  I have contacted the universities in my area looking  for  interns, I  have put the word out through the artists' grapevine that I am looking for private students, and yesterday I dropped off a flyer at the elementary school across the street advertising an after-school clay class. I made the terrible mistake however of arriving just as the bell rang and literally hundreds of K-8th graders swarmed the parking lot. OMG! I briefly paused and considered getting back in my car.. Can I really do this I thought? I don't have children  of my own for a reason... but I pushed through all the kids and found the office.

I now wait on the colleges, the parents, and the Universe to call me back....