Sustaining Craft

Crafting a single piece of pottery can take up to three weeks. There’s the design stage, then the piece is created on the pottery wheel and must dry completely before it goes into the kiln. “If that moisture, as it leaves the clay, if it is rushed, it will crack in the kiln,” Quintanar explained. “It has to be bone dry, that’s what we call it when all the moisture is out of the pot. That takes days.”

The firing takes a few days, and then the pot is glazed and fired again. The kilns at the arts center are massive and can fit a couple of thousand pieces. With about 200 students and teachers creating throughout the week, it still takes time to fill the kilns.

Now, Quintanar is working on his end-of-residency show and experimenting with colored clay and colorful slips. “I want the show to be really bright and colorful,” Quintanar shared. “I’ve been making my own clay and mixing up my own slips, which are colorful slips that are applied on the surface.”

Slips consist of clay with water added and can be painted on a piece of pottery. Quintanar has been focused on experimenting for four months and has found some trial and error in the process. “I’ve had a lot of failures recently, after the firings, losing the colors,” he explained. “I could show you tons of tests of little white cups that are supposed to be purple and pink and blue. ... I really finally think I’ve come upon a direction that might work. I haven’t so much thought about the forms yet. Like I said, I want it to be functional. So, of course, there will be bottles, jars and cups and possibly bowls. But there’s so many design elements to choose from, so I need to do a lot of brainstorming and drawing and sketching for those things, but I think it’s going to be really exciting. It’s going to be really colorful if it all goes well.”

Special Guest: Adrian Quintanar.

And they keep their product lines interesting, even taking special orders. “We have these really unique niche scents in some of our candles, so they work really well for historical reenactors, but they’re not going to sell to somebody else,” Reeves said. “We have a state park that we contract to that deals with historical reenactors all the time, and one of their properties on the park is a jail. We designed an entire line of candles just for their jail, scents that would have been in a jailhouse in the mid-1800s to early 1900s when it was operational.”

One of those specialty scents is called The Sheriff. “It kind of smells like this dirty man that’s been smoking a pipe,” Reeves explained. “When I smell it, I get the thought of the cowboy with his feet up on the desk, and the big sheriff badge and a hat over his face, sleeping while his prisoners are in the cells behind him. That’s what it conjures for me. Many of our scents are like that. You can smell it and you can conjure this idea of what it is supposed to be in your head.”

But not everyone can smell the candles. “A lot of men can’t smell,” Reeves explained. “I didn’t realize this until I started dealing with men on a regular basis. Men, blue-collar workers, a lot of them can’t smell because they’ve worked around chemicals their whole life. Or they’ve worked around major smells their whole life. My dad is a maintenance man at a roofing plant. My dad can’t smell anything. Asphalt’s burned the inside of his nose. So he can’t smell candles. My dad can’t smell when something is cooking. And he’s not the only one.”

Special Guest: Tabatha Reeves.

When Long moved to Florida, Godbold and Cook divided the remaining responsibilities. While they at first tried splitting the baking and the decorating, they found the workflow wasn’t efficient. Cook, who has a degree in business, took over the finances, taxes, and practical business needs. Godbold took on all of the baking, decorating, social media, and marketing.
Along with refining her baking skills, Godbold learned that her customers weren’t on Instagram or Facebook. “At the beginning, I was trying to do paid ads and do all these things and market on Facebook but that really doesn’t sell for this market,” she explained. “Most of my customers didn’t find me on Facebook. It was word of mouth or they tried our cookies at someone’s event. Once I figured that out, it took a lot of stress off of social media. Social media is just fun. It’s a fun case to showcase our art and product and meet people.”
Referrals turned into regular customers, and they also started selling cookies at the Me and McGee Market, a stand dedicated to local produce, meats, cheese, products, and crafts.
“When we first started marketing, it was a little bit of a struggle trying to find who our customer is,” shared Godbold. “Who would appreciate what we do and who is looking for what we were offering because we’re not trying to compete with Walmart. We’re not even trying to compete with some of the other local storefront bakeries. You can’t call me up on a Tuesday morning and say, ‘Hey, can I have three dozen decorated cookies by this afternoon?’ It’s not going to happen because I need at least three days. It took a little bit, but once we really found our customer base, who understands us, they understand what we put into it. They know that I’m a stay-at-home mom and that I do this from 8 pm until midnight or sometimes later during the week. They appreciate our work and are willing to pay for what we’re offering.”

Special Guest: Suzanne Godbold.

In the four years since we last talked, Morgan has moved on from her Muse series, which she focused on for two years. She's branched out into working on several different series, with focus ranging from Greek mythology to folklore to mushrooms. She's also teaching herself new methods and skills. "It’s fun trying new papers and different brushes and stuff because I’ve been missing out on a lot," Morgan said. "I’m kind of sad I didn’t discover this stuff sooner because it’s working on different mediums or different papers. I have to learn how to use the paint totally differently than on other stuff that I’ve worked on. It’s really interesting and keeps me from getting bored."

Read the rest at: https://hewandweld.com/news/

Find out more about Morgan:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theinklinggirl/
Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TheInklingGirl
Etsy - https://www.etsy.com/shop/theinklinggirl/

Sustaining Craft is a passion project of Hew & Weld Writing. There are no fees for artists and craftspeople to participate. Music provided by Jim Ciago (Seven Second Chance on iTunes and Spotify).

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sustainingcraft/
Facebook - http://facebook.com/sustainingcraft

Find more from Hew & Weld:
Website - https://www.hewandweld.com/news
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/hewandweld/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/hewandweld/

Special Guest: Morgan Allain.

Ti King is the CEO of American Business Engine and the co-founder of the nonprofit Arkansas Podcast Collaborative. He shared his creative journey, how he discovered podcasts, and what's next for Arkast, the only Arkansas podcast convention.

“Anyone can get started with any type of equipment. Everybody has at least a cell phone. That’s how I started way back in the day. And people aren’t worried so much about audio quality more than they are about your content. We’ll help you refine your content, what it is that you’re trying to say, and get your episodes lined up in a way that you can record them and release them and get them out to the public.” - Ti King

Watch the YouTube video here: https://youtu.be/GFBXubk81Vs

Learn more about Ti:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ambizengine/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/americanbusinessengine
Website - https://www.americanbusinessengine.com
Arkansas Podcast Collaborative / Arkast - https://www.arkansaspodcasters.org/arkast

Sustaining Craft provides storytelling resources and shares the tales of those pursuing their art or craft. Music provided by Jim Ciago (Seven Second Chance on iTunes and Spotify & Nomad Neighbors in the Denver area most weekends).
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sustainingcraft/
Facebook - http://facebook.com/sustainingcraft
Website - https://www.sustainingcraft.com

Special Guest: Ti King.