Getting Permission
Do good work for goodness sake.
Do good work for goodness sake.
At some point most makers run into the same quiet trap. You finish a piece, set it on the shelf, and before you’ve even decided how you feel about it yourself you’re already wondering what someone else might think. You start looking for a signal. A nod, a comment, a like, a sale. Something from the outside that tells you the work was worth making. I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit.
The problem with needing validation is that it moves the measuring stick outside yourself and hands it to someone else. Someone who wasn’t in the studio at six in the morning. Someone who didn’t fight with the clay or rework the lip three times or lose sleep over the glaze. They get the finished piece and a few seconds to form an opinion, and somehow that opinion gets more weight than the hours you put into the thing. That’s a real bad trade.
Good work doesn’t need an audience to be good. A pot that holds water holds water whether anyone praises it or not. A well-thrown bowl with a good foot and a honest glaze is a well-thrown bowl whether it sells at the first show or sits on the shelf for two years. The quality is in the object. The opinion is in the person looking at it. Those are two different things and it’s worth keeping them separate.
This doesn’t mean feedback has no value. It does. A more experienced potter pointing out something you missed is useful information. A customer telling you a mug changed their morning routine is genuinely worth knowing. That kind of input can make you better. What I’m talking about is something different. It’s the waiting. The making work in order to be told it’s good rather than because you believe it is. That’s where the trouble starts.
Make the work. Assess it honestly. Learn what it’s teaching you. Set it on the shelf and move on to the next one. If someone recognizes it for what it is, good. If they don’t, the pot is still what it is. You were the one in the studio. You already know if it’s good.
If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have trusted my own eye sooner and spent less time waiting for someone else to confirm what I already knew.
Things I am grateful for: Every pot that sat on the shelf unsold and taught me something anyway. The makers who showed me by example that the work is its own reward.
If I get to live to be 86: I might only have: 12,670 days left.
Originally published at Creek Road Pottery
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