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It is hard to be a beginner—especially when the path to improvement is heavily paved with unpredictable outcomes, frustration, and no guarantee that you’ll make the progress you want on the timeline you have in your head. That’s what
discovered when she first started making ceramics. But the pastime also provided her with ample opportunities for growth; not only could she learn to sit with the discomfort of creating less-than-perfect creations, but she could also experience the joy and validation that comes with seeing yourself actively get better at a decidedly difficult task. That’s why, when she’s not writing her excellent internet culture newsletter Embedded—which is one of my favorite Substacks and more than worth the paid subscription—you’ll find her in the pottery studio, making Wordle-inspired mugs (which she sells for charitable causes), crafting gifts for friends, or improvising on the wheel. We talked all about how she got into ceramic-making and how it’s changed her attitude toward perfectionism.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
How did you get into ceramics?
The very first time I did ceramics was in a workshop in college, but I didn't really start doing it until I moved to New York. I got one of my first jobs at Refinery29 in 2017, and my editor mentioned she was taking a class. I was like, “Well, I'm gonna join.” I figured I could go and talk to new people, and it was something to do where I couldn’t touch my phone.
I took a few classes at this place called Gasworks in South Slope. It's really good, but it's never been near anywhere I’ve lived, so it was always a commute to get there. When you're in a class you get unlimited access to the studio, so what a lot of people do is they'll take a class a bunch of times to get guidance when they need it, but also to get more studio time. Studio memberships are very coveted, and they’re an investment.
So, I’d make ceramics when I took a class but then wouldn't have access to the studio [in-between]. When the pandemic happened, everything shut down, and I got an email from a studio called Brooklyn Clay, which is in Prospect Heights. A lot of people left the city so it had a ton of memberships open up.
Very unique experience: I didn't like the pandemic. It made me sad, and I was very depressed. I remember I had some impostor syndrome [about getting a membership] like, “Do I want to bite the bullet on this?” But I needed a reason to leave the apartment, and it felt safe because people were wearing masks, but also, pottery studios have to be very ventilated.
I would go in on weekends, but [my ceramic-making] really took off after I got laid off from my job at a startup. I received a very generous severance in combination with unemployment. And my healthcare was subsidized because of COVID. It was the summer, and suddenly I had all this free time, and there wasn’t really pressure to find a job because everyone was being laid off.
It was obviously stressful and precarious, but at the same time, it was the most free I've ever felt. I was like, “You know what, I'm going to rethink my relationship with work.” I had really let it get very intertwined with my self-worth. I started my newsletter that summer and then I would read in the park and make pottery. That’s when I saw the most marked improvement in my pottery. I just made constantly.
What was it like improving? And what do you think was the biggest thing that got you to the next level, where you felt like you could sell your pottery?
Pottery is so hard. It is not something you can be naturally good at—you have to learn how to get clay centered on a wheel and be able to apply even pressure and all this stuff. I remember I was really struggling with centering when I first started. I'm someone who's not used to doing things that I'm not immediately good at. Normally, if I wasn't immediately good at something, I would just abandon the thing. Like, I quit track in middle school after one practice because I was like, “I will not subject myself to being bad.” But this was the first time I ever got to experience what it feels like to get better at something.
I remember one Saturday, I was like, “I'm just going go into the open studio, and I'm not going to make anything; I'm just going to throw and center the clay over and over and over again until I get better.” It was a tedious day, but I did get better at it, and that was a bit of internal validation that I wasn't used to.
There's so much about pottery that can be out of your hands. There are four steps: You throw it, you trim it, you do one firing, and then you glaze it before its final firing. Every single one of those steps, something can go wrong, especially when it's being fired. Shit can just blow up, or clay can react weirdly, and there's nothing you could have done to know that or prevent it.
I recently started to realize with my therapist that I struggle with OCD and pottery forces me to accept imperfection in a way that's really difficult for me. I haven’t overcome it yet. I can get really stuck remaking the same thing over and over again because I keep noticing something wrong. I can really get stuck in those loops and it kind of can take the joy out of it.
There was one time when I sold my pottery, and it was just income that I kept. It made me really anxious. But I found that when I donate [the proceeds], it’s for a good cause first and foremost, but it also releases the pressure of it needing to be perfect because it's for something bigger than just the item. I just know if I didn't donate the money, if I used it as a source of income, it would immediately stop being fun. And I only ever want it to be fun. It's something that I enjoy doing, and it is a way that I can give back to the community, so that makes it an even more positive experience.
I feel like we as a culture are just so obsessed with seeing someone do something and being like, “Oh, you should monetize that.” And for me, that usually makes me not want to do something anymore.
It's a weird bit of capitalism that almost feels like it's the highest compliment, to be like, “This is worthy of being sold.” But then it becomes work. It's all about your intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. That feeling of getting better is an intrinsic motivator and selling is extrinsic. It's a problem I have with so much of my creative stuff; I have trouble writing just for myself anymore.
Oh my god, yeah, it’s so hard.
I majored in creative writing, and I haven't written fiction pretty much ever since, and I keep being like, “I want to get back into it.” Then I sit down and I feel like what I write is bad because it's been 10 years since I did it. And then I go, “It will be okay if it's bad because no one has to see it.” Then I'm like, “Well then why am I doing this?”
It's the same thing with pottery. The Wordle mugs were a thing that just fell into my brain. My parents and I had a Wordle group chat, and I had just started playing with the [pottery] technique of using tape to stencil on a grid. I don’t trust my own eyesight because I’m always like, “Oh this is actually bad,” but then the mugs sold out immediately. Every time I do a batch [of about eight mugs], I'm like, “This is going to be when I'm like exhausted the Wordle mugs,” and then each time they sell out again. I’ve found that Christmas, Mother's Day, and Father's Day are good times to target.
Sometimes when I show up to the studio, if I don't have to make Wordle mugs and I don't have an immediate need for my apartment, I'm like, “What do I make?” That’s the hardest thing; it needs to be a place I can go for the joy of doing it versus the end product being useful for selling or something like that.
Yeah, I feel you so much on the fiction thing. It's so hard to get the pressure out of your mind to just go forward with something. I'm curious about how you open up that creativity for yourself, with pottery. Where do your ideas come from?
When I really am in a rut, I just get a bunch of clay, sit down, and in an almost zen way, with no plan, see what comes out. I've done that a few times. But what's helpful is honestly a combination of using Pinterest or Instagram and it being Christmas or any other gift holiday because I like to make gifts for people. It usually means I'm making something that I haven't made before. I made my sister a coffee pour-over cone. I had to try a few times to get it right.
The thing, honestly, that can get in the way of making fun stuff for myself at this point is I've been doing pottery intensely since 2020; I just have so much—I don't want to say “bad” because it's mean to myself—but so much pottery that is either not usable or was a test piece that I don't really want to display. It accumulates in my apartment. I think I've gotten to feel like I need to have a place for [everything I make] but I also think that the idea that perfection can only ever come into this home is holding me back.
What I’m trying to do is find ways to repurpose those pieces. I have a whole collection of pottery that came out wrong that I smashed into little mosaic pieces. I use super glue and grout to make these light switch plates. I'd love to find more things like that I can do because I just have such a weird thing about waste and clutter.
But the short answer is Pinterest.
I love the idea of like, a mosaic lamp or something.
I know. The thing is, if I had a garden, I would do little stuff out there, but it's so hard in an apartment. Light switch plates I can do because you can swap them out, and they’re renter-friendly.
What's your favorite thing that you've made?
Early on in my pottery journey, when my boyfriend and I were first dating, I made him a mug. There are so many things wrong with it—this is very technical, but there's so much extra clay at the bottom. I didn't trim enough so it's really heavy. And I don't know, I just find it kind of ugly. Years later, I was like, “I’ll remake your mug for you,” and that’s the mug I’m drinking out of now, which is probably my favorite.
I don't really make anything crazy. I just make mugs and cups and stuff like that. Vases, lamps—anything big, I want to do, but it's hard. I made someone a dinner set once, and I really liked how that turned out. It was a huge project, and I will never do it again because making plates is so hard.
Is it because the clay has to be so thin?
Yeah, and the problem with thin clay is it can warp and crack; that's one of those things that is pretty impossible to anticipate. I keep saying, “Oh, I'll make us a dinner set now,” and I'm only halfway through, and it's because what's left is the plates, and those are a nightmare. You have to make so many in order to come out the other side with just six.
Do you have any favorite types of glazes or colors you gravitate toward? Like how would you describe your style?
I was someone who was always changing my MySpace layout. I could never land on anything. And so I feel like I have a similar thing [with pottery]. Inside me, there are two wolves, and there's the sort of earthy, darker one, but then I also love bright and fun colors. I have started to switch my clothing a little bit to be a bit less gray and neutral. So I think I do naturally gravitate to earthy colors, but to make the experience more fun, I'll be like, “This is going to be colorful because that's more fun to spend time with.”
I feel like it requires a lot of dedication to keep going at this. Do you feel like working with pottery has changed anything mentally for you? Do you feel like it increased your resilience or your creativity?
I'm not there yet, but I’d like to be able to accept when things go wrong or accept that something is nice and good even if it's not perfect. I want to be able to go to the studio, see that something's come out of the kiln, see that something went wrong, and basically have it not ruin my day. And we're getting there.
It's more about not seeing it as not a judgment on me but as a thing I like to do, so I can be like, “Oh, what didn’t work?” instead of being like, “Oh, if only I had done this differently,” even though I wouldn’t have known I had to do it differently. I guess it’s resilience but also being more creatively nimble and taking it less personally.
What would you tell people who are thinking about getting into pottery?
You're going to be bad at it for a long time. And this is advice that, obviously, I have a hard time taking, but just accept that you're going to be bad and have fun within that space and try new things. Because the best part is, there'll be a day when you realize you've gotten better, and there's truly no other validation like it. ▲