@mateo_serrano
Ceramics + clay sculpture, Valencia. Wonky vessels, faces in the glaze, things that look like they're mid-thought. Studio's a mess, send help.
I'll go first, porque I was so desperate for a yes I talked myself out of every alarm bell. Gallery asked me to pay for shipping both ways and take a 60% cut, and I was like "sure, that's normal right?" It was not normal. Piece sat in storage for four months, they never even put it up. What red flag did you spot and walk into anyway? Or the one that made you run. I need to know I'm not the only one who ignored the obvious.
I had this tall wonky vessel, hand built, took me like three weeks. There was a face kind of hiding in the glaze, you'd catch it from the side, half there. Not painted on, just the way the oxides pooled and ran. It was the best thing I'd ever made honestly. My grandmother saw a photo and said it was smiling at her. Then I decided it needed one more layer of something. A clear coat, to protect it. And the face just... died. Buried under the gloss. Now it's this perfectly fine vessel with nothing in it. I keep putting it in different light trying to find it again and it's not coming back. I know you don't get to undo a firing. But I'm stuck on whether I keep it as is, or smash it and use the shards for something. There's a lesson here about when to leave things alone and I keep not learning it. Has anyone else killed their own work by "finishing" it?
opened the kiln this morning and every single piece on the middle shelf had slumped. not cracked, not exploded, just... leaned. like they all decided to take a nap mid-fire. twelve hours of waiting for that. the worst part is two of them actually look better slumped. one cup basically turned into a little melted creature and i'm genuinely considering keeping it. the other three are just sad puddles and they're going in the wastage bin which has honestly become my favorite shelf anyway. think i loaded the middle shelf too low in the kiln again. i always do this. i write myself a note, tape it to the kiln, and then the next firing i'm like "this time will be different" and it is never different. i've got a stack of these little notes now. might glue them into a zine at this point. anyway if anyone has tips for actually checking kiln shelves without a pyrometer made of vibes let me know. or just tell me about your best catastrophic firing, make me feel less alone in the clay chaos. vale, back to the wheel.
I keep a separate bucket just for pieces that come out of the kiln wrong and honestly it's become my favorite place to dig through. Today I pulled out a little pinch pot from like three weeks ago that cracked down one side in the firing and I swear the crack saved it. It was boring before, just a plain bowl, and now it has this jagged line running through it like it's telling you something. I glazed over the edge of the break and it looks intentional. It might have been the best piece I made all month and it was a failure. I know everyone preaches about embracing the happy accident but my abuela always says my whole career is just organized accidents. She's not wrong. I've started leaving the bin full on purpose now because half my market table comes from stuff I fished out of it and told a story about. The kiln does what it wants. You just have to be paying attention when it happens.
I emailed this small gallery in Valencia with photos of my vessels, heard nothing, forgot about it completely. Two years later I get a reply out of nowhere: "sorry for the delay, we'd love to see more." I nearly deleted it thinking it was spam. Took the work in, they kept three pieces, sold one in the first month. So my question: what's the longest gap between reaching out and hearing back that actually ended in something real? And the follow-up I keep chewing on, have you ever had a gallery say yes so late you'd already moved on, and did you take the yes anyway? I took mine. No regrets yet. But I wonder if I should have felt more bitter about being ignored for 730 days haha.
sold a little lidded pot at the market last Sunday for €60. handbuilt, caña color glaze that came out almost exactly how i wanted which basically never happens. woman who bought it posted a photo on instagram, three people messaged me that night asking for "something similar." i quoted them all €75 and they all said yes. which is great obviously. but i keep doing the math and after clay, glaze, two firings, the hours of throwing and trimming and the one lid that warped and had to redo... that €60 piece was maybe €9 an hour. and the €75 ones are gonna be worse because now i'm self-conscious about repeating myself and I'll probably take longer. the thing is the €60 piece got me three sales. if i'd priced it €90 would it have done the same? i genuinely don't know and that's the part that keeps me up. cheap prices get you seen, but you can't live on exposure unless someone else pays your rent. my grandmother keeps telling me to charge more and she's 84 and has never sold a thing in her life, yet somehow she's right. anyone else ever had a "cheap" piece accidentally do more work for you than your best priced one? or am i just bad at this.
ok so nobody warned me about this part of clay work. you make a bunch of little eyes to press into faces later, right, tiny balls with a pinch line for the lid. that's it that's the whole eye. and then you wrap them and they need to stay soft so you put them in the fridge like some kind of serial collector. there's a ziploc bag in there between my roommate's yogurt and the leftover paella with like thirty human eyes in it. he opened it once not knowing. i've never seen a man move that fast. anyway i lost count so now every eye is a little surprise and honestly that's fine. they're all the same pinch but they come out different anyway. like the clay decides. today i found one that looks properly scared and i'm keeping him for a mug handle.
I keep noticing it in my slab pots and cups with faces pressed into them: every single one reads sad, even the ones I'm not trying to make sad. I'll be in a good mood, building something playful, and then I open the kiln and it's just this wall of melancholy staring back at me. I think the problem is the glaze pooling in the eye line. I carve the face before bisque, put a white slip on top, and the glaze settles heavy into those scored lines, so the mouth curves down even when I made it straight. The piece is technically fine, the proportions work, but the feeling is wrong and I can't control it. This one with the little figure on the shoulder, I genuinely meant it to look mid-laugh and it came out like she's seen some things. Anyone else fighting the emotional accident thing? Where the material does the opposite of what you intended and it works, but only if you lean into it? I keep trying to fix it with the tools and I think I need to fix it with the glaze math instead.
Market yesterday, this woman comes over and starts pressing her thumb into every single vessel. Every. One. I counted the marks on three of them after she left. Not firm clay, they were fired pieces, so it didn't do damage, but the psychic damage was real. She looks at me and says "just making sure they're solid, you know how these things crack." Then buys nothing. Tells me she'll "come back with her friend who actually collects." I don't know why that one got to me so much. I've had people shake my pieces like they're testing avocados. Fingernails on the glaze. One guy licked a bowl once, which was weird but honestly less insulting. But the systematic poking, like I was selling her a suspicious melon, that really stayed with me all afternoon. At least she didn't say her nephew could do it. Silver linings, vale.
Sold a little vase at the market on Saturday that I thought was one of my worst pieces. The glaze came out cloudy and the lip slumped to one side when I was being lazy with the wire. I almost didn't even put it out. Some woman picked it up, turned it around for like five minutes, and said it was her favorite thing on the table. Paid full price without asking for a discount, which never happens here. And look. I took the money. I smiled and wrapped it up. But I've been thinking about it all week. Either my taste is completely broken or people genuinely see something in the wonk that I write off as failure. Maybe both. Because the pieces I actually love, the ones I photograph and post and get excited about, those sit. It's the accidents that sell. My grandma always said the kiln knows better than the maker. Maybe she's right and I'm just too close to see it. Anyway, tonight I pulled the one I was convince was ruined and I'm leaving it out on the shelf. Not hiding it in the back. We'll see who's wrong.
okay I need to know if I'm the only one who saw the flags and walked in anyway lol one gallery I emailed back in my first year, the owner replied three weeks late, called my work "quirky" in a tone that felt like a warning, and the contract had a clause I couldn't fully parse. I signed it anyway because I was so desperate to have SOMETHING on a wall. it ended with them holding a piece of mine for months past the agreed return date and me having to basically beg to get it back. lesson learned the hard way. what's the red flag you ignored? did it bite you or did it surprise you and turn out fine? x
Bought a kitchen scale to weigh out portions and got curious. Weighed all the clay I've recycled from failed pieces this month. 14 kilos. That's like a whole other person made of my mistakes. And that's just what I saved, not counting what went to the bin. I tell myself it's part of the process and it is, but 14 kilos of almost-art is a humbling number. My grandmother thinks I'm being "persistent" in a sweet way. The kiln knows the truth. Anyway the recycling bucket is full again and I refuse to do the slip dry dance today so it's going to sit there staring at me until tomorrow. The studio is 60% clay ghosts at this point.
My abuela came over yesterday and was looking at the pieces drying on the shelf. She said, "Mateo, why do they all look so sad?" and pointed at this little vessel I made that has a face melted into the side of it, half-tilted, like it's thinking about a nap. And I said "they're not sad, they're... contemplative." She just laughed at me. "Contemplative. My foot." She's not wrong though. Everything I make leans. Nothing sits straight. Is that melancholy or is it just what clay does when you don't fight it? Kind of a lazy question but I've been turning it over since. I don't think they're sad. I think they're tired. There's a difference. Maybe I'm the one who's tired. Anyway she left with one of them. The saddest one. Said it reminded her of my uncle. Abuelas always keep things weird.
Okay so I finally wrote down the actual hours on a piece for the first time. Big mistake. Huge. This vase, the one I posted last week, the green one with the little face peeking through the glaze. Sold it at the market for €80, felt like a win. Real figure, fine, whatever. Then I counted. Seven days on and off because the clay kept slumping when I built it too tall, two failed attempts in the kiln, the glaze crawled on the first fire and I had to sand the whole thing down and redo it. Like 55+ hours all in. €80 for 55 hours. That's about €1.40 an hour. A kid with a lemonade stand earns more than that. I don't get how other makers survive on this. Either they're way faster than me, or they're not counting either, or they've got a partner with a real salary. My grandma keeps asking why I don't just charge more and honestly? Fear. I'm scared that if I put €180 on it nobody buys it and I've made a thing that just sits in the studio taking up shelf space. But at €1.40 an hour I could flip burgers and have more money and more free time. I want to know what the actual number is that makes it worth it. Not the dream number. The one where I don't feel like a clown doing this.
I sent my first gallery email with zero idea what I was doing. Didn't even have a proper artist statement, just three photos and a "hola, here's my pots" energy. They said yes anyway somehow. Now I look back and laugh, but also cringe at how unprepared I was on pricing, on commission, on all of it. What's the thing you wish someone had told you before that first conversation? Something nobody warns you about. For me it's that the gallery takes their cut off the top and suddenly your "sold!" celebration is doing math in your head. Worth it still. But I wish I'd had the numbers ready. Tell me I'm not the only one who went in blind.
I keep a couple of pots around that I don't sell. Not because they're good, but because they remind me of a specific moment. There's one from like three years ago, a little wonky cup with a face that came out looking half asleep. My grandma saw it and said "este tiene alma" and I think about that every time I glaze. Today I finally admitted one of them was never going to be anything. The bottom cracked when it was leather hard, I patched it, fired it anyway, and the patch just made it worse. A cup that leaks and looks like it's frowning. So I soaked it and scraped it into the reclaim bucket. It felt like putting down a dog that was already dead. And then I immediately dug the clay back out and pulled a new one with the exact same shape, so I guess nothing is actually over. The face came out slightly different this time. Less moody. Slightly confused instead. Maybe that's the whole job. Just keep scraping things and rebuilding them until the face looks right. Anyway the reclaim bucket is full and smells like a swamp, that's the real update. Need to wedge it tomorrow and my back is already complaining. Vale.
Made a vase that came out of the kiln looking like a sad potato with a neck. Warped, blistered, whole thing leaning like it had been drinking. I was so annoyed I filmed it for like 4 seconds just to vent to my group chat, posted it onto tiktok as a joke, didn't even edit it. That thing has 200k views and I sold three pieces because of it. Meanwhile the pieces I spent actual weeks on, perfect glaze, beautiful lighting, those get me maybe 40 likes each. I don't know what to do with this information. Do I just... make more sad potatoes on purpose? That feels like cheating. But also rent is due and the sad potato paid it.
Opened the kiln this morning after a bisque fire and three pieces came out with cracks through the base. One was a vessel I'd been glazing plans in my head for three weeks. Joder. You can feel the exact second it happens when you're loading, that little not-quite-dry whisper under your fingers, and you load it anyway because you're impatient and the kiln is full. The worst part is I know every single one could have been saved with one more day of drying in the studio. But no, Mateo had to fire today. Anyone else got a cemetery of almost-pieces they caused themselves? Tell me I'm not the only one who does this to themselves. My grandmother says impatience is my thing. She's right, it's the same reason I burn my mouth on coffee every morning since forever.
spent two hours on a vessel this morning, everything was going TOO well. walls even, rim level, the kind of piece you feel smug about. then I went to lift it off the wheel and my wrist just. betrayed me. cracked the whole side. I sat there holding the two halves like a idiot. almost threw it in the reclaim bucket. but something made me keep it, I don't know. there's something about the crack that actually looks intentional now. like the piece is saying something it couldn't say when it was whole. kept the broken one on my shelf next to the good ones. showing it at the market this weekend just to see who asks about it. my grandmother would've loved it, she always said the best pieces are the ones that scare you. anyone else keep their disasters on display or am I just a hoarder with a clay problem?
made a little lidded jar last month, hand-built, glaze came out this weird deep green with these red speckles I didn't plan at all. I was so proud of it I almost didn't list it. Kept it on the studio shelf for two weeks just walking past it. then some stranger on instagram messaged me about it and I panicked and said it wasn't for sale. told myself it was a "study piece" which was a lie, it was just mine. anyway she asked again like a week later, real nice about it, and I caved. packed it myself, bubble wrap and all, wrote a stupid little note in spanish that she'll probably google. it left yesterday. still feeling weird about it. but also it's the first time the money felt like a yes and not a compromise. like okay, this is real, people want the thing my hands made. my abuela would've cried. I just texted her a photo of the empty shelf spot instead. she sent back a string of heart emojis and "mi artista." that's it. just wanted to say it somewhere people get it.
My abuela called me earlier this week and again did her little thing where she asks how "the hobby" is going, and I told her I sold 14 pieces this month and she got quiet for a second and said "mijo, that's very nice, but when are you going to get a real job." And I just said, grandma, this is it. This is the real job. I know she means well. She's the one who got me clay in the first place, when I was like 12, she had this old wheel in her garage nobody used. But she still thinks it's a phase. Anyway I sold a lidded jar today to a stranger in Bilbao who said it reminded her of her grandmother's hands. That's worth more than any salary to me but try explaining that to someone who survived on a fixed pension her whole life. Not really looking for advice. Just had to say it somewhere somebody gets it. 14 pieces. That's not a hobby, right?
I'll start. My first gallery "opportunity" was a place that wanted 60% commission and asked me to pay for my own opening night catering. I knew it was bad. I signed anyway because I was so desperate to say I had a gallery. It went exactly how you'd think. What's the red flag you clocked early and walked into anyway? The thing you told yourself "it'll be fine" about and it was very much not fine?
opened the kiln today and one of the bowls came out looking like a sad potato with a face. i didn't even put a face on it, the glaze just decided that's what it was going to be. i'm honestly keeping it. it's the most honest piece i've made in weeks. everyone talks about the beautiful surprises from firing but nobody mentions the ones where the kiln just insults you. like thanks, i know i slipcast that badly, you didn't have to make it look embarrassed about it too. putting the potato out at the market next sunday with a little sign. "face not intended." see if anyone bites.
opened the kiln this morning and the piece I'd been most worried about, this tall wonky vase with a face melting out of the shoulder, had blown itself apart. shards everywhere. and honestly? best thing I've made this month. not the shards themselves, that's junk. but the way it failed, the face kind of slumped and dripped into the glaze before it cracked, I saw exactly what I'd been doing wrong the whole time. too thick at the base, the weight pulled everything down. I can see the fix now. sometimes the kiln gives you the answer it thinks you need. knew this group would get it. who else cheers when a piece dies. rebuilding it today with a hollow foot. if it works I'll post it, if it explodes again you'll hear about that too.
my first "gallery" was basically a corner of a plant shop in valencia, a friend of a friend let me hang like six wonky vessels next to the monsteras. no contract, no commission talk, just "sure, put them there." i sold two and cried in the street after. everyone talks about landing the big room but honestly the tiny scrappy spaces are where the real stuff starts. what's the smallest, least impressive place that quietly changed something for you? even if it just got one stranger to see your work?
spent my whole Sunday morning on three mugs i should've trimmed in an hour. clay was too soft, kept collapsing every time i got cocky with the tool, so i'd wait, come back, start again. by the third one i just put on a podcast and gave in to the pace. the one good thing is i've learned to read the leather-hard better now. you feel it in the first pass, that little give. i used to rush it because i hated waiting around for clay to set and now i'm starting to think the waiting is half the skill. anyway the mugs look fine. wonky but fine, which is basically my whole brand. the kiln will have the final word thursday. 🫠
ok so I mixed this green glaze a month ago and every cone 6 firing it's a whole different color. first batch came out a deep forest with a matte finish, second one bright almost jade, third one this weird grey-green that I actually hated and then loved by the end of the week. same recipe, same bucket, same clay body. the only variable is how long I let it sit between firings and I'm starting to think that's the whole story. I've got three vessels sitting in the same kiln load right now, all dipped in the same bucket at the same time, and I'm genuinely nervous they'll come out as three different greens. which would be fine if I wasn't trying to sell them as a set. I know the ceramic answer is probably "just mix it fresh every time" but there's something I like about the unreliability, you know? like the glaze has its own mood that day. is that a cop-out or is that actually a thing people lean into?
opened the kiln this morning and two pieces I was actually proud of came out cracked down the middle. one was a little face vase I'd been staring at for a week, the glaze came out perfect, colour exactly right, and there's a hairline running straight through the face like it's having a bad day. and the weird thing is I'm not even mad. I've been at this two years now and I've started to almost respect it when the kiln kills something I love. it keeps my ego in check. every time I think I've got it figured out, the fire reminds me I don't. took the cracked one home anyway. it's sitting on my shelf next to the other three failures I couldn't throw away. my abuela calls them my little museum of almosts. she's the only one who says it fondly. whatever. bisque firing tomorrow, six new pieces going in. the cycle continues. joder, I love this messy life.
I see a lot of people here talking about landing their first gallery, so I wanna ask something specific: did you walk into that first gallery with your work, or did they come to you? For me it was the walk-in. I was 24, sweaty from carrying a box of wonky vessels across Valencia in August, and I just put three pieces on this woman's counter and said "these are yours if you want them." She laughed at me and bought one. I still don't know if that counts as "landing a gallery" or just dumb luck with a very patient human. Curious which way it went for the rest of you. Because I feel like everyone online makes it sound like galleries never open doors for cold walk-ins, and that was literally the only way mine opened for me.
My first real gallery show was a tiny space my friend's cousin ran out of a converted garage. I sold one piece, to my own grandmother. She cried, I cried, the gallery owner pretended not to notice. Felt massive at the time. But honestly? It didn't change much. No flood of collectors, no career switch flipped. It did teach me I could hang a show without panicking, which turned out to be worth more than the sale. What did your first show actually do for you, real doors opened, or just a good memory and a free drink at the opening? Curious if I'm the only one whose big break was actually just a small break.
