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i know there's a "right" way to wedge. i've watched the videos. but my body just wants to do this violent ram's head slam every time and i swear the clay remembers the aggression. my left wrist has started clicking in a way that's definitely not normal. tried soft wedging yesterday like a normal person and the clay felt dead. like i'd been polite to it and it didn't trust me. had to go back and really put my weight into it before it started feeling alive again. my teacher from the course would be so disappointed. but also she had perfect wrists at 55 so maybe she was onto something. idk. anyone else have a bad habit you KNOW you should fix but it works so you don't?

Had a really nice piece of black granite. Perfect for the piece I'm blocking out. Decided I knew better than the stone and tried to split off a section that wasn't ready. Heard the wrong kind of crack and now I've got a 40lb bookend and a pile of gravel. The worst part is I knew better. Thirty years in and I still get impatient and waste good material. My old mentor would've just looked at it and walked away. That was his move. Didn't need to say a thing. Back to the supplier tomorrow. Hope they still have some of that batch left.

Funny thing happened last month. I was mid-stretch of a new canvas, fighting with a stubborn corner, and I photographed the back of the frame out of pure frustration to send to a painter friend. Bare wood, the wedges, my crappy handwritten label where I always date the work. Posted it by accident to my story before I caught myself. That image sold the painting before I ever showed the front. A collector I'd been going back and forth with for weeks wrote within the hour. Said he liked seeing the bones of it. I don't know what to do with that information. That the accidental, half-finished, unglamorous behind-the-scenes carries more weight than the months of careful work. I resent it a little. But I'm also not stupid. So now I'm trying to figure out how much of my process to show without turning the studio into a circus. There's a line between letting people in and performing the work instead of doing it. I keep showing the mess and it keeps working, and I'm not sure I like that it does.

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.

i don't know why but i literally cannot start throwing or handbuilding unless i've spent like 10 minutes just... touching the clay. like i have to sit there and wedge it a bit, poke it, flatten it, roll it around. my hands have to remember it first. it's not preparation really, it's like a weird ritual. if i skip it and try to go straight to making something, the piece comes out stiff and wrong every time. my grandmother (who is the wisest person i know) once watched me do this and said "clay remembers your hands even when you forget them" and i think about that constantly. today i had a whole plan for a series of little cups with faces pressed into the sides. spent 15 minutes just kneading a lump of terracotta like it owed me money. finally started and now i have five little heads staring at me from the shelf. vale, worth it. anyone else have a stupid little thing you have to do before the work actually starts? or am i just a weirdo with clay dependency issues

ok so I've been undercharging for literally years. selling my little handbuilt cups for €25, small wall pieces for €60, telling myself I can't ask for more because I'm still learning and who am I etc etc. finally just... raised everything. cups at €35 now, wall pieces at €80. I did the math on a single piece the other day, €25 cup, took me about 2 hours from wedging to glaze, plus firing costs, plus the ones that crack or warp in the bisque. I was basically paying myself €6 an hour and pretending that was fine. raised prices on my online shop and at the last market. nobody said a word. same people buying, same compliments. one woman even said "oh that's all?" about a piece I was nervous to price. now I'm mad I didn't do it a year ago. what are we even doing out here, giving away our time for free?

Everyone keeps posting these gorgeous studio photos and mine is literally a fold-out table wedged between the radiator and the window in the bedroom I share with my partner. The window I keep painting is the one right above the table. I have a box fan that sounds like a small plane taking off and honestly I've learned to hear it as white noise now, there's no going back. But here's the thing, I just finished the biggest commission I've ever had on that janky table and it went out today and I'm so proud of it I could cry a little. Eight months ago I was doing this on my lunch breaks at the café. Now I have a folding table that's mine all day. I keep catching myself staring at it like it's a whole room. I know someday I'll have a real studio with good light and a sink and I'll look back and miss this cramped little corner. It's got the paint flecks on the wall from when I flick my brush too hard and a cup of dirty water that's been sitting there for three days that I keep meaning to change. It's gross. It's perfect. What's your setup right now? Do I need to know there are studio sinks in my future or is the box fan just my life now