Friday, July 25, 2014

As The Wheel Turns: Selling out is a good thing.



I'm new to the world of ceramic sales.  So entirely empty shelves in my studio still astound me.  I'm amazed everytime it happens and, lately, it's been happening a lot more.
This is a good thing.  
I've been making, showing and selling my art for over 15 years.  I've been in gallery shows, art fairs, community and museum shows, books and magazines, and online galleries plus my own website.  I'm not a newbie to making or selling or marketing my art.   
But(you knew that was coming, right?)...selling primarily porcelain functional pieces is new.

I've only been throwing and glazing for 3 years. Half of that time, I was taking classes to learn to do what I'm doing now.  It's been a journey full of the ups and downs that go with learning something new.  It was a struggle to figure out wheel throwing but I was determined, this time, not to let fear of failure stop me.  (More about my clay journey in topic, clay, or, here)

At first, I donated my work and watched it sell. Then, I took a small step into selling with 6 pieces and sold 3.  Slowly, my inventory of finished clay pieces increased and so did the sales.  Now, I'm looking at empty shelves of finished pieces on one side, while on the other side, shelves are filling up with new work to be fired and glazed and fired again.  

Flow.  There's that word of the year cropping up again with more lessons for me to learn.  One - I understand my work is still evolving and growing in style and profiency. Two - understandably, my sales totals are still small but growing.  
​I am grateful, not just for the money, but the encouragement of the universe.  The simple flow of selling out makes me want to make more.  And that is a very good thing.
 

2 comments:

maggie52 said...

Love the article. Functional ware is fun and does expand our technical knowledge of clay. What can I do, how should I do it, what works best for me??? All these things are what make it enjoyable for me. So.... HAVE FUN !!!

Susan Gallacher-Turner said...

Thanks for the encouragement, Maggie. I feel a certain level of confidence now that comes with more experiences but I'm still very much experimenting with all the questions you stated above. The most important is, of course, to have fun!