Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Tara Laughery Nissen. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Tara, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
My confidence has not always been a steady and consistent thing, and it has definitely taken me time to develop it in my journey as a ceramic artist. The biggest confidence boost for me has been through putting in the work. You can only get better the more you practice, and as time goes on you will see yourself improving, and then you can look back and compare to where you were a year before and see the product of that growth. That is the biggest confidence boost, seeing the change and knowing you can achieve it through hard work.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
My name is Tara Laughery Nissen, and I am a ceramic artist from Houston Texas. I had my first introduction working in clay in High School but didn’t become serious about the craft until my junior year of college at the University of Houston Clear Lake. Initially I was a Graphic Design student but changed quickly to a Studio Art Degree upon taking my Introduction to Ceramics course. I basically sat down at the pottery wheel and never got back up. A lot of potters joke that when you start in clay you basically get the bug for it and never turn back, and that’s exactly what happened to me. Sense graduating with my Bachelor of Fine Arts from UHCL in the Fall of 2021, I have started teaching pottery wheel classes and have been starting my small business selling my handmade wares online and in markets. Currently my next goal is to get into a residency program to further grow and challenge my skills as a maker.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
As most ceramic artists know, there is a learning curve you have to get through before you can start making quality pots. You have to get used to actually working with the material and how it behaves and how far you can push it. One of the things we learned in our introduction course was to cut our pots in half to see the thickness of the walls, and we’d see how much clay we could’ve actually pulled up that was left at the bottom. I had to really push myself to not tip toe around the wheel and actually start pushing the clay further to see where the breaking point was, because all my pots were so heavy. As my professor Clay Leonard would quote, “get to failure faster.” The faster you let yourself fail the faster you will learn from it and get better.
Teaching has also become exceptionally helpful. and I saw an influx of growth happen for myself when I started teaching, because I started watching people throw all the time and I would see all the places where they would mess up and the pot would fall over and there’s just something about watching that process where you are getting new information that you can’t get when you are throwing.
Something that I have been more conscious about here lately that has become very important to me is testing my pieces. Because I make functional work for people’s homes, I need to know how they will function. I would have a lot of people tell me I love your mugs, but the rim chipped. It’s good to have a nice taper on your mugs because you want them to be comfortable on peoples’ lips, but I would make them too thin, so they would chip easily if bumped. I found that rounding the rim slightly would make it stronger and less accustomed to chipping.
To any ceramic artist who are just beginning, be patient with yourself. If you put in the work and are not afraid to fail the success will come. The coolest part about being a ceramic artist is you never really stop learning/growing.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
Currently I am sitting at a crossroads in my career, and the number one challenge I have been facing is what is next in my journey. I am over a year out from graduating with my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and have been actively looking for what’s next. A lot of the pathways will require big life changes, so I have had to take a lot of time to decide on what I really want. It has helped me a lot to consider what I want my future to look like, and if the next path I choose can be a detriment to that life or if it will be helpful. All pathways include making pots!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://taranissenceramics.squarespace.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tnissenceramics/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tara.laughery
Image Credits
Tara Laughery Nissen
