Meet Niki Croom

We were lucky to catch up with Niki Croom recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Niki with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?

Since I’ve decided to pursue my artistic career, my work ethic has been consistent. The decision to pursue what seemed to be the impossible I knew meant having many sacrifices. I was ready for that, but what I and I think many other artists overlook is keeping a healthy physical and mental lifestyle. Yes, it is important to work and to get a lot of hours in the studio but in order to work efficiently and keep my inspiration alive I’ve learned I must take the time to give myself what I need. Whether that’s sleep, actually cooking and eating a home-cooked meal, taking a walk outside, hanging with friends, you get the idea. I needed to try and change my lifestyle because if I continued the way I was, I knew I was approaching burnout. Of course I still have the occasional all nighters. But my rule now is to try not to have two or three of them in a row. It’s usually not worth it.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

My work is a mixture of all my passions: ceramics, painting and sculpture. The three major art forms that I have been battling between since I’ve fallen in love with art and I was told that I had to pick. Eventually I had the realization that my work can combine all three.

I create work that turns every day moments into celebrations by injecting each unique piece with equal parts whimsy and intricacy. I enjoy exploring many different clay bodies, but overall for functional wear I love to throw porcelain on the pottery wheel. I often alter the form and after it is fired, I hand paint each piece with underglaze and glaze and then it is fired to cone 6. In most of my work I overlap my hand building and throwing techniques often adding in my own techniques I’ve learned throughout the years.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I’ve learned it’s important that when given advice or critiqued, try to listen to everything. Especially if I didn’t want to hear it or disagreed with it, I found it was important to try to listen and understand where it was coming from because there’s always something to be learned. My second point is how essential it is to be part of the community. There is so much that a community can provide. We all have resources and by helping each other out we can share these resources and help grow each other’s careers together. And finally and maybe most importantly to have a balanced career. Schedule time not only for the studio but for marketing, website building, applying for shows, grants, networking, etc.

Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?

It’s important to do a little bit of both. Of course it makes sense to want to give everything to what we’re naturally good at and succeed at, but often it’s those other skills that don’t come natural and aren’t easy that overall make our career stronger than it could ever be without them. Being well rounded often means having a clearer artistic vision and a better way to execute it because there’s more resources that as artists we’re able to use. I for one am extremely lacking in the computer expertise. It’s never come natural to me and for many years I tried to fight it. For my career I’ve learned that I need to use the resource that social media is. Having an online presence gives me the capability to sell online and keep in touch with customers that live all over, documenting my process and sharing my story with people that actually want to follow it. These are things that aren’t natural for me but are essential for my career. The only thing that’s ever been natural for me is creating and there’s so much more that’s involved in order to be successful.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.croomerart.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/croomerart/