We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Katie Cameron. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Katie below.
Katie, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
Creativity ebbs & flows for everybody. I’ve felt it in massive, sudden bursts, & I’ve been without it for months on end- mostly because I’ve been over my head working so hard just to get by. The biggest issue I’ve experienced with my creativity is mainly just lacking the time/energy/resources to pursue any of my ideas.
I’ve spent the past 3 years facilitating other people’s creativity by offering take home clay kits & hosting pottery workshops at my studio ‘cry baby clay’. While that’s given me immense joy, it’s also been preventing me from digging deeper into my own creative practice. Since my pottery studio journey began in 2020, I’ve put all of my time, money & effort into the business; but somewhere along the line I became a potter who seldom makes pottery.
The amount of hard work & no play that I put myself through to start & maintain my business sent me into a pretty severe depression that drasticaly impacted my personal & physical health. The services I’ve been offering the community were increasingly feeling more & more like a disservice to myself. Within my depression, between waves of feeling numb & on auto-pilot, I found myself experiencing an intense yearning & ache to create. To me, that longing felt like a gift. Painful as it was to experience it without much wiggle room to act on it at the time, that intense need to create was unmistakable & it presented me with a crystal clear direction that I knew I needed to pivot toward.
After December, 2023, I’ve decided to no longer offer clay kits or workshops at my pottery studio. This will be an opportunity for me to prioritize myself & my art.
My best advice for keeping creativity alive is to pay attention. Your mind & body will tell you exactly what it needs, & to sort that out you must slow down & listen. Being willing to adapt & make scary, bold choices for the sake of finding the right balance is so powerful. I’ll email myself anytime a cool idea pops into my mind & I’ll save it in a folder called “project ideas.” Watching that folder grow & grow over the years without the ability to act on it was a painful experience, but looking at it now, I feel intense joy & excitement knowing that I’ll be able to finally dive into those projects.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Life’s been a doozy for me for a while! I “accidentally” started a very successful pottery business during the pandemic & have been sprinting my butt off ever since to keep up with both the growth (yay!) & the expense (boo!!) of the business.
I’ve worked with clay in some capacity my entire life. I used to call it my “hobby jobby” & after graduating college, I built myself an at-home studio to continue my craft. In March 2020, after getting laid off from the service industry, I began offering contact-free take home clay kits to community members. The clay kits took off in popularity beyond anything I could have ever imagined, which both required & enabled me to open up an in person studio (at the time, every surface of my house was dedicated to other people’s clay projects)! It’s been amazing being able to offer casual access to working with clay to so many people, & the support I’ve felt by my community has been immense! Even so, I’ve just been working so hard for so long & have identified that it’s time for me to step away from my current business model in order to give myself time to create again.
After December, 2023, I’ve decided to no longer offer clay kits or workshops at my pottery studio. This will be an opportunity for me to prioritize myself & my art. Ever since sharing the news that I’m reassessing my business model with the community, I’ve felt so much support, which makes me so relieved & excited for these last few months of workshops & clay kits! I feel like I’m floating instead of trudging, & I know I’m on the right path.
So! Now – December I will be hosting workshops & offering take home clay kits- it’s business as usual, baby! By being loud about closing down shop at the end of the year, my hope is that people who’ve been meaning to come by the studio & use my services still have a chance to do so!
Oh also! I will be having a fun 2 year anniversary party on August, 13th from 12 – 7 pm at 4141 Minnehaha Ave. There will be pots for sale, clay activities, carnival games, prizes, face painting & more. All are welcome, and I hope you’ll party it up with me for the final push of ‘cry baby clay’ as we currently know it!
With so much love & gratitude,
Katie
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1) F*ck around & find out (in a non-violent sense) like “idk, let’s see what happens!” A willingness to dive into something without having all the answers, & instead just trusting that you’ll figure things out as you go. 2) An ability to identify when something feels off & needs to be re-assessed.
3) HOLY SH*T work life balance please!!! Please please please don’t let whatever you do for a living consume you to a point of not having a personal life. You’re a human who needs & deserves rest & fun & adventure & freedom of headspace.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I’d be open to selling my business model (tangible & intangible assets) to the right person (or collective! That’d be so ideal, given the burnout reasons mentioned in this article, lol)!
If you’re interested in learning more about what that hand off could look like, feel free to email me at [email protected]
Truly, this would be such a slam dunk for someone who isn’t completly exhausted by the energy it took to build it up to this level!
Contact Info:
- Website: crybabyclay.com
- Instagram: @crybabyclay
- Facebook: N/A
- Linkedin: N/A
- Twitter: N/A
- Youtube: N/A
- Yelp: N/A
- SoundCloud: N/A
- Other: [email protected]
Image Credits
Zoe Prinds-Flash Deja’ Jendro Nina Perkins
