​I will give you tools to expand your options to use your glazes strictly for function, but I will also help you to create techniques with glazes that you may use for decoration on your work. Some decoration techniques will also be usable for kitchenware. We will address troubled glazes; how to identify and fix them and we will touch on altering glazes for the different base glazing techniques, like dipping, pouring, spraying and brushing on glazes.

There are different ways to resist glazes from the pottery surface. It is also possible to block out a certain area and layer a next color on top of the previous one.

I am sure you will know what I mean when I say that decisions can sometimes cause big storms in one’s life. Koos and I put our house in Illinois on the market in late August and had it sold 2 weeks later. In these economic times that is almost unheard of, so when it happened, the storm was on and it came like a tsunami down on us.  We had to move out of the house in less than 2 weeks, because the initial closing date actually happened on time and was not delayed like it so often times happen.

Three truckloads further and Koos and I find ourselves back in the first house we bought in Saltillo Mississippi and that was rented out while we were in Illinois. Now we have to make it home again and my studio needs a serious revamp after termites got hold of it. ​

In 1987 we made a similar move, except that our children were small and I was just past the beginners’ phase of my pottery career.

The University of Pretoria recruited Koos to work for them. We were sad to leave beautiful Malelane behind, but we realized that there were several advantages in moving to Pretoria. We were young and today we know the grass always seems to be greener on the other side.

 I started teaching pottery classes again, but also took the opportunity to attend pottery workshops. It was great to enroll in a pottery class as a student and learn from masters in the field.

Every artist dreams of the day that he or she will make it big, so I was happy that I could sell more pottery. At this stage I did not consider myself as an artist. I was good at teaching and I was good at making pottery. I even got to the point where I started to understand the chemistry of ceramics and could make my first glazes.

One of the things that is often overlooked by artists and which should be addressed more often in college courses, is the art of business and how to work yourself gradually to a place where you can earn an income without allowing that the business to consume your whole life . I was completely ignorant in that field and the perfect candidate to fall into a trap.

My first series of pots were unloaded from my kiln one day and I was very excited about it. When I had an opportunity to show my work at a big show, I got an order within 3 days that was bigger than I could handle. I was totally freaked out, but instead of working my way through the situation, I turned my attention to buy a factory. All signs indicated that I should not buy the factory, but at the time I was too close to the problem to think clearly and after one year, a crooked partner and lots of heartache I was back home with just my one wheel and small kiln.

In looking back at the situation, I learned a lot; not only about business, but also about managing the 20 people I had working for me at the time. I learned how to plan and schedule the production of hundreds of pots per day, sometimes jumping in and working side by side with my employees. The hardest, but maybe the best lesson that I learned was that I loved pottery and not wanted to be a manager of potters.

The aftermath of the factory was difficult. I had a lot of self-doubt. My children, still very young at the time suffered with me and my husband were stressed out to his core. He co-signed for the factory and lost everything because of my crooked partner. With a very demanding job, it was not good for him to worry about me and the children.

As with all things, life went on and soon we were back on our feet. I restarted my teaching studio and our lifes resumed as if nothing happened. I became a very successful teacher and not only did I write my first articles for a newspaper, but soon thereafter I won my first pottery award. As a family we were content and happy.

At the time the winds of change were already blowing viciously over our beloved South Africa. Nelson Mandela was the new president and although everything seemed to be peaceful, thousands of professional people started to leave the country; either because they lost their jobs or because of fear that they will lose their job. Little did we know at the time, that we would soon follow in many other's footsteps. We just had to make a little detour through Namaqualand and Cape Town, before we would, in 1999 also find our way to the United States.

​

• It is very important to know what you want to be. Do not be a potter or artist because you think it is a moneymaker. It is not. It is extremely hard work and if someone tells you that the life of an artist is an easy one because they can get up and play their life away, do not believe that. You have to be extremely disciplined to be your own boss and the hardest thing to do is to find inspiration when you are tired and the money coffer stays empty.
• Find your voice and your own niche. It is difficult to do while you are still a beginner and after all how will you learn if you do not copy others. You have to separate learning to do art work from doing business in art.
• The easiest way to stay on that track is to be honest with yourself. Sit down with pen and paper and write down subjects that interest you. Tear pages from magazines of things that catch your eye and find the common elements that you like in those pages. Incorporate those ideas into a workbook. Keep notes and transfer ideas to your artwork.
• Have the discipline to work regular hours, eat and exercise enough and to maintain a good lifestyle.
• Once you have a style and maybe a series of work, you have to learn how to market it. Bruce Baker offers a series of CDs in which he discusses important rules for the creation of images of your work and things you should know to set yourself up for success at different shows. He also teaches some selling techniques. It is of no use if you make beautiful work and you cannot get rid of it.
• Know and understand your market and do not fall around from one style to the other.
• Make sure that you have a well worked out proposal with business cards, images, an artist statement, resume and biography. It is important that you know why you are doing what you do and make sure that others can learn that by looking at your proposal.
• It is difficult to make money if you do not have money to start with. I want to encourage you to read my blog “The beginning of my pottery career” One of the nice things about artists is that they are problem solvers. I heard a story about a guy that was working off the side of the road………ahmm………. but wait I am jumping the gun here; that story is part of an interview that I had with a fellow potter. I will post that shortly, so check back if you’re interested to hear it…….
• An artist without at least some basic computer skills will survive with difficulty in today’s world, since social networks have mostly taken over as the advertising tool. It is a fast and effective tool to use. Use it sparingly, but wisely.
• I’d love to hear your personal stories of survival and if you have any business tips to share, I’d absolutely welcome that. Thank you for reading and sharing my blog.

The online workshop "AAMAL" (All Artists Making A Living) by Curtis Benzle is available on TeachinArt. In this online workshop Curt explains all the needed information that a small business owner needs to control office administration, promotion of products, design and safekeeping of new products, tax and sales tax information, and everything else to assist artists in making a living with the art that they create, develop, sell, and enjoy.

Malelane was paradise. Our children were young preschoolers; in fact Tinyke was a 9 month old baby when we moved there. Koos was working at the sugar mill, a booming new industry for a region that previously relied on vegetables for their daily bread. 

I was raised in Namibia, where we only saw flowing rivers when it rained in the Khomas Hochland Mountain, just so that it will run down in a few hours into dry sand beds? So in comparison, Malelane was a true paradise.

It was a luxury to see the Crocodile River constantly running. Drought was not uncommon in this region, but the vegetation was lusciously green after the mostly grayish green landscapes where I grew up. Bougainvillea became trees in comparison with the ones growing in Namibia and I never saw bigger banana leaves than the ones that grew in plantations next to the roads.   There were crocodiles and hippopotamus in the river and if you watched closely, you could see elephants or buffalo on the other side of the river in the Kruger National Park. Our favorite leisure time was on Sunday afternoons when we took the children to see animals in and around the river.

My biggest challenge at the time was to get the papayas off the trees in my garden, before the monkeys get it! A papaya showing the slightest hint of yellow was a monkey’s delicacy and they would grab it and then tease me from a distance while they consume it!

It was a beautiful remote little town, where everybody knew each other and helped raise each other’s children, but it was also a place where we had limited enrichment and adult educational opportunities. The result was that the woman of the town took it upon themselves to do exciting and stimulating projects.
So it happened that I became the regional potter. 

Have you ever noticed how potters transfer images on clay, either by scratching through the surface or by painting on the clay surfaces? As a young potter, the marks that I put on my clay had no particular meaning; at least that was what I was thinking at the time. It was just pure joy to cut and carve and smear and pinch and roll the clay, a willing material that forms and shape in whatever direction it was pinched and pushed. ​

​When I think back, I recall unfinished bottoms and sloppy pots, often times with underdeveloped forms. We did try to smooth it off, but it took several years, before I got the knowledge to finish my work properly. I learned that clay needed to rest and become ready for the next preparation phase with hard lessons. Even though I could see that there were mistakes, I did not have the knowledge to solve it.  Pots were thick and it stayed thick! The local library had a few books about pottery and we utilized them as much we could, but the information was scarce and very unsatisfactory and all the information we got were always about the making process, but never about finishing the final product before it goes in the bisque kiln.

During this time we made pots and all kind of objects; from pinching, to coiling to slab built pottery that the clay allowed us to do, never thinking that once we have it fired, it basically would be set in stone, carrying naive finger and cutting marks ; objects that carried the evidence of a small community of potters to be. 

It took me five months before I had my first kiln. Someone advertised a kiln for R400 (about $23.11 in current terms) in Nelspruit, a neighboring town. It was time for my next lesson and it was here that my husband showed his weight in gold regarding my pottery adventures. 

The kiln was a flimsy old top loader, with broken elements and only two settings: on and off. With the help of technicians, Koos hand coiled elements and before long we had a kiln going! 

​By then I collected enough class fees to buy our first glazes. Not knowing better, I ordered 12 different one kilogram (2.2 lb.) glazes to dip our pots in. Of cause it did not work too well (our pots were too big to dip and we did not know of any other way, so we poured the glaze. We managed though and before long we had our kiln firing. Our first pots were made and we were very proud of ourselves.

As I improved, curiosity sometimes got the best of me and I opened a kiln way too soon, just to end up seeing pots cracking in two right in front of my eyes.
Today I know much better; I teach pottery and porcelain workshops. One of these classes is an online workshop in which I teach potters how to improve their glazes, store bought or self made and how to fire a porcelain kiln successfully. 

It took me years to learn and understand that pottery carried a history that stretched far beyond my imagination. I never realized the importance of clay for anthropological research.  If my first studio would have been an archaeological site, they will probably find shards, telling interesting stories of us few women that had so much fun in our garage studio and maybe they would find the first signs of the birth of my passion for clay. It became a lifelong love affair, one that I never would have managed, was it not for my dear husband and his patience with me. (oh he still did not eat his hat as he said he would do if I become a potter!)

I mentioned anthropologists. They are very interested in clay objects. Did you know that  shards can tell us about ancient technology and human behavior? Since clay is preserved by fire, it carries footprints and cultural evidence that cannot easily be distinguished. 

I came across this you tube video that explains how they translate images and marks from clay into historical facts: The presenter has a lively way in which he explains the importance of pottery shards to read ancient history.

I also found this beautiful website with information about the Ancestral Pueblo cultures found in the regions where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado meets, known as “The Four Corner area” It is believed that the Pueblo people descended from nomadic living styles and gathered here some 12 thousand years ago. Their pottery has a significant influence on American pottery; to this day.

I was not fortunate enough to learn about clay through generational inheritance, as the ancient people probably did. I did not even know at first that clay is earth and it was a big "aha" moment for me when I realized that clay in a kiln and rocks forming from lava has strong similarities. When I decided I have to start teaching pottery, I never thought that I started on a path in which I created footprints that may have some permanence. Having that knowledge now, puts an obligation on me to make sure that any piece I fire, not just holds beauty in its core, but also an intelligence of good craftsmanship and expressional value to last for millenniums to come. ​

I partook in one of America’s most prestigious shows (American Craft Expo). Was it not that I still have so much to learn, I might have thought that I finally came full circle, but after almost 40 years I can say, I know what I still don’t know…….at least I think I can guess……

Links: 
TeachinArt online School of Art
​​Hands-on workshops with Antoinette Badenhorst