Confidence

A couple weeks ago I was hanging out with another potter at the Folk School. He has been making pots about twice as long as me or more and has lots of experience traveling and working in the field. He had a pot I wanted and I offered to buy it. He said he'd trade. I said okay, but as we weren't at a show I had nothing for him to pick from. So he tells me just to send him something. I felt awkward and asked what he'd like. "What do you make that's good?" he asked. Well my low self esteem kicked in and I said something like 'I don't know'. This went on for a minute or two and finally he said, "Be confident, send me something you like. That will be fine."
I think that is the first time someone had told me to be confident. (Actually awhile back another potter had told me that some of the new work I was making looked more confident.) Anyway this has stuck with me. Be confident.

Later as we were in the workshop looking at some pots I asked the potter for feedback on some bottles I had just thrown. We decided some of them were too generic. He pointed to some other pots and said "you do this well, and this", identifying specific parts of the pots. "Play on your strengths and see where that leads you." Good advice. I have kept this in mind as I have been working.

So my two new pieces of information are: Be confident and Play on my strengths.

I have more on all of this but it will be in the next post. Stay tuned.