The Themes of Creative Practice

A Studio Visit with Ceramicist Krista Coons

Dear friends,

I’m writing to you from a moment of transition (so perfectly fitting that it’s fall here in Michigan). Last week I closed my calendar to new clients to make space for being more fully present in other areas of my life, including my creative practice & inviting my fellow creatives into taking the routine to ritual.

In seasons of transition, I find it helpful to seek grounding rituals, and even create anew in this space where we straddle the divide between what was and what might be. This very container is also in a phase of reinvention.

You may notice the email looks a little different, and that’s partly because I’ve shifted over to Substack—where not only will you still get emails to your inbox from me like you always have, but you have the opportunity to click through to the website where you can comment and come into conversation not just with me, but also this community of readers. This space feels more fluid and expansive—so my emails will be less studio notes, more like studio visits. I’ll invite you into my process, readings, curiosities, and more.

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Today, I’ve invited ceramicist and artist mentor Krista Coons in for a studio conversation. If you don’t know Krista, she is someone who truly lives the life of an artist, and has a special gift for inviting us in to participate. In my own state of shifting curiosity, I am so grateful to have Krista share some of her own rituals, rhythms, and artful glimpses with us today. I invite you to settle in with something warm to sip in, perhaps open your sketchbook to jot down any bright spots, and savor the generous spirit in which Krista shares with us.

Studio Chat with Krista Coons

My questions are in bold and Krista’s answers are beneath them.

Tell us a little bit about you in this moment—where are you writing from, what part of your day is it, what do you notice around you?

One of my favorite feelings is folding back the bed sheets and comforter and then climbing into bed at the end of a day telling myself, "a job well done today" or the not-so-occasional "don't worry, we can try that again tomorrow." I collect patterned sheets and bedspreads and then I mix and match depending on the mood or season. Currently, I'm trying to usher in fall to the desert and I have paired linen terra cotta and white striped sheets with an ochre quilt.

About once a week my husband and I make a simple dinner for our kids and then after they are in bed we order takeout and eat it in bed and catch up with each other, tonight it was Thai. We ordered a Panag curry with chicken and extra vegetables and Pad Thai to share.

We are in a season where I spend long hours in the studio preparing for the holidays. He naturally rises with the sun and I prefer the company of the moon so this is a way we care for each other. 

What does creative practice look like for you in this season? Do you have any rituals or rhythms you're leaning into lately? Are there any that you've released?

My creative practice typically follows four themes: rest, curiosity, preparation, and production. I am in the production rhythm which is the culmination of the work done in the three other quarters and while I love the challenge and the repetition of my work at the moment I miss the playfulness and generosity of the other seasons.

I am preparing for the holidays so I have a lot of studio chores to do like mixing glazes and rolling slabs. I work in batches and give myself "themes" for the day like the other day was "blue day" where I made all the pieces that needed to be made from this delphinium blue porcelain I made. 

When I come into the studio I always ask myself "What do I need from my creative practice today?" Sometimes I need to move through feelings, sometimes it's to learn, other times I need playfulness and discovery.

I love to gift myself 15 minutes of stillness to ground myself before moving into my work for the day. I find our work carries our energetic signature so if I feel chaotic, careless, serene, or content my work has signs of that! I feel it's important to have rituals when I enter the studio but also when I leave and close out my flow.

I find I need a few moments to decompress from the day's work and they can be quite simple like washing my hands in a bucket of water and listening to the sounds, hanging up my apron, writing down my production tallies for the day, wrapping up my work so it doesn't dry out too quickly,  listening to my song of the moment which is Cat Power's cover of "I'll Be Seeing You" while I wash tools and put them back where I can find them tomorrow. I have started laying on my back after closing the door and coming out of the studio, closing my eyes and doing some stretches— creating can be demanding on your body and I find it feels very kind to tell it "I am grateful for you" in this way. 

Working in the studio is often a solo activity, but I appreciate the way you share glimpses in with your reels, your writings, and even film stills. Do you find yourself documenting along the way, or does that come later?

I love the idea of us being studio mates. When I was in college studying ceramics one of the things I loved the most was this shared knowledge in real time, you are a witness to all kinds of beautiful and frustrating processes happening! Ceramics is such a humbling medium with so many variables—it's so valuable to have these conversations about your craft and questions, kinship, and knowledge just kind of bounced around naturally!

I love that social media is a canvas for that if that's how we choose to use it. I find I don't often share in real time, in part because my hands are usually messy but also in part because while I like to capture these glimmers of beauty that flash quickly across the work tables I find I don't always know the stories yet so I capture while I work and then...I wait.

create. collect. curate

I'm a big fan of mood boards in general, and I get really excited whenever you share yours. How do you use these to set the stage for creating?

I am such a visual creature, I like that a mood board serves as a little sketch for the muses that have visited, materials that are inspiring, pieces of projects I'm not yet ready to part with. They each take on a different personality!

I think they are also a beautiful way to display ancestral hand-me-downs of those people we carry with us when we create, whether it be a friend, an ancestor, or the spirit of an artist we find endlessly inspiring. I also use mood boards to put in my line of sight things that are perplexing me, I find when I pass by them my mind works on these problems in the background while I attend to other things.

Do you like constraints or rules when it comes to art making? If so, what are some of your favorite creative constraints to work with?

I do! I find creative constraints to be an effective way to nurture creativity!  I will make the same form and then make 15-30 versions of it to see what kind of character or attachments suit it. This process also helps me work through a system for making that particular design and I also am able to anticipate any problems that might come up in the process like cracking or warping. I think this repetition also develops muscle memory, technique, and signature shapes. 

I also use a legend of sorts for style elements and personal symbols: marks, imagery, color palette, shapes, glaze choices... all things that might repeat from collection to collection and make my work recognizable as something that says "Krista was here."

I'm still in my scallop shell era.

I occasionally will also give myself challenges or studies, for instance this summer I also made sense sketches every day by recording something I noticed for each of my senses. I had three rules:

• I will record these by hand in my sketchbook with a black fountain pen—no phone notes.

• I will do this practice everyday for two weeks. 

• I will use black and white film to document something from the day that I recorded in my sketchbook.

It was illuminating and led to other studies, I started making sense portraits for people that I love, for instance I noticed when I would tuck my daughter in during the summer her hair would smell of coconut because she had over sprayed her face when applying her sunscreen, I loved it. I find our senses, especially our sense of smell, ties us very quickly back to our memories, and my memory bank is one of my favorite places to create from.

I love how you have studio books that collect clay and exist alongside you as you create. Can you tell us more about how reading plays into your studio practice? Is there anything you're especially loving lately?

Oh books are such lovely companions! I come from a family that values a searching mind and discovery was encouraged. My Dad is a scientist and my Mom didn't get a chance to finish her degree but took it upon herself to be continually learning, she was always reading and is such a brilliant conversationalist. For her 50th birthday her goal was to read 50 books. My Dad gave my Pappap the nickname of "Books" because he was always reading, I guess it's one of those behaviors that was observed and then modeled!

I keep my favorites in my studio, sometimes I open my studio session by reading, I try to pause my day around 4 pm everyday to sit in the sun under my orange trees and read a few pages of my current book.  I also lead a book club for Creatives with my mentorship program, Kilnfolk, that is open to anyone who would like to join! I love how certain lines from books will echo in your memory long after you've closed the cover. 

A Book I Loved:I recently finished Ross Gay's The Book of Delights and it is one of my favorite books I have read in some time—it's even more of a delight to listen to him give interviews. 

The Next Book To Read: I will read Life In the Studio by Frances Palmer next month if you'd like to join me in Kilnfolk book club. It's a book that lives in my studio. It's just the sort of book I think I would like to write should that ever happen—it's full of the beauty of the everyday, wisdom passed on, the metaphors we learn from our materials, dedication to family, craft, and beauty. It's endlessly inspiring. 

How do you play?

There was a time in my creative practice when I forgot to play. I used up every bit of my creativity in service of others, this is something to be mindful of when your job is to create! If you continually pour out your creativity for others, one day you will tip over that vessel and find it empty. Play is something I have found to be one of those magical elixirs that multiplies and fills your vessel up quicker than the steady drop of other habits. 

I have personal projects that go on at the same time as professional projects:  I decided I was going to make tile for my house this year as one of my personal projects! I made 184 tiles for this space in my studio I have been staring at for two years.  I just decided it was time and then I used my 15-minute warm-up time for several weeks to make a few tiles a day. I do not think play has to be all or nothing, I have found for myself a little play goes a long way. 

I take myself on artist dates: This is a suggested weekly practice from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way and while I don't usually do them weekly I do make an effort to do them at least once a month. It's dedicated time by myself and I find them so rejuvenating. 

I prioritize collaborations: Collaborations with other artists have always been a beautiful place to play and explore my medium in ways I haven't thought of before! It's really inspiring to see another artist in their zone of genius and oftentimes translating their ideas into clay form allows me to rethink my natural inclinations or habits. 

I invite my kids into the studio: Children are so sensitive to wonder and joy and I find myself admiring their natural inclination to play. I love being by their side as they explore in the studio—they really are free of inhibitions. 

What does community mean to you as an artist, a mentor? Where do you find and create community for yourself, and for others? How do you foster that sense of connection virtually?

If I think back to all the beautiful things that have happened in my career, many of the seeds and roots of those experiences are in some way tied to community and the art of gathering. 

We gather to solve problems we can't solve on our own. We gather to celebrate, mourn, and mark transitions, we gather to make decisions. We gather because we need one another. We gather to show strength. We gather to honor and acknowledge. We gather to build companies and schools and neighborhoods. We gather to welcome. And we gather together to say goodbye.

—Priya Parker

I love the word gather. Gathering is a sacred act that I have come to honor this past year as I have been leading a group of artists in my mentorship program,  Kilnfolk. The Kilnfolk community is a place of belonging for emerging artists in a nourishing year-long vessel that begins as individuals and in time the group is able to discover who they are as one, as creative kindred. I offer a posture of support and encouragement as we learn over time how to look after each other benevolently and with a great amount of respect and trust.

Love and trust sit quietly but are everywhere in our monthly Kilnfolk gatherings as we nurture our connection to our bodies and our unique rhythms of rest and work, who we are as artists, how to develop our creative voices, how to tell stories with our art to our golden collectors, how to build and lead our communities with art as an act of service and generosity, and how to attend to our businesses to reach of goals of what is enough and what is our own measure of success. 

I would love to open the invitation to gather as part of the 2024 Kilnfolk community, it's been one of the most healing and beautiful experiences.

Applications are open through November 2, 2023 and information can be found on my website www.kristacoons.com under the navigation tab Kilnfolk, or please feel free to email me hello@kristacoons.com with any questions you might have—I'm quite kind and will respond with great care. 

Can you leave us with a favorite poem/quote/excerpt that speaks to you in this moment? 

I've been researching still lifes, in the art academic tradition but also in the way that I would love to build a life that is vibrant but also a still, life. I'm exploring the art of noticing and connection to intimacy, beauty, and life.

 …I have been drawn into the orbit of a painting, have allowed myself to be pulled into its sphere by casual attraction deepening to something more compelling. I have felt the energy and life of the painting’s will;  I have been held there, instructed. And the overall effect, the result of looking and looking into its brimming surface as long as I could look, is love, by which I mean a sense of tenderness toward experience, of being held with an intimacy with things of this world.”

—Mark Doty, Still Life With Oysters and Lemon

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What a treat to join in conversation with Krista. The idea of studio mates near and far brings me comfort and connection in my own creative practice, and now I will bring more questions as well as bookish companions into the studio to accompany me throughout the day.

What will you take from this conversation? Reply or comment and let me know.

Thanks for stopping into the studio!