Studio playlist I listen to audiobooks constantly. When the book becomes mundane, I will put on NTS Radio.
Wishlist A little robot named Buckley that would clean all of my tools shiny clean at the end of a long work day.
Studio
The studio is a cozy, light-filled space in Bowdoinham, Maine, surrounded by the woods and the quiet. It is a 500-square-foot (46.4-sq.-m.) space, originally a garage, now converted into a workspace. I share the building with fellow potter and friend Sara Cox of Delilah Pottery. The space is perfect for my needs; it is large enough for multiple work areas, wheels, a glaze setup, two kilns, and plenty of shelving. It’s warm, welcoming, and grounded in the landscape around it. Large windows look out onto the gardens, which gives the studio a calm, collected atmosphere. I work primarily in translucent porcelains and incorporate painting, drawing, and writing onto my surfaces. Because of this, my work areas are split into two main zones for making: The Green (clay work, pinching, making, reclaim) and Surfacing & Illustrating (painting, lustering, writing, glazing). This separation helps keep the porcelain free of contamination while still allowing me to move easily from form to finish.
The studio’s greatest gift is the quiet. The space has such an unhurried rhythm and the work absolutely amplifies that. The natural light and the landscape make it easy to settle into the meditative parts of handbuilding, pinching landscapes of fingerprints, writing prose onto the pottery, sharpening dozens and dozens of underglaze pencils, and applying the 22K gold luster with intention. I also love sharing the space with Sara, a potter for nearly 30 years; the creative companionship is grounding.
Life in the woods keeps me ever so mindful of my place within the land and also within my craft. We reclaim all porcelain scraps/slop and only fire full kiln loads. We keep the heat as low as possible so the clay doesn’t freeze when we are not there, except for when we are actively working. Porcelain is finicky, especially Laguna Frost porcelain, but one thing it does not require is excessive heat when the studio is running intentionally. The hotter the studio, the faster the porcelains dry and the less workability the clay has.
Paying Dues (and Bills)
I received my BFA in ceramics from Maine College of Art and Design in Portland, Maine. Post graduation, I continued learning through community studios, workshops, residencies, and personal experimentation. Much of my work blends traditional pottery with illustration, writing, and narrative, which comes from parallel personal training in drawing and storytelling. It also comes from a deep need to want to better understand those around me. My work is a conversation between myself and the user, and between the user and the pottery itself. On average, I spend about 40–50 hours a week in the studio, but during busy months, it can be more. I often tell my husband how thankful I am that my studio is not in my home; I feel so unabashedly myself while working that I believe I’d be in there 24/7. My schedule tends to follow the natural rhythm of the work: handbuilding early in the week, trimming and handling mid-week, and painting/lustering the pots toward the end. Kiln firings often happen on weekends. Much of my work includes writing and painting on the clay—I build in quiet, uninterrupted time just for surface design. I lay out all of my writings and my sketchbooks on my work table and apply all of those thoughts onto the wares.
Ceramics is my full-time work, and I am still amazed that I get to say that. Nearly a decade in, it remains dreamlike. The online collections I release make up a significant portion of my income, supplemented by exhibitions, a wholesale commitment here and there, and very special commissioned pieces.
Marketing
Most of my clients are people who appreciate handmade objects with emotional or narrative depth, people who want pieces that feel radically honest and lived with. People who want to understand human nature better, who want a moment of thought with their morning coffee, not another glance at their telephone screens. At the heart of this work is a conversation that includes domesticity and memory. There are intricate, intimate details expressed through drawings and text that serve to record connections between myself and others, and also between myself and the material. These renderings weave a rich tapestry of visual and conceptual layers: childhood memories, kitchen rituals, a conversation with a stranger in Market Basket. I believe it helps people connect with the work emotionally, and also that it helps people connect with themselves.
I try to show a bit of the process on social media, the handwritten lines, the brush marks, the notebooks, the people from my past who may have inspired the piece. My online collections tend to sell out in minutes, which has become a meaningful part of how customers engage with the work. It becomes an event to snag up a piece, and I like to think that the enhanced experience of purchasing spills over to how they use the piece in their homes. An enhanced experience, a magical cup. Intention, connection, performance!
Small, limited collections keep the work fresh and evolving. My biggest fear has always been stagnation, and I am thankful for clients who long for experimentation in the work and are ready to feast their eyes on new words, new forms, new feelings. In the next couple of years, we plan to expand the studio’s capabilities—bigger kilns, bigger works, bigger ideas. I have been interested in making more ceramic furniture and lighting. Chandeliers, ceramic chairs, and down the line, a potential ceramic house?! Yes, a house. Anything is possible in our studio. That’s the beauty of clay. I find it to be limitless. It offers a profound experience into material and metaphor. The kiln’s transformative process adds elements of serendipity, revealing unexpected outcomes that enrich the complexity of each piece’s story.
Word of mouth has been one of the greatest drivers of growth. These days, I post on social media a little less, I don’t have a mailing list, and I keep my pop-ups small and surprising. I welcome studio visits, longing for visitors so that I can personally watch them engage with the works. I hope for the work to be stumbled upon inside of people’s homes, museums, or a gallery you walked into after passing it unknowingly on the street. In person, people tend to fall in love with tactile qualities. The gold luster shimmering in the light, the thin porcelain walls showing your hands moving throughout the piece, and the layers upon layers of underglaze. The work is meant to be discovered. I want you to feel as though you were meant to find it. I want you to feel as though it was also meant to find you.
Most Important Lesson
There are two lessons that have shaped me and my studio practice in profound ways. Do not fear spite and do not fear experimentation. Spite, when honed in, can be a powerful motivator. To be completely honest, much of my journey was shaped by the desire to prove others wrong. Those who dismissed art school as a “real” institution, those who questioned ceramics as a serious career, or doubted my direction within my craft. I have allowed that resistance to sharpen my commitment to ceramics.
Equally important is carving out the space to experiment. Make strange work once in a while. Sit with it, learn from it. Experimentation keeps the hands engaged and the mind wide open. Failed works can be a compelling teacher. Growth as an artist has always happened in all of these frustrating, strange, unconventional moments in the studio.
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Just the Facts
Clay
porcelains, preferably Laguna Frost Porcelain
Primary forming method
handbuilding, coil building, slab building
Primary firing temperature
mid-fire range, cone 5/6
Favorite surface treatment
premium 22K gold luster
Favorite tools
a rusty old Pastene tomato can
Studio playlist
I listen to audiobooks constantly. When the book becomes mundane, I will put on NTS Radio.
Wishlist
A little robot named Buckley that would clean all of my tools shiny clean at the end of a long work day.
Studio
The studio is a cozy, light-filled space in Bowdoinham, Maine, surrounded by the woods and the quiet. It is a 500-square-foot (46.4-sq.-m.) space, originally a garage, now converted into a workspace. I share the building with fellow potter and friend Sara Cox of Delilah Pottery. The space is perfect for my needs; it is large enough for multiple work areas, wheels, a glaze setup, two kilns, and plenty of shelving. It’s warm, welcoming, and grounded in the landscape around it. Large windows look out onto the gardens, which gives the studio a calm, collected atmosphere. I work primarily in translucent porcelains and incorporate painting, drawing, and writing onto my surfaces. Because of this, my work areas are split into two main zones for making: The Green (clay work, pinching, making, reclaim) and Surfacing & Illustrating (painting, lustering, writing, glazing). This separation helps keep the porcelain free of contamination while still allowing me to move easily from form to finish.
The studio’s greatest gift is the quiet. The space has such an unhurried rhythm and the work absolutely amplifies that. The natural light and the landscape make it easy to settle into the meditative parts of handbuilding, pinching landscapes of fingerprints, writing prose onto the pottery, sharpening dozens and dozens of underglaze pencils, and applying the 22K gold luster with intention. I also love sharing the space with Sara, a potter for nearly 30 years; the creative companionship is grounding.
Life in the woods keeps me ever so mindful of my place within the land and also within my craft. We reclaim all porcelain scraps/slop and only fire full kiln loads. We keep the heat as low as possible so the clay doesn’t freeze when we are not there, except for when we are actively working. Porcelain is finicky, especially Laguna Frost porcelain, but one thing it does not require is excessive heat when the studio is running intentionally. The hotter the studio, the faster the porcelains dry and the less workability the clay has.
Paying Dues (and Bills)
I received my BFA in ceramics from Maine College of Art and Design in Portland, Maine. Post graduation, I continued learning through community studios, workshops, residencies, and personal experimentation. Much of my work blends traditional pottery with illustration, writing, and narrative, which comes from parallel personal training in drawing and storytelling. It also comes from a deep need to want to better understand those around me. My work is a conversation between myself and the user, and between the user and the pottery itself. On average, I spend about 40–50 hours a week in the studio, but during busy months, it can be more. I often tell my husband how thankful I am that my studio is not in my home; I feel so unabashedly myself while working that I believe I’d be in there 24/7. My schedule tends to follow the natural rhythm of the work: handbuilding early in the week, trimming and handling mid-week, and painting/lustering the pots toward the end. Kiln firings often happen on weekends. Much of my work includes writing and painting on the clay—I build in quiet, uninterrupted time just for surface design. I lay out all of my writings and my sketchbooks on my work table and apply all of those thoughts onto the wares.
Ceramics is my full-time work, and I am still amazed that I get to say that. Nearly a decade in, it remains dreamlike. The online collections I release make up a significant portion of my income, supplemented by exhibitions, a wholesale commitment here and there, and very special commissioned pieces.
Marketing
Most of my clients are people who appreciate handmade objects with emotional or narrative depth, people who want pieces that feel radically honest and lived with. People who want to understand human nature better, who want a moment of thought with their morning coffee, not another glance at their telephone screens. At the heart of this work is a conversation that includes domesticity and memory. There are intricate, intimate details expressed through drawings and text that serve to record connections between myself and others, and also between myself and the material. These renderings weave a rich tapestry of visual and conceptual layers: childhood memories, kitchen rituals, a conversation with a stranger in Market Basket. I believe it helps people connect with the work emotionally, and also that it helps people connect with themselves.
I try to show a bit of the process on social media, the handwritten lines, the brush marks, the notebooks, the people from my past who may have inspired the piece. My online collections tend to sell out in minutes, which has become a meaningful part of how customers engage with the work. It becomes an event to snag up a piece, and I like to think that the enhanced experience of purchasing spills over to how they use the piece in their homes. An enhanced experience, a magical cup. Intention, connection, performance!
Small, limited collections keep the work fresh and evolving. My biggest fear has always been stagnation, and I am thankful for clients who long for experimentation in the work and are ready to feast their eyes on new words, new forms, new feelings. In the next couple of years, we plan to expand the studio’s capabilities—bigger kilns, bigger works, bigger ideas. I have been interested in making more ceramic furniture and lighting. Chandeliers, ceramic chairs, and down the line, a potential ceramic house?! Yes, a house. Anything is possible in our studio. That’s the beauty of clay. I find it to be limitless. It offers a profound experience into material and metaphor. The kiln’s transformative process adds elements of serendipity, revealing unexpected outcomes that enrich the complexity of each piece’s story.
Word of mouth has been one of the greatest drivers of growth. These days, I post on social media a little less, I don’t have a mailing list, and I keep my pop-ups small and surprising. I welcome studio visits, longing for visitors so that I can personally watch them engage with the works. I hope for the work to be stumbled upon inside of people’s homes, museums, or a gallery you walked into after passing it unknowingly on the street. In person, people tend to fall in love with tactile qualities. The gold luster shimmering in the light, the thin porcelain walls showing your hands moving throughout the piece, and the layers upon layers of underglaze. The work is meant to be discovered. I want you to feel as though you were meant to find it. I want you to feel as though it was also meant to find you.
Most Important Lesson
There are two lessons that have shaped me and my studio practice in profound ways. Do not fear spite and do not fear experimentation. Spite, when honed in, can be a powerful motivator. To be completely honest, much of my journey was shaped by the desire to prove others wrong. Those who dismissed art school as a “real” institution, those who questioned ceramics as a serious career, or doubted my direction within my craft. I have allowed that resistance to sharpen my commitment to ceramics.
Equally important is carving out the space to experiment. Make strange work once in a while. Sit with it, learn from it. Experimentation keeps the hands engaged and the mind wide open. Failed works can be a compelling teacher. Growth as an artist has always happened in all of these frustrating, strange, unconventional moments in the studio.
Website: dominiqueostuni.club
Gallery: Dowling Walsh, dowlingwalsh.com
Instagram: @droseos
Photos: Anna Maria Lopez.
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