Just the Facts

Clay 
red earthenware clay 

Primary forming method 
handbuilding and wheel throwing 

Primary firing temperature 
Tom: cone 2 in a soda kiln 
Maggie: cone 03 in oxidation 

Favorite surface treatment 
slipware: Maggie paints layers of mostly white, and Tom uses tape and wax to add color 

Favorite tool 
Surform tool 

Studio playlist 
Tom’s favorite podcast is Ear Hustle and Maggie gets very excited when the latest Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling) audiobook is released. 

Wishlist 
a sink in the studio 

Studio 

We live on a rural road near Shafer, Minnesota, a few miles from the Wisconsin border. In the heart of the St. Croix River Valley, we’re surrounded by three state parks, a river gorge, and plenty of farmland. Our studio is a barn-style outbuilding that we inherited when we bought our property five years ago. It was close to what we needed without requiring too many large improvements. 

Since we spend just about every minute together, having our own spaces is essential, and we set up our studio building with this priority. The ground level is about 750 square feet. Tom works in what used to be a two-car garage, about 450 square feet. It has heated concrete floors, and Tom framed in the garage doors, replacing them with windows. His space is made up of two 4×8-foot work tables plus a smaller one for slipping pots, a throwing wheel, a trimming wheel, a treadle wheel, as well as a clay mixer, pug mill, slab roller, a tool chest, and a large ware rack. Maggie’s studio is upstairs, and is about 400 square feet. She divides her space between clay and drawing/sculpture. Each end has two work tables, bracketing a throwing wheel, a wedging table, clay mixers, three baking carts, a tool chest and drawing cabinet, a small couch, and a cat named Michael Jackson. Michael is by far her favorite studio feature. Additionally, there is a shared space of about 300 square feet on the ground level, between Tom’s studio and the stairs to the upper level, that holds our two electric kilns, a small glaze lab, the furnace, and a little gallery space. We don’t have running water in the studio currently, though we plan to have a sink installed at some point. 

Outside, a 24×24-foot shed houses Tom’s soda kiln, but we also store extra packing materials and wood there. Finally, our home is an 1892 farmhouse, which the previous owners lifted and put in a new basement. It was roughly framed into several small rooms that we now use as, among other normal basement functions, a wood shop, a packing and shipping area, and a photo room. 

Paying Dues (and Bills) 

We both moved around a lot, for many years, following arts opportunities. Maggie’s ceramic education took place at Kootenay School of the Arts and Alberta College of Art+Design in Canada, with graduate school at the University of Minnesota. Tom worked as an assistant to Simon Levin and Tara Wilson. We have both participated in several residency programs throughout our careers and were lucky enough to have been residents at the Archie Bray Foundation and Penland School of Craft. Those opportunities changed our lives, and we are forever grateful to those institutions. The Archie Bray is also where we met, so it’s an extra special place for us. 

While Maggie teaches periodically, we both are currently full-time studio artists. We have a seven-year-old son, Hamish, who is a delightful distraction from the studio. We generally work six days a week if we can, take Sundays off, and work normal daytime hours. We work at night on and off, depending on how our bodies are feeling and whether a deadline is looming. Our studio life doesn’t have a typical day. We both prefer to be in the studio, and many days, during Hamish’s school year, we can have whole days working with clay. When there are writing, shipping, or business tasks we tend to take those on as they come, usually first thing in the morning. Sometimes those things can consume a whole week, other times they just fill a random morning. Our individual making cycles vary depending on approaching deadlines or gallery needs, more than on kiln loads. Tom tends to work more toward kiln loads, as the soda kiln requires more planning and work. For Maggie, firing in an electric kiln allows for making cycles as short or long as needed. Both of us prioritize studio time whenever we can, working toward upcoming deadlines and gallery needs. In every cycle, if not every day, we try to balance deadline needs with time to develop a new idea that excites or challenges us. We also both try to get an hour of exercise in on most days. 

Marketing 

We sell our work in various ways, with the goal of staying at home as much as possible. This keeps stress down and life simple. We each have a dozen or so consignment galleries around the country, as well as a few stores that wholesale our work. We also teach both short workshops at local colleges and art centers, and a longer workshop at a craft school most summers. These opportunities do not provide a steady income, but they allow us to meet new people and expand our community. We both use social media minimally, so these experiences are important to us. 

We also sell pots in person through invitational shows and studio tours/home sales. The past few years we’ve been lucky enough to be guests at the St. Croix Valley Pottery Tour, an amazing pottery event that takes place every Mother’s Day weekend in the St. Croix River Valley. We are also developing our own fall home sale, currently in its third year. This sale focuses as much on community and fun as it does on economy. We host six potters for the weekend, including ourselves, as well as a neighboring beekeeper who sells honey and candles. Our Front Yard Sale was named in response to our neighbor and close friend Peter Jadoonath, who is also a studio potter. His annual Backyard Sale has been a tradition for many years. Over a few summers, Tom and Peter built a ball field on Peter’s property. Now, on the Friday evening of the two sales, we play each other in an intense game of wiffle ball. Teams are made up of our guest potters, our kids, and friends and families from the community who have come to help with the sale. Last year our team, the North Shafer Night Crawlers, beat Peter’s team, the South Shafer Deer Ticks, 22-19. We don’t spend much time on social media or advertising. We both have Instagram accounts and very intentionally use those only to share work or show announcements, rather than using them as a journal. This of course is a very dry approach, and we are certainly missing out on sales and/or followers, but it fits our ethics. We both believe in the role of galleries, and this has served us well. The gallery gets a large cut, but we also get more studio time, and some portion of advertising is fulfilled. Shows, exhibitions, and teaching help with promotion as well. Our home sale and other local events help us reach our immediate community. 

Mind 

Minnesota has four defined seasons and we try to embrace each one. Every season brings a new rhythm that shifts our studio practice and priorities. Summer is very social and studio time happens in bursts. Our son is at home with us, and we want to spend time with him. There is a lot of outdoor work on the property, as well as vegetable and flower gardening and preserving food. We have two large vegetable gardens that feed us year round, pollinator habitats, and chickens for eggs. In the fall, the school year starts, Hamish is gone during the day, and all our big studio ideas from the summer get full attention. Tom takes October off to get our property ready for winter. We mostly heat our studio, and our home as well, with wood. This chore is a huge task all year long: chopping and stacking in the summer and fall, and hauling and tending the stoves in the winter. We also harvest our meat chickens in the fall, as well as a deer and sometimes a pig. Once winter hits, we’re more locked in. We have fewer distractions, focusing on quiet studio time and tending to the wood stoves. Spring starts off with maple syrup, and then it’s a scramble to get work finished for the St. Croix Valley Pottery Tour, to fill galleries for the summer, and to grow seedlings and plant the garden. 

Cooking connects us to the seasons and our gardens, it’s a way for us to spend time together and a way for us to learn about the world. Getting outside year round is also essential. We each try to walk every day and play soccer or bike with our son on the weekends. In the winter we cross-country ski and ice skate. When life gets too busy or too icy to get out of the studio and outside, we both feel it, in our mental and physical health. 

Most Important Lesson 

Invest in yourself. We own all the equipment we need and want. Tom’s soda kiln is made of new brick, by someone who builds kilns professionally. This goes against the frugal nature both of us were taught about becoming a potter, but we are frugal in other ways, and having the appropriate tools is a resource for creative sustainability and studio efficiency. Also, make the work you want to make. Do not compromise. Then find where that work fits into the world. For us, this meant working other jobs while we figured that out, and we are still perpetually having to adjust and refine how to make this work for us in our lives. 

tomjaszczak.com 
Instagram: @jaszczakpottery 

maggiejaszczak.com 
Instagram: @maggiejaszczak 

Topics: Ceramic Artists, Functional Pottery

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