Meet Ian Wolterstorff | Ceramic Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ian Wolterstorff and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ian, what role has risk played in your life or career?
Risk is unavoidable. Especially in art because someone is going to judge a thing you made and they might think it sucks. Ouch. That’s gonna sting baby. It hurts because a person’s art is but a piece of their shattered soul. Great metal band. I got tickets to the Warped Tour to see SHATTERED SOUL! But for reals, creative expression is very personal, so the next time you see sh*tty art just keep it to yourself.

I also think people in general are way too concerned with being right. It starts with chasing good grades in school and then the goal post becomes the perfect instagram montage of a free spirit hottie living their best van life. The only way to make quality art is to surrender to a process of failure and doing better next time. You have to be bad at something before you’re good at it. I guess the risk is being bad at something for a while and having your ego bruised. I try to bruise my ego every six months. Prevents behavior illnesses such as dipshititis.

I was actor for a long time and the constant rejection you face in the audition process is a great training ground for managing risk and failure. When your’e working as an actor you’re constantly going on really embarrassing job interviews that rarely pan out. This really helped shielding myself from external judgment when I later became a visual arts. Internal judgment is a whole other topic that deserves it’s own rant, but I’ll stay on topic.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I do wheel throwing ceramics. You sit at a motorized pottery wheel making cylindrical forms out of clay. The spinning wheel creates centripetal force that throws clay outwards in all directions all at once and the potter is supposed to skillfully resist this gravitational force to create something that looks cool. Or, not. A lot can go wrong from working on the wheel to glazing and lastly firing the piece. Any mistake along this weeks long process can mess up everything and you just start over again. Fail, try again. Fail, try again. Fail, but now I just say the mistake was on purpose. How would they know?

If you’re just starting out as an artist I recommend you make as much as you can. Quantity over quality. Don’t stop making until you have enough to start editing. I keep the best pieces, learn what I can from them and then gift the homies with the stuff from the reject pile. After a while aesthetic patterns emerge and eventually people will call it your style. I like this strategy because it’s focused on the work. But you’re gonna need resilience to carry you through life’s inevitable bummers.

The writer/actor strike of 2023 was brutal for so many people in LA. Financial stress sucks, big time, but it can also be an awesome motivator. To compensate for a shrinking bank account I signed up for lots of art fairs and started teaching an influx of out of work entertainment people who wanted a ceramic hobby. The result was that I had to doubled my output, which made me put out better work that eventually started to sell.

Hardship isn’t a creative motivator for me. Art out of adversity might work for some but my imagination works best when things are super chill. There’s some new age potters out there who think you can transfer your mental state into the clay your working with. Pretty sure that’s some wu-wu shenanigans but it definitely would suck if you bought a giant bowl from me that was imbued with my bad day vibes. That’s why I try to have no bad days, so both me and my work are nice and healthy.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
First on the list has to be Dodger Stadium. Been going to games since I was kid. LA is a fractured city. It’s lots of neighborhoods puzzled together, making it hard to find that unified experience of belonging and civic identity. Besides Dodger stadium the only other place I’ve gotten that was jury duty in downtown LA. It was in one of those beautiful art deco federal court buildings and everyone was super cool. We bonded over not wanting to be there and what each of our drive times were from where we lived. After two days I didn’t get picked for the case and I met a seamstress from Tujunga. So yeah, Dodger Stadium.

Bay Cities Italian Deli in Santa Monica is a sandwich institution. Go get a godmother with the works, spicy peppers and then take a nap, maybe sleep through the day, into the night and start fresh tomorrow. That’s what I do.

Gotta come out East to Pasadena and shout out the Huntington Gardens. Great for family hang time, wandering through different ecosystems. Smell some roses, check out the cactus/succulent zone that looks like an alien garden and then wander into a museum for an AC break. A great walk and talk date spot for the single homies out there.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My wife has to get the shoutout nod here. What a legend. Years ago the two of us took a ceramic class together. When it was over she hung up her clay skates forever and told me to keep going. Now I’m doing triple axels and sticking the landing, all the while she’s been cheering me on, encouraging me to chase this wacky dream of making vessels out of mud. It’s such a massive privilege to tag team life with a stable, loving, super hot partner. So blessed.

Website: https://wolterstorffceramics.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wolterstorffceramics/

Other: Stores in LA where my work is carried…

Homage Pasadena:
100 N Fair Oaks Ave, Pasadena, CA 91103
https://homagepasadena.com/

Potted Atwater Village:
3216 Los Feliz Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90039
https://pottedstore.com/

Image Credits
Photographer: Matt Rose

Website : https://www.mattrose.me/