Meet Lucy Pennell | Ceramicist

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

Hi Lucy, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I feel like the business has kind of started twice! Lulupots was born during my undergrad ceramics program. I had an excess of inventory from assignments and testing that I needed to clear my shelves, so I created my instagram, made a logo and began selling my pots online! I graduated during the pandemic, so my junior and senior year were made up of online assignments and self-taught studio time (my professor was immune-compromised and so higher level students such as myself had almost an entirely self-taught experience for those last 2 years). I was dying to learn more and had so many ideas that I wanted to explore that I think that is where the seed was planted for lulu pots 2.0.

When I graduated, I moved to LA immediately, knowing it was a great place to be an artist. I worked jobs exclusively in the ceramics business over 3 years- I was a studio technician at a large community studio, a pottery teacher, and a production potter for a small lamp company. Let me just insert now that pottery is grueling on your back. The constant being bent over and lifting heavy things is going to be tough on anyone overtime. However, I had been struggling since college with some small health things. Lethargy, muscle aches, body pain, and a slough of other symptoms that I’d never been able to get diagnosed as anything. Around the time I was working my production job, I was trying to balance being there for this company I was an employee for and also having the time/energy to work on my own creative ideas. I was the most stressed I’d been since living in LA, and I genuinely thought to myself at one point, “I want to explore what Lulupots can be before I’m too physically broken to do so”. So I left my production job and took a month off to get a diagnosis for my symptoms. I was eventually diagnosed with Hashimoto’s and Multi-connective Tissue Disease. With the diagnoses, it felt like a good time to try to work for myself, as my pain can be erratic at times and working on a more rigid schedule was stressful! Opening up Lulupots helped me create my own hours and lean into the work I really wanted to do, which was my own.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Oh ceramics, what can I tell you about it other than it’s just so free. There’s honestly no limit to what you can make out of ceramic or the ways you can surface a piece or alter it… I feel like that part of it is also what I struggle with the most in ceramics because my ideas are always changing and I have so many of them and that’s hard to market sometimes! My work is whimsical and playful but is refined and finished in a way that makes it a tell-tale Lulu Pot.

Getting here wasn’t easy at all and I genuinely don’t feel like I am anywhere yet, really. I am grateful to have had a really supportive pottery community and personal community along the way that helped me have the motivation to start my studio, but the studio was only a stepping stone to what I think the rest of my career is going to be.

I’m going to grad school in the fall for ceramics and glass- I had been feeling so stuck creatively over the last year, and like my relationship with pottery was taking a hit because I was trying to make ends meet financially. I have always had a Masters on the back on my mind but thought I would only go if it was abroad. (I’ve always wanted to live abroad so that felt like an obvious two birds, one stone situation to me). Towards the end of last year, I felt really exhausted creatively and emotionally and thought “why don’t I just apply to this one school I’ve had on my mind… its a long shot, it’s the best art school in the world allegedly but if its meant to be, your work and story will speak for itself.”

I applied to the Royal College of Art in London in January and was offered a spot 2 weeks later. It felt unreal and also like the biggest weight of any of them had been lifted off my shoulders- I can finally create again with no consequences and just be an artist for a second.

I feel like what I’m most proud of is an accumulation of a few things: getting into the school yes, but also knowing when in my life I needed to pivot and respecting that, even when it was the hard or maybe financially irresponsible thing to do. I trust my gut and that’s something that I think is reflected through my work, as well.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Oh- we are going all over town. Hitting up Highland Park brewery for a few beers, some great food and then chilling in LA Historic State Park. I take all my visitors to Bearded Beagle in Highland Park- the best vintage store in town. (HP location > silver lake one, sorry)
We’ll go to Spoke in Frogtown for the California B.L.A.T. and some Arnold palmers before checking out the LA river and then maybe going to Silverlake Res to walk or sit!
There’s the obligatory beach day. My spot is a hidden beach in Malibu that I can’t reveal and then we end the day at Malibu seafood… whole lobster, baked potato. Need I say more?
I mean, the last thing I have to take someone to is KBBQ. LA has some of the best Korean food ever and I’ll say that til the day I die. Bak Kung is my go-to, and Oo-Kook is right up there with it honestly.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
The bosses I had at Ceramicah, my production job were incredibly kind and patient with me when I was getting diagnosed. The weight I put on myself to be a good employee to them (because it was a small business and If I wasn’t working efficiently it did have an effect on their company) was a weight I put there, but also a weight that exacerbated my symptoms. (my own worst enemy- typical.) Not only have the owners of the company, Micah and Alex, been friends to me since I arrived in LA, where I was a sublessee in an apartment in their complex, but they helped me grow as a potter, a business woman, and helped me by writing a recommendation letter for me to get into grad school, which I am attending in the Fall of 2025. They’ve only supported and helped me and I only think how I was so lucky to have been in that apartment complex when I first got here!

Website: https://lulupots.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/lulupotsla

Image Credits
Yasara Gunawardena