I’d Rather Be Making Pottery

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Margie Zavoico: It's a fight between you and the clay, who's gonna win. Who's gonna, you know, tame the clay, or is the clay gonna tame you?

[00:00:14] Katya Rucker: Hello and welcome to another episode of I'd Rather Be, a podcast about the hobbies and passions that make our lives fuller and richer. These are the things we'd rather be doing almost all the time. I'm your host, Katya Rucker. 

[00:00:30] One of the things I love most about making this show is getting to vicariously experience the joy and the energy people get from their hobbies. Whether they're showing me something they've made, like a finished piece of embroidery or a miniature bonsai garden, or showing me how they do what they do, like the process of centering clay on a spinning potter's wheel, this spark that feels like a mixture of pride and contentment is universal. It's apparent in all of them.

[00:01:00] Today, we're following the story of Margie Zavoico, an avid potter who lives in Asheville, North Carolina. Margie's passion for pottery is palpable. And every new challenge seems to fuel her dedication to it even more. 

[00:01:16] Margie Zavoico: It’s so gratifying. And I dream about it, I go to bed thinking about it. I wake up thinking about it, making a plan. Sometimes I can't sleep because I'm stressing out how to solve a problem that I, I just can't, [00:01:30] I can't grasp, or a new skill that is just, ugh.

[00:01:33] Katya Rucker: So how did Margie and pottery find one another? Well, Margie’s story showed me that inspiration can strike at the most unexpected times, and even in the hardest times of our lives. It's a beautiful aspect of the human condition that we can find new sources of joy even after the unthinkable happens. For Margie, as she was going through a period of immense grief, she still [00:02:00] found a way to be open to discovering something new, something that called to this inner creative spark that had always been a part of her. 

[00:02:06] Margie Zavoico: We had moved from California here to Asheville. Anyway, my husband passed away and I was sort of looking for something to do that would just fully encompass me.

[00:02:21] So I was having a massage one day and this massage therapist was telling me about how excited he was. He was taking pottery classes at this place down [00:02:30] in the River Arts District in Asheville. And he was just so excited about it all. He said, you know, you maybe want to try that. That might make you happy. So I did. And then I took one class and then I took another class and took another class and I really loved it. I was not good at it. I was not a fast learner. It was very hard and very physical. And the young potters were in there moving, you know, eight pounds of [00:03:00] clay. And I was just struggling with my two pounds to get it to stay put on the center of the wheel, which is the whole point of pottery.

[00:03:09] So I worked and worked and worked, so it was more perseverance than talent, but somehow it fascinated me, somehow it just -- all I wanted to do was get back there at that class. 

[00:03:24] Katya Rucker: This drive to stay the course on a steep learning curve would serve Margie well when she [00:03:30] faced that initial challenge of centering the clay on the spinning potter's wheel. It's the fundamental obstacle that every potter must overcome, and it takes a lot of practice.

[00:03:41] When the clay is centered, the wheel can be spinning really fast, but the clay will look like it's standing still and not swaying or leaning to one side. And there are tons of things that can go wrong when you're trying to get it centered. Maybe you didn't prep your clay properly and it has air pockets in it. Or maybe you didn't put enough water on your clay, or it could even be too [00:04:00] wet, or your wheel could be spinning too slowly, or maybe something about your body position is causing the clay to go off center. Here's Margie talking about what it feels like to try to center the clay when you're first starting out. 

[00:04:13] Margie Zavoico: It's a fight between you and the clay, who's gonna win. Who's gonna, you know, tame the clay, or is the clay gonna tame you?

[00:04:22] Katya Rucker: And what happens if it gets off center or if it wins? What, what does it look like when the clay wins?

[00:04:30] Margie Zavoico: It's like a nail and a tire. You keep running over the nail and nail, as you go along, it's like you have your hands around it and then you go, ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump. And it's never smooth. And gosh, I think that was the hardest thing for me to learn was how to center the clay. And it's the reason most people give up on clay because it's like riding a bike. Once you've learned, you're fine. [00:05:00] But to get it first up there, it's just, um, many, many people quit. I've seen people come into classes and you know, maybe the class has eight people in it and then the next semester comes along and maybe only two of those people come back. And then maybe after that, maybe only one person comes back because it just gets -- want to give up, just say, I can't do this.

[00:05:25] Katya Rucker: Right. Right. And were you able in that first semester to get it centered or were you still--[00:05:30] 

[00:05:31] Margie Zavoico: No, I was, you know, faking it, hoping if I fake it til you make it, but no, I was faking it. I was almost getting there and sort of making a pot so I could have something to glaze, but it wasn't until I started making larger pots that I realized I can't fake it because it will--

[00:05:54] Katya Rucker: the sheer weight of it. 

[00:05:55] Margie Zavoico: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:05:56] Katya Rucker:  Is it--once you have it, is it less of a fight? Like, [00:06:00] are you able to kind of relax a bit and shape or are you always kind of managing-- 

[00:06:04] Margie Zavoico: No. Once you’ve got it really centered, you are good. You are gold, and it will behave the way you want and you can do anything you want to it, but if you keep on going without it quite centered you're fighting and fighting and fighting. And I really did that for longer than I would like to admit.

[00:06:27] Katya Rucker: Hearing Margie described these [00:06:30] months of fighting the clay to get it truly centered, I asked her, if you could go back to the beginning of your pottery journey, is there anything you would have done differently? 

[00:06:40] Margie Zavoico: If I had known I was going to have this hobby, I would have been working out in the gym with weights and all to get my arms, my hands strong, my arms strong. I have to lift, you know, just carrying -- a bag of clay is 25 pounds. And for me, that's a challenge just to tote my bag of clay around.

[00:07:00] Katya Rucker: It’s very heavy.

[00:07:00] Margie Zavoico: And they come to you in a box, that’s 50 pounds. I have to get someone to help me, you know, I do, but the younger potters, they just are carrying around 50 pounds of clay, no problem. And building structures say with 8-10 pounds of clay. Well, I have to divide it into two sections. I have to start out with five pounds and then I center that and then I add five pounds and then I center that in order to get a 10 pound-- [00:07:30] I just can't do 10 pounds.

[00:07:30] Katya Rucker: And what do you--is it sculptures? What do you make out of 10 pounds of clay?

[00:07:37] Margie Zavoico: Ah, you would make a pot, you know, like a big pot. Oh and I love to make big pots. They are really fun. And I put sections together. The challenge is to not be able to see that seam where you put the two pieces together, because it will show up unless you have it perfectly smooth [00:08:00] on the inside and perfectly smooth on the outside. It will, after it's fired, it was just be right there for ya, so that’s a huge challenge. 

[00:08:10] Katya Rucker: Margie tells me that when she isn't taking a specific class that requires homework, she always wants to come back to making these big pots, putting them together in sections and seeing how big a pot she can get. These classes are a part of a two-year immersive program at the Village Potters Studio in Asheville's River Arts District.

[00:08:29] Margie was [00:08:30] intimidated about the prospect of getting into this program, but her instructors told her that as a part of the program, she'd have access to the studio and a potter's wheel along with all of their other facilities every day of the week.

[00:08:41] Margie Zavoico: So I applied to it and they actually let me in, which is very odd, but I learned since then it was because of my perseverance not because of my talents.

[00:08:49] Katya Rucker: Yeah. No that's a huge--I mean, for anything, right? You can't become good at something without some perseverance. 

[00:08:56] Margie Zavoico: Yeah. Yeah. So I worked and worked and worked, [00:09:00] and most potters love fire. I'm afraid of fire. So, there is a big old fiery gas-filled kiln that you can fire in, which I have fired in many times, but I won't do it myself, and I won't learn how to do it myself. And so I've now switched over to the electric kiln that I, you know, it's like a microwave oven. You just press some buttons and it works and you just walk away and it happens all night long

[00:09:29] Katya Rucker: Fire [00:09:30] is the key ingredient in turning what is essentially mud into the mugs and bowls that are strong enough to hold food and water. When you shape raw clay into a piece of pottery, it's kind of like building a dribble castle out of sand. It holds its structure unless a big wave comes along and makes it collapse. But thousands of years ago, humans discovered they could turn sculpted clay into waterproof pots and bowls by putting it into fire for a long period of time.

[00:09:55] And this firing process is called sintering. It changes the molecules in the [00:10:00] clay by fusing the particles together once the clay reaches around 1600 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 900 degrees Celsius. And this turns the clay into ceramic. This means that pottery is basically one of humankind's earliest chemistry experiments.

[00:10:15] Today, potters will usually put their pottery through two fires in a kiln. The first fire is called the bisque fire. Some people call it the biscuit fire, and this is where the sintering happens. So the clay shrinks into a harder object and loses all its moisture, [00:10:30] but most clays are not fully waterproof after the first fire, because they're still a little porous. They basically have little tiny holes in them. Like, a terracotta plant pot is an example of a pot that only went through the bisque fire. The second fire is called the glaze fire. And this time, the ceramic goes through a process called vitrification, and that's where the ceramic reaches a high enough temperature that its glass-forming ingredients begin to melt between the clay particles.

[00:10:57] And that makes the ceramic waterproof, [00:11:00] and potters will apply many different kinds of glazes to their pieces after the bisque fire. So once glazed, the piece goes back into the kin, the glaze melts onto it, and this makes the piece smooth and shiny, though there are other textures that can emerge based on the temperature in the kiln and how long the piece is left in or how long it's allowed to cool down.

[00:11:19] After the glaze fire, the piece is strong enough to last for thousands of years, just like the pottery of the ancient Mesopotamians. 

[00:11:26] Margie Zavoico: Most potters love to throw the pot, [00:11:30] but they don't like the glazing part. The glazing part is like a chore, but for me, the throwing part is the chore and the glazing part is the joy.

[00:11:42] Katya Rucker: Oh Okay, Interesting. When Margie talks about throwing pots, she doesn't mean literally throwing pots and mugs at walls. Throwing pottery is the term used for making pottery using a wheel as opposed to sculpting it by hand. It's where that very physical and challenging process of centering the clay needs to happen.[00:12:00] So it makes sense that this isn't Margie's favorite part, but when it comes to glazing and finishing a piece, the possibilities are endless. 

[00:12:07] Margie Zavoico: You can paint on it, you can dunk it, you can pour on it. Um, and there's so many types of surface design. I'd love to, um, carve. And then when you put the glaze on it, the glaze pools up in certain areas and not in other areas.

[00:12:25] Katya Rucker: Margie's pottery is alive with all kinds of textures and colors. Some of it is [00:12:30] rough and almost metallic, and some of it is shiny and smooth, like glass slathered in butter.

[00:12:36] Margie Zavoico: This is a new glaze I’m experimenting with.

[00:12:39] Katya Rucker: Very shiny--

[00:12:41] Margie Zavoico: Shiny!

[00:12:41] Katya Rucker: Margie shows me two beautiful blue mugs. The first is glossy and smooth and the second is a little rougher to the touch. 

[00:12:50] Margie Zavoico: And it can be--this is fired at a slightly higher temperature and cooled down slowly. And it comes out much more [00:13:00] beautiful than this. But that took experimentation. So that’s my new favorite glaze.

[00:13:05] Katya Rucker: Lately, Margie has been tackling her fear of fire head-on and trying out one of the riskiest forms of pottery firing, which dates back to 16th century Japan. 

[00:13:16] Margie Zavoico: When I do Raku pottery, um, which is done outside in a kiln, and you wrap your piece in a newspaper that has all sorts of chemicals inside of it. [00:13:30] And you sort of make it like a mummy with slip on the outside, and then you dry that and fire that, the chemicals explode inside of there. 

[00:13:40] Katya Rucker: This chemical explosion means you never know exactly how your Raku pottery is going to turn out. When Margie wraps up her pottery for a Raku fire, she uses the stringy silks from corn husks that burn up and create jagged black lines, zigzagging all over her pots. Potters also use wire and horse hair to achieve this effect.

[00:14:00] Many of these techniques are unique to the Western style of Raku pottery, which has diverged quite a bit from the Japanese style over the past hundred or so years. Western Raku pottery is meant to be decorative, and a single Raku pot can command prices upwards of $750. Raku pottery is not food safe, mostly because it's fired at a lower temperature of around 1000 degrees Celsius or 1800 degrees Fahrenheit.

[00:14:26] That's still seems pretty high to me, but high fire kilns get up [00:14:30] to 2300 degrees Fahrenheit or 1300 degrees Celsius. Raku pottery is also very fragile because it's removed from the outdoor kiln when it's red hot and then cooled down rapidly. Some pieces won't make it through the firing process intact to due to these extreme temperature changes.

[00:14:47] But I suppose the heightened risk is part of the fun of Raku firing. Margie showed me a few of her finished Raku pieces in her garage studio.

[00:14:55] Margie Zavoico: It’s very intensive. You put a different [00:15:00] kind of background glaze on it. You bisque fire at a different temperature. So you have to have enough people with enough pieces to do that. Then you have to wrap it. Then you have to fire it, then you have to unwrap it and you have to clean it, and you spray it with this kind of glossy spray. 

[00:15:21] Katya Rucker: All of these steps are still a lot of fun for Margie since she always looks forward to the glazing part of making pottery. And now that she's conquered the challenge of centering the [00:15:30] clay on the wheel, I asked her, “What's a current challenge?” Once someone has really mastered the basics of pottery, what does a more advanced technique or challenge entail? 

[00:15:40] Margie Zavoico: Well, right now I'm struggling with making what they call an infinity bowl. So usually a lot of bowls have a flat bottom and then the sides curve up, but an infinity bowl is, you know, a continuous curve. And you have no idea how hard that is to make that [00:16:00] continuous curve.

[00:16:00] And I work and I work and I end up with this hump right about here, and it's called a beginner's hump.

[00:16:08] Katya Rucker: If you're trying to picture an infinity bowl, it might be helpful to picture the inside of a tennis ball if you cut it in half. Infinity bowls aren't necessarily spherical, but the inside slope is always a continuous curve.

[00:16:21] Some potters refer to the infinity ball technique as a constant curve bull. And this is pretty rare. Just take a look at the inside of the bowls in your own kitchen and [00:16:30] see how many actually flatten out at the deepest part of the bowl instead of continuously curve. 

[00:16:36] Margie Zavoico: So I'm struggling with that. And if I can, I can conquer that -- I've been watching YouTube videos. I've been trying--I figure, maybe my teachers are just not teaching me right. Why can't I get this? So I'm searching for how to do that and reaching out every way I can. And I’ve got to conquer that. And then when I do, it'll be huge. It'll [00:17:00] give me--

[00:17:00] Katya Rucker: Right, It's a milestone.

[00:17:02] Margie Zavoico: It's beautiful. And when it is perfect and beautiful, then you can design things, put surface design in there. You can do a painting inside there. You can do a carving inside of there. You can splash glaze in there. So it’s a perfect surface to work off. It's like a, a canvas for an artist.

[00:17:24] Katya Rucker: Right. 

[00:17:25] Katya Rucker: We sit down across from one another in Margie's garage with Margie at the wheel and me on the [00:17:30] other side of it.

[00:17:31] Margie is currently taking a class on lids, which can be challenging because they're made separately from the original bowl or pot, but they need to be the exact right size to have a circumference that is just small enough to be inset into the rim of their matching base. Even though it's a lid, Margie is practicing her infinity bowl technique to see if she can achieve that elusive, continuous curve.

[00:17:54] Margie Zavoico: I don’t know if that’s a lump or that -- oh it is a lump. 

[00:17:58] Katya Rucker: How can you tell? 

[00:18:01] Margie Zavoico: Feel it.

[00:18:02] Katya Rucker: Oh this right here? The ridge there? And you don't want that in an infinity bowl. 

[00:18:09] Margie Zavoico: I do not want that. So it's going to be fine for a lid I mean, cause my outside shape will be perfect.

[00:18:16] Katya Rucker: It was hard to see this beginner's hump just by looking into the bowl. But it was obvious when I put my hand into the bowl and actually felt it, it was like a little ridge. And this led me to ask about some of the tools Margie [00:18:30] uses since throwing pottery involves a lot more than just your hands. 

[00:18:34] Katya Rucker: …the ribs, right? And the, um, the knives and even the needles that you might use-- 

[00:18:42] Margie Zavoico: Ha! Sounds like surgery.

[00:18:43] Katya Rucker: It does! Really they’re instruments, right? That you pull out, and you are in a way performing surgery on a completely, you know, raw piece of clay. 

[00:18:54] Katya Rucker: Okay. This might've been the first time Margie felt like pottery was made to sound like surgery, but hey, [00:19:00] even the pots themselves have their own human-like anatomy. Like vases, for example, have necks and pots have bodies and sometimes feet.

[00:19:08] Margie Zavoico: I showed you the calipers. I've got so many different ribs, I’ve got so many different sponges. 

[00:19:14] Katya Rucker: And is that a specific instrument? 

[00:19:19] Margie Zavoico: It’s called a wood stick. [laughing]

[00:19:21] Katya Rucker: A wood stick! [laughing] The wood stick looks like a cross between a paintbrush and an extremely dull box-cutting knife. It's used to remove [00:19:30] what potters call a skirt, or an uneven thin layer of clay at the base of the piece on the wheel, kind of like when a baker trims off the edge of a raw pie crust. Margie explains how she has come to acquire all of these tools. 

[00:19:42] Margie Zavoico: I think the tool is going to solve my problem if I buy it. And then I end up with, you know, really only using the basic tools and not all these fancy things. 

[00:19:52] Katya Rucker: Right, so what's, what's like one example of a core tool that is indispensable for most of the pieces you make? 

[00:19:57] Margie Zavoico: Ah, a metal rib [00:20:00] that's flexible, bendable, but I have plastic ones. I have wooden ones. I have all sorts of ribs, but you know, the metal rib would be the absolute most--first basic, because you shape with it.

[00:20:16] Katya Rucker: I ask Margie to show me how she would center a new piece of clay on her wheel since this was the biggest hurdle she had to overcome to really hit her stride as a potter.

[00:20:27] So, she takes about a pound of clay out of a [00:20:30] 25-pound plastic bag. 

[00:20:32] Katya Rucker: It's amazing how small a pound is. 

[00:20:34] Margie Zavoico: Yeah. So this is what you would use to make a mug. 

[00:20:37] Katya Rucker: “Okay.” And the first thing she has to do is wedge the clay.

[00:20:45] Wedging is like kneading a thick and heavy bread dough to remove any air pockets and lumps. After a couple minutes of wedging, Margie takes a bat, which is a flat disc about the size of a large dinner plate, and settles it into place on her wheel. [00:21:00] 

[00:21:04] Margie Zavoico: [water dripping] If you don’t wet the bat, it doesn’t stick. [wheel spinning]

[00:21:08] Katya Rucker: Margie has her foot on what looks like the gas pedal of a car, and the harder she presses the faster the wheel spins. She uses a sponge to wet the entire surface of the bat so her clay will stick to it. And then - [thud] - she plops the clay onto the bat, soaks her hands in a bucket of water, presses the pedal with her foot, and begins to shape the wet [00:21:30] clay with her palms and fingers.

[00:21:32] Margie Zavoico: And now, [sounds of centering the clay] get it as close to centered as we possibly can because it makes life much easier. 

[00:21:42] Katya Rucker: There are seven steps to throwing pottery and getting the clay to stick to the bat is step one. Next, Margie uses her hands and plenty of water to do what potters called “coning up” the clay. 

[00:21:56] Margie Zavoico: You squeeze it - now this is very easy with one pound of clay. 

[00:21:58] Katya Rucker: Okay. [00:22:00] So best to start with one pound.

[00:22:04] Margie Zavoico: Oh yeah. So we're going to bring it up. 

[00:22:09] Katya Rucker: [watching] Into kind of a cone or a Christmas tree shape. With the clay now in this cone shape, Margie moves on to step three, the big one, centering the clay. What she's actually doing is almost imperceptible to me. It's like she sensing some perfect equilibrium of nonresistance deep within the clay, and her hands are barely moving while she [00:22:30] holds the clay steady.

[00:22:31] Margie Zavoico: So I can feel it not jerking me around. 

[00:22:36] Katya Rucker: ”Okay. When it starts just kind of not resisting anymore. But at first, you are kind of fighting it. You're really holding it still.” 

[00:22:48] Margie pulls her hands away from the clay. And now the spinning cone almost looks like it's standing still. 

[00:22:54] Margie Zavoico: I’ve centered it. Now I'm doing what they call opening up.

[00:23:00] Katya Rucker: Opening up the clay, step four, involves pressing into the middle of the spinning cone to create a hollow center, and opening up segues pretty quickly into step five, which is pulling. Pulling is exactly what it sounds like. You pull the sides of the vessel up by pinching the walls as they spin between your fingers.

[00:23:18] “So you've centered, then you open it, and then you're pulling it.”

[00:23:21] Margie Zavoico: Then I’m pulling it. So I'm going to pull to try to get the clay up and to thin out the sides. 

[00:23:29] Katya Rucker: Step six is [00:23:30] shaping. It's the step that takes the longest. And it's when Margie would use her trusty metal rib to carve and shape the piece, or try to create that continuous curve of an infinity bowl.

[00:23:41] The last step is cleaning and trimming, which is the fine-tuning time to remove any small imperfections. After she's done, Margie takes a thin metal wire to slice under the base and detach the piece from her bat. She gives her finished pottery plenty of time to dry under pieces of plastic. 

[00:23:59] Margie Zavoico: So you have a [00:24:00] bunch of pieces of plastic all over the place and things drying and come out and check on them. It's kind of like checking the baby. Lift up the blanket: How are you doing there? [laughing]

[00:24:10] Katya Rucker: Margie has come a long way from those first few classes when she was fighting the clay and losing every time. She and several of her potter friends just opened their own studio and gallery called the Second Story Potters in Asheville's River Arts District. It's right above the Village Potters Clay Center, where she took her very first class. [00:24:30] As we reflected on her journey, I asked her what it was that continued to feel so incredibly gratifying about making pottery. 

[00:24:37] Margie Zavoico: Maybe just, oh gosh, I did this, I built this and it's still standing. [music] 

[00:24:46] Katya Rucker: One of the best ways to try pottery for the first time, if you're intrigued, is to sign up for a beginners class at a local studio, just like Margie did, but you can always try sculpting clay by hand to get a feel for it. 

[00:25:00] I'd like to thank Margie for sharing her love of pottery here on the I'd Rather Be podcast. You can find pictures of her gorgeous pottery by following her on Instagram.

[00:25:09] Her handle is @margiezavoicopottery. That's M A R G I E Z A V O I C O pottery. Next week, we're getting back into the sports genre of hobbies with a guest who would rather be playing badminton. 

[00:25:25] Guest for Next Episode: I’m disappointed now that I found this so late. I just feel like I've wasted a couple of decades. [00:25:30] I could've been doing this. 

[00:25:31] Katya Rucker: And for an even deeper dive into badminton, we'll also be hearing from a guest who works for the Badminton World Federation. Tune in on January 11th to listen to the episode. I'm posting more details about the show, these amazing guests and their passions and upcoming episodes on Instagram.

[00:25:48] So you can follow the handle @idratherbepodcast to stay up to date. This podcast was hosted, produced and edited by me, Katya Rucker. You can find show notes and the full transcript for this episode [00:26:00] at idratherbepodcast.com. Have a great week, and thanks for listening.