We recently connected with Corey Bechler and have shared our conversation below.
Corey, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Taking care of customers isn’t just good business – it is often one of the main reasons folks went into business in the first place. So, we’d love to get a conversation going around how to best help clients feel appreciated – maybe you can share something you’ve done or seen someone do that’s been really effective at helping a customer feel valued?
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My wife and I like to use the tag line that “We make Happy Art for Happy People!” Many times, people will see our art for the first time and instantly smile, their curiosity taking over, and picking up a sculpture or tile to investigate them more… seeing how they are made, looking closely at the whimsical work and smiling.
It is this basic concept that caused us to have a very loyal group of collectors. Our fans enjoy our work, often collecting numerous pieces each year. It is this faithful loyalty that causes Stacey and I to work hard to always help out collectors with their special projects… a custom tile if their fur baby, a whimsical robot sculpture for their sons birthday, a stylization of their family’s vacation cottage, we are passionate about helping our collector’s vision become a reality!
We appreciate our collectors! We often will make a special piece with a client in mind. We will often add a “freebie” with a purchase to allow the collector to get more than they expected! Our business is certainly one of passion. We are proud of our art and are honored that so many people have been willing to let our Art be a part of their homes and lives! Here is a thank you note one of our repeat collectors received from her 22 year old nephew after giving him a custom portrait of his childhood family fur baby…
“Thank you so much for the portrait of Holly. I just got it today and it’s honestly one of the best gifts I’ve ever received and I teared up looking at it once I got it. I love it so much and thank you so much for it, I love you! I’m going to cherish it forever!”
It is feedback like this that gives us motivation to keep making “Happy Art for Happy People!”
Corey, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
. Both Corey and Stacey Bechler are self-taught potters. The couple started dabbling in Clay over 20 years ago when they made their wedding favors, and with time, they honed their craft their audience expanded not just friends and family but too perfect strangers, having their artwork on every continent except for Antarctica, in every State, and dozens of countries around the world.
The couple make their home in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park in Northern Michigan, where they have a small studio and gallery. While the husband and wife team have made countless bowls, coffee mugs, and dinnerware sets, their true passion is the one of a kind tile and whimsical sculpture. Corey starts the process with a pile of mud, shaping it, rolling it, and forming it, he turns it into a funky, whimsical creation. It then gets loaded into a kiln and fired to roughly 2000 degrees to harden the creation before moving onto the next step. Stacey is the master glazer! She has stumbled onto the perfect blend of colors to use, some commercially available, some a “family recipe!” On some of their creations, she will even mix up small shards of glass Frits with the glazes, so in the next firing process, the glass will melt down into the glaze to create little specs and mini explosions of color all over the one of a kind creation!
While the couple sell their Happy Art out of their Gallery and online, their true passion is doing Art Fairs throughout the Midwest. They get to meet new people and see their happiness as new potential collectors are able to interact with Bechler Pottery sometimes for the first time!
Bechler Pottery is different. Using clay as every pieces base, they will add copper wire, and wood, and old telephone wire, and antique wrenches, and anything else they can find to make their mixed media sculptures come to life!
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
. Clay, by nature, is a finicky material. It can expand, it can shrink as it dries, it has to be fired too several thousand degrees to make it permanent. If there are any imperfections in the material or caused throughout the making process, they get exponentially worse as you get closer to the finishing process. It is with this knowledge that I have learned patience and resilience! We have had a bad batch of clay where everything cracked due to the wrong properties in the material. We have had a power outage in the middle of a kiln firing and lost several thousand dollars worth of pieces. We have had our beloved black lab wag her tail with excitement and take out an entire shelf of brand new coffee mugs.
Through thick and thin, Stacey and Corey have persevered. They have learned that they can only continue on and control what they can and try to use their knowledge of materials to limit issues that might have creeped up on them in their earlier days of being makers.
How’d you meet your business partner?
. Stacey and Corey met some two decades ago. Corey was a new teacher at the local High School and Stacey the cute bank teller at the local bank. After months of Corey randomly taking money in and out of his account so he would have an excuse to pop into the bank, he eventually worked up the nerve to ask Stacey out.
They quickly found that they had a mutual passion for the arts and for making. They painted together. They built their furniture for their log cabin. They painted a painting with a wide frame to be used as a guest book for their wedding guests. It was when the couple started getting requests for their clay creations from strangers that they thought they might be onto something. A local gallery asked for some work. Collectors started taking their work with them to their vacation home, where their friends would want some pieces for their homes. HGTV magazine had their work in it. Things started to click. They now have work in a handful of galleries, they do some of the largest and best Art Fairs in the region, and are usually several months out on special orders. Playing with mud is very much their full time gigs, with Corey also still passionately teaching and coaching the amazing students at his local school.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.BechlerPottery.com
- Instagram: @bechlerpottery
Image Credits
Photos by Corey and Stacey Bechler