We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Diahn Ott. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Diahn below.

Diahn, appreciate you joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

One of the things I see often in the arts is the idea that an artist should drill down into a particular niche or medium – that somehow a Jack-of-all-trades artist is a bad artist. I disagree strongly with this idea. The work I do in two-dimensional spaces – painting, collage, sketchbook – informs the work I do in three-dimensional spaces. The functional pottery I create informs and influences the sculptural ceramic work I make. These different media do not dilute the concepts and themes of my art, but rather serve to strengthen and enhance them.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I have been a creator of one sort or another most of my life. I came from a family of creatives. My father was an avid photographer and builder of all sorts of things. My mother is an accomplished pianist, seamstress and quilter and currently creates artwork in fabric and watercolor. Creativity was woven into my childhood from the very beginning. As I grew up, however, I suffered through the angst and insecurity that most people have about that place where one’s artistic taste and their artistic ability are not aligned and I gave up any idea of creativity as a career.

I majored in Geology in college, earning Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees, and even doing the coursework and exams for a PhD before realizing that true calling of my life was to create. I quit the PhD program without completing my dissertation and began the art education journey I’ve been on for the past 20+ years. I took classes in photography, life drawing, sculptural welding, and painting through the local university community outreach. I watched hundreds of hours of instructional videos on everything from collage to cyanotype. I may not have a fine arts degree but I put in the time and honed my abilities, nonetheless.

In 2015, my father passed away after a long illness. The time leading up to and afterward were so stressful between his passing and moving my mother to be closer to my family plus the added stress of teenage sons and family obligation that I just stopped creating. My heart wasn’t in in it and I couldn’t find the motivation to make anything at all. But out of the blue, I had lunch with a friend who mentioned that she was taking a beginning pottery class at a local studio and she knew that they had some seats left, if I was interested. I decided to join her and from the first time I put a ball of clay on the wheel, I knew I had found the thing that would re-ignite my creative drive.

Pottery, for me, began to open doors to all the aspects of my creativity. I make functional pots that turn into canvases I can paint on. I photograph those pots in beautiful settings and write about the process of making them. I build sculptural forms in clay and create stories of their origin. Because I started creating again, I started painting on canvas again – it all merges together to reflect my authentic self.

And that’s what I want to be known for – not for having the most beautiful pots or the most artfully painted flower or the most perfectly staged photograph – but for having the most authentic voice I can project into the world. When people see my work, my greatest desire if that it sparks a joy in them and maybe a desire to join in the creative process in their own lives.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington has been a game-changer for me over the past year. My intention for this year was to grow my small business by increasing my social media presence and getting work into at least one gallery. Because my business is built primarily around small-batch pottery, my exposure in media is often limited to the four times a year or so that I release a collection. Trying to stay in the public eye during the down times has often proven to be challenging because I didn’t have a set of goals and a plan to implement in order to stay ahead of the curve. I found the ideas in the 12 Week Year to be incredibly helpful in this regard. My social media following has grown organically by about 25% in the second of my 12 week blocks, I have work in a gallery, invitations to show more work and inclusion in a local artisan marketplace. In addition, I’ve shown some of my mixed media work in a local show and sold out of the last two collections I released.

How did you build your audience on social media?

The main thing about social media is that consistency pays dividends. It doesn’t matter if you post every day or every week, as long as your followers know what to expect. I post 4-5 times every week on Instagram, plus post to stories every day. I think followers these days want more than just a artfully staged photograph – they want to see a glimpse into the life of the maker. These days, Instagram is pushing Reels, so in order to increase the reach of your feed, it’s necessary to post Reels. I’ve embraced Reels in a big way over the last few months and it has made a huge difference. The other side to the social media coin is the interaction with other accounts. It’s not enough to post even really fun and interesting content – engaging with your own audience as well as with the accounts that you follows makes it easier for people to find you and to see what kind of person you are. Being authentic is crucial – don’t try to force some personality that you think fits the situation. Put your own, real, quirky, weird self out there.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.diahnottstudio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diahn/
• Facebook: facebook.com/diahnottstudio

Image Credits
Joshua B. Ott