We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Hope Thomas. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Hope below.
Hope, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
I have been making pottery as a full-time career since 2009. It wasn’t until I decided to get really serious about setting some monthly goals that I was able to actually increase my sales enough to earn a full-time living consistently. Being a studio artist comes with great challenges, but along with every challenge comes great rewards. There are the challenges of running a business completely by myself. As a solopreneur I have many roles to fill. Every aspect of running my business is done by me; purchasing, receiving, creating, making, firing, glazing, measuring, photographing, listing, promoting, customer serving, packing, and shipping! Wow it’s a lot! And along with that comes many micro responsibilities in between all the macro ones. There is also the daily challenge of finding consistent motivation to keep my work fresh and exciting enough for me to want to get into the studio every day and create. I’m always finding new ways to create pieces that maybe I’ve made for years, in order to keep my audience captivated and wanting more. Currently, my monthly goal is to make a minimum of 40 mugs plus at least 30 more items in the form of bowls, vases, planters, lanterns, votives, baking dishes, etc. so that I end up with 70 plus items every month.
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?
When I was studying ceramics at UNC Charlotte, I was less than inspired by the ceramic work I would find in galleries and other places. Everything was just brown and round it seemed. I wanted to bring a fresh perspective with exciting colors and smooth forms. I wanted my work to lure the viewer in and provoke a desire to pick it up. My goal has always been for my audience to want to hold my work close, and have it be like a warm hug, to feel a connection to creator, and enjoy the feeling of comfort that holding a handmade object can bring. I want them to feel that my work ignites and reflects something within them. I do this by using buttery smooth forms with dramatically bright and intriguing color combinations. Another aspect I have always loved about my work is marketing and social media. Presenting myself mostly on Instagram has given me the ability to be as creative as I want in Stories and in Reels while keeping my posts gallery quality. Also, love the process of photographing my work and in this line of business, a good photo is everything. Finding the perfect lighting, setting up the shot, and then presenting it to the world.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I started out by setting up an Etsy shop and maximizing its full potential. Listing daily and maximizing keyworks, having great descriptions and titles. But as my audience grew and their fees increased, I knew I needed a more viable way to present my work. I did however spend a lot of time creating beautiful Etsy banners, beautiful photos, and doing all I could do to help Etsy drive traffic to my shop and that system worked for a lot of years. Once Instagram really started taking off for the self-employed artist, I focused on increasing my following slowly and authentically. I began having monthly shop updates and began to see how wildly successful that could be with the right Instagram engagement. My success on Instagram has been from consistently posting one photo daily at least 5 days a week, using relevant hashtags, responding to the audience as much as possible, building relationships with my followers, having beautiful photos, and creating Reels of me making pieces at the wheel.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
The best thing you can do to support artist and creatives is to find some that you really love and buy from them, send them positive messages about what you love about their work, and share their posts on your socials. When you do buy from them post pics of the pieces you bought and tag them in them. These things mean so much to a creator.
Contact Info:
- Website: riverstonepottery.com
- Instagram: @riverstonepottery
- Facebook: facebook.com/riverstonepottery
- Twitter: @riverstonepots