We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful HP Bloomer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with HP below.
HP, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?
One of the most unexpected issues I have encountered is finding my audience. Having spent 10 years traveling around the country as a Artist In Residence at various craft schools and as a instructor at various colleges I struggled to collect contacts and build a consistent audience. I was partially relying on the gallery system to promote and move my work but that generally failed expectation. The galleries got me in front of new people but they generally take up to 50% of the sale price and when you’re selling $60 mugs and paying for your own shipping that fifty percent can hurt. When I arrived back in Texas with the intent of staying put for a while I began to push pretty hard into the farmers markets in the area. While I was met with a warm response, and some interest most people were not there to buy high end art and so my sales again were not where I wanted them to be. Realizing that was not my audience and that my home town couldn’t support my desired sales was a learning experience. From here I have begun to show at more art specific fairs and am beginning to travel further to try and expand my audience and build my sales.
HP, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I was introduced to ceramics by my mother who received her MFA in Ceramics from Texas Women’s University in the late 60’s under artist John Miller. I grew up in Waco and she was one of the studio instructors teaching ceramics, photography, printmaking, batik, and paper making. When I went to college at University of North Texas I intended on getting a degree in Painting and Drawing however like many in Denton at that time I got distracted by music. I joined a few bands and at one point was playing shows in the DFW area up to 5 nights a week. I dropped out of school and did not return until that bug left me after a 3 month tour of the West Coast. Living with five guys in a van going from town to town has its high points but it quickly made me realize that I wanted to finish my degree. When I returned at the age of 25 I started finishing my credits and suddenly found myself taking ceramics courses. It was fun and I could sell my pieces on the side to make a little money back. Eventually I concluded that a degree in Ceramics was the shortest route to finishing my bachelors degree. As I wrapped up my degree I quickly realized that I really liked the act of making functional items with clay. I had fallen in love with the way the clay felt and moved. It never ceased to challenge me and new avenues of exploration constantly reveled themselves to me. I applied to grad schools and the best offer I got was from UNT so I stayed put. Graduate school was three years of challenging curriculum under Elmer Taylor who worked our fingers and brains to the bone. I finished my MFA in 2011 unsure of how I could keep making and working in clay. I applied to several jobs and residency programs. I ended up choosing between a job at Georgia State University and a Residency position with Adjunct classes in Colorado. This set me on a road where I moved from Texas to the Aspen Valley in Colorado, then to Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts in Gatlinburg Tn. After these three years of residency programs I took a job as the Studio Director of Santa Fe Clay in New Mexico for two years before moving on to help build a residency program in the woods of Northern California as well as teaching at Mendocino College for three more years. In all of these programs I was able to build my network and meet new artists and educators while learning new skills and approaches. I am proud of the way that allowed my work to develop.
My work began as a two pronged approach to making art. The first part of this was to bring a punk rock approach to making Art that was accessible and functional. I have an interest in making items that everyone can enjoy. We all know and understand the concept of a cup or a bowl and to make those as Art items seems to me to be a very populist approach to something that generally seems pretty in accessible to most people. The second portion was to explore the ideas of architecture through pottery. My dad was a architect and I was interested in the way that we segment and divide our lives with walls and structure as well as being interested in how these structures and lives weather and age over time. As I grew as an artist my work began to absorb more content first taking on patterning in reference to architecture and textiles in those spaces and then evolving in to a personal narrative before fully embracing and exploring the relationship between my live and the natural world around me. During my time in Northern California I helped to reclaim land that had been logged in the 90s. We cut fire breaks and removed fire prone species as well as focusing on building up native horticulture while removing invasive spices. My most current work builds on those two initial piers by taking patterns which reference the way we build in and live in nature. Through the use of multiple patterns and juxtaposition I pair floral themes with architected ones. For the viewer who is interested they can explore what those plants are to better understand what their enviroment.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
Creativity and making I think is too dismissed by our educational systems and our culture. How many times have I heard “what’s your real job?” This is it. I make pottery and I teach others to make pottery. One of the reasons that I love ceramics is that it is one of the few arts that can be used to teach a whole variety of other skills. For all the visual people out there it is a great case to see math, geometry, physics and chemistry in action. If you really move into the field you can learn to work with electricity, lay plumbing for gas line, learn how to work with masonry to build kilns. I even got into ecology through my art. When art is unified into learning experiences the students can get so much more out of it. It spurs new ways of approaching problems and finding new avenues to keep you brain nimble as a kid and as a adult. Adding to that in this age of video games it helps to develop dexterity and strength as well as focus which can all benefit you else where in your life. So to help support artists try taking a class. Appreciate that sometimes while a piece can look simple it took years of understanding to get to that point and make the idea so clear and concise. Understand that, especially in the craft field like with pottery, that if I spent 20 years learning, making, honing skills, and refining work that I am not going to sell my work for what would be minimum wage. If you spent 20 years working and developing a skill would you only ask to be paid $7.5 a hour plus materials?
Contact Info:
- Website: www.hpbloomer.com
- Instagram: @hpbloomer
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hpbloomer/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/h-p-bloomer-iv-63845748/