We were lucky to catch up with Thaddeus Erdahl recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Thaddeus , thanks for joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I don’t think I can narrow it down to just one moment in life that solidified my ambitions to be an artist and creative person. Throughout my life, the idea of pursuing a career as an artist has ebbed and flowed as I have grown and matured. But a significant event in1985, when I was 8 years old, probably set things into motion. My parents were struggling financially due to my father being laid off from his position at John Deere. They made the hard decision to deed our house back to the bank and invested what money they did have into purchasing the old 1882 Union Bank Building in my home town of La Porte City, Iowa. My dad had just recently started a furniture refinishing and antique restoration business out of the garage and he needed a commercial retail space to grow the business. The 1882 Union Bank building could accommodate our family and the business. The main street level was my fathers shop called “The Hand Done Shop”. To financially make things work, my parents decided to move my older brother, younger sister and myself into the upstairs space and immediately began renovations to make it our family home.

Just after we moved in, and before they were completely broke, my mom decided to take my older brother and me on a trip to Florida. It was going to be our first time seeing the ocean, our first time going to Disney World, and our first time meeting my Uncle Richard and Aunt Mary Lou (my dad’s siblings). My uncle Richard was an artist.. My brother and I were excited about going to Disney but I can remember being more excited to meet my uncle who was the legendary artist of the family. I distinctly remember looking through my uncle’s sketchbooks and seeing his paintings on the walls at his condo and thinking that someday I wanted to do what he does. My uncle gave my brother and me sketchbooks and some art supplies. I fondly remember sitting down on the kitchen floor and having a drawing session with my uncle. It was one of those magical moments that fueled my love for being creative.

After the big Florida trip, art took on a new importance for me. In grade school I remember working hard in my art class, skipping recess and going to art after school to get in some extra art time. My mom was very active in the PTO at this time and my elementary school hosted an annual art show. The PTO would help hang the show and I would help hang the art work with my mom. I thought it was so cool to get the behind the scenes look at all the artwork that was made that year in school.

My uncle’s influence became even more apparent to me after he passed away in the early 90’s from AIDS. I can remember it being such a hush hush event. It was taboo to talk about my uncle’s passing from AIDS or to talk about him identifying as gay. Growing up in a small rural community in the midwest made it more difficult to navigate these topics. But I was never more sure of what I wanted to do after his passing. In many ways, making art was a gesture or tribute to him and his life.

My father also shifted his practice at this time and began transitioning from being an antique dealer and furniture refinisher to making his own art work. All the years of collecting antiques and furniture parts gave my dad the material to begin his own creative adventure. He started learning how to do Norwegian chip carving and combined that skill with his expertise in cabinet and furniture making. He also started becoming increasingly more interested in American folk and outsider art and his personal art became heavily influenced by his love of work made by untrained artists.

I was fortunate to be raised by parents that embraced the creative aspects of life. Both my parents were always supportive of my life and career decisions and they fully embraced the idea of me making my own path, learning from those around me and making mistakes along the way.

I’ve moved around and changed careers many times. All of my business and career choices have paralleled and informed one another. My current business, Zaggs Coffee, is a small craft coffee roasting company but it also functions as a gateway to the creative, craft and handmade world that I have been involved with for years. The mission of Zaggs Coffee is to highlight, promote and partner with local, regional and national craft artists. Since my background in art is so heavily rooted in the ceramic world of art and craft, Zaggs Coffee will work with ceramic artists to create signature hand made coffee products such as mugs and pour overs. We will also work with the artist to create custom roasted coffees and labels that pair with their artwork.

The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work? How did it happen, who was the client and how did you feel – tell us the story, paint the picture so we can feel what you felt.

I was in the military when I sold my first art work. On weekends, when I wasn’t on duty, I would make artwork as a stress relief. I worked out of my spare bedroom on a plastic folding table. It wasn’t ideal but it worked. The ceramic sculpture was a fish with a human face. I didn’t have a kiln in my apartment so I took my work to a local paint your own pot store to get it fired. The owners of the store suggested that I take the sculpture to a gallery. It was the story of the classic young naive artist walking into a gallery unannounced and expecting them to help. The owner gave me that “crazy, don’t you know how this works” look but he agreed to put the work in his gallery on a consignment basis. A few weeks later the owner called me up and said he had a check waiting for me. I was so floored and beyond proud that I had actually made money doing something that I loved.

Sets me apart

It is hard to describe what really sets me apart because seeing my work from that distance of objectivity is too much of a stretch for me. I can at least explain my work objectively. When considering the murky reservoir of human history, it is difficult to separate legend from reality. Through my work, I examine human myth in the modern age, specifically on characters that emerge from our society’s underbelly; the less popular folk. Using their “legends”, I feel compelled to tell stories that illustrate analogies in life; blending together archetypes, shared experiences, and my own personal mythology. Who we are in the world is a kaleidoscope of interpretations, biased memories, and personal connections.
Ceramic sculpture and portraiture, in particular, are forms of a visual narration that I use to satisfy my urge for documenting what I see in human nature. Evocative of well-loved toys and obsolete artifacts, I use the implied history of these objects to encourage the viewer to disconnect from the present situation and conjure their own individual narratives from my sculptures.
Working with concepts that are personal and sometimes narcissistic perceptions of the gloomy side of life, dark humor is my buffer. Dry or irreverent, it is humor that mystifies the tragic.
My ceramic sculptures are intensely nostalgic. The evocative figures are inspired by my love of old wooden, tin, and antique toys. I try to impeccably simulate aged and worn surfaces with cracks and crevices, chips and stains. The work vividly captures a sense of time, and keeps the viewer puzzled about the material, amazed by the technical virtuosity, and endlessly curious about the supposed life the object has lived.
I work with multiple ceramic forming processes when I create my work. Sometime I started with a handmade life cast silicone mold of a face. Clay is pressed into the mold to create a ceramic face that I altered and changed. I often use coils and slabs of clay to create the neck, shoulders, hair and any other components that make up the body of the work. In the leather-hard stage, I covered the clay in layers of engobe, terra sigillata, slip, and underglaze. A very thin mix of the slip is sprayed on and drips and runs are encouraged with water carefully sprayed onto the surface. After a cone 08 bisque, I carefully work back through the layers with rasps/files, wire brushes and wet/dry sandpaper. Then the piece is coated with glaze and fired to a mature temperature. If needed I will incorporate other material with the sculpture, such as faux fur,wood and other mixed material.

As I have evolved in ceramics, my voice has changed with the times.

What am I most proud of

I’m really proud of my resilience and ability to adapt to new situations. It’s a skill that I have cultivated my entire life. I’ve traversed many different careers and have had to adjust to personalities, work environments, and different expectations along the way. Students have always evoked a challenge; different ages, personalities, and skill levels all play a factor in the dynamics of a class when teaching and I became a pretty good teacher. Strictly as a studio artist I am extremely proud of my resilience to keep moving forward with work. Even when it’s hard to get into the studio because of family, a job, or simply life constraints, I’ve always made it a point to put in the hours. In regards to my new coffee roasting endeavor, I’m just proud that I had the courage to branch out and do something different. I’m in my mid forties and taking on a new career. It’s scary but I have a great family that supports me and friends that are always willing to lend a hand. Owning Zaggs Coffee and roasting coffee allows me to stay connected to the art world and in many ways it gives me more time to continue a studio practice in a way that other careers have not. Having multiple outlets for creativity is the greatest opportunity I’ve had in many years. I love being able to make the most of my resources and continue forging a new path as I learn something new. It’s all very exciting.

Clients

If you are hiring me to be a teacher then my clients need to know that I’m all in all the time. I put in a tremendous amount of effort and sweat equity into helping young students find a love for making. We are programmed to be makers and have always been makers. I think we are restless and have too much idle time to worry about things that we cannot control. We inherently need to create and build – that is the only productive outlet for our desire to control. We have gotten away from creating things with our hands. The handmade became devalued in our culture through industrialization and it’s sad. I have a busy brain and I find that to keep myself happy I need to be busy. Throughout all of my creative endeavors, it has become apparent to me that I am always seeking something new. There is something about the challenge of embarking on a new adventure that keeps me motivated to carry on with working in the creative field.
As a studio artist I am always considering the next thing and I put a lot of myself into every piece I create. In my artist statement I talk about how I use visual narration to satisfy my urge for documenting what I see in human nature. I look at both the bad and good but mostly at that gray area where these two dualities in life coexist and get a little murky. In the end my artwork is about stories and legends that are blended with my personal narratives to begin a dialogue that the viewer finishes.

With my coffee roasting business I want my clients to know that changing careers at any point in your life is always a possibility. ZAGGS COFFEE is a company that has a mission. A portion of all of our proceeds go to scholarships at craft schools across the country. The scholarship program is for k12 teachers and students at both the secondary and post secondary levels.
Roasting coffee is a lot like any other creative journey that I’ve been on. There’s a lot of research, experimentation, and some good old fashion intuition. The path to our dreams is rarely linear. Sometimes you have to zig zag your way to happiness. At ZAGGS COFFEE we embrace the idea that in life rarely are there straight lines to happiness. My wife and I founded ZAGGS COFFEE in the summer of 2022 with the intention of doing something new and seeing where a little risk in life might take us. The two of us have spent the better part of our adult careers as art educators working within the K12 arena of education. We have come to know that change can sometimes be intimidating, it can create doubts and be seen as a negative .Meeting the change with optimism, curiosity and a sense of purpose is important. . We need to stop and remind ourselves that learning and change are part of growth.

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 back background and context?

I got into the creative industry because I wanted to make a positive difference in people’s lives. Being a creative person allows me to be authentic and true to my calling. Creativity keeps my eyes open to the world around me and gives me permission to explore ideas in ways that other careers do not. I’ve been a studio artist, a k12 art educator, a craftschool instructor, a dad, husband, PTO volunteer and now I am embarking on another journey diving head first into micro craft coffee roasting. All the creative arenas that I have worked in have aligned with my values and made me a better person. I have gained insight through being creative and helping others reach their potential. Art nourishes the soul and provides me with an outlet and soapbox to discuss the world around me. I grew up with a father that owned his own business. He worked out of our home and the idea of working for myself was ingrained in me since I was young. I remember walking home from school and opening the front door of my dad’s shop. I would walk through the showroom, stop to look at the furniture and antiques, and search to see if he added anything new to the line up. My dad would be standing at his workbench completely immersed in a project, usually covered in sawdust and paint. My parents were very supportive of me carving out my own path in life. I feel that without them letting me figure things out and make mistakes along the way that I wouldn’t be the person that I am today. During my highschool years, my parents let me use one of the extra rooms in the house as my own private art studio. They saw that I had the drive to take my interest in art to the next level.
During the summer between junior and senior year of highschool I made the decision to enlist in the military. . I knew that I wasn’t ready to go to college. I knew that I needed to stir things up in my life and do something so completely out of my wheelhouse to better understand what it was that I really wanted. My time in the military set me up to believe in myself and push myself further and harder than I had ever imaginged I could. Being in the military also gave me a foundation to be disciplined but it also taught me to creatively think about problems and how to better approach situations in my life.

I knew as soon as I signed up that I did not want to be in the military more than the three years of active service that I had signed up for. The structure and hierarchy of rank was not for me in the long term. It was something that I knew I could tolerate and benefit from for three years. That time also gave me the confidence to do what I really wanted to do.

Once I made that decision to move forward with my ambitions of being an artist I did not look back. I enrolled in community college to get my general studies out of the way. During that time I took an art appreciation course that was taught by Larry Beck, a retired Vietnam vet, who fell in love with art later in his life. He showed me that you just need to keep moving forward and commit to what you are passionate about.
I transferred to the University of Northern Iowa where I met Jean Petch and JoAnn Schnabl, who along with many other professors taught me more about my craft and fueled my desire to learn. Jean was my art education instructor and JoAnn was my ceramics professor. They were both strong, fearless artists that fully believed in me as an artist and teacher. Jean set me on my path to becoming an art educator. We had many long conversations about how to balance studio life and a teaching career. I can remember reading Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orlando, and vowing to never sacrifice my studio practice for teaching.. For me to truly be an effective and successful teacher I had to also be an effective and successful studio artist. JoAnn taught me how to self advocate and take my education into my own hands. She never gave me an easy answer. She wanted me to learn how to learn and to experiment with a purpose. She was well connected in the ceramics field and she was always able to point me in a direction and advise me on who I needed to network with as I moved forward with my career.
JoAnn set in motion my ambition to continue with my education in graduate studies at the University of Florida. There I met two more influential artists and teachers, Nan Smith and Linda Arbuckle, both my professors and mentors in the ceramics program. Nan was a figurative ceramic sculptor whose work I greatly admired. She was the reason that I applied to the University of Florida’s graduate program. I loved her work and saw the success of the program and the students that came out of it. Linda Arbuckle was a surprise to me. I didn’t expect to have the kind of relationship that I did with her. She changed the way I thought about my work. She asked me hard questions and she knew how to simultaneously be a respected teacher and a great friend. They both worked with me during a difficult time in my life when I was in the process of divorcing after 10 years of marriage. They made me feel okay about where I was at in my life and let my life circumstances become the fuel for my thesis show about communication and the breakdown of communication in relationships.
You can’t change what life throws at you but you can change your attitude towards it. It might be hard but it’s better than being stuck in your own head. By some unexpected turn of events,, shortly after my divorce I began dating my future wife and life partner. We were in the same graduate program at the University of Florida. Life can seem as if it is unraveling, and then you meet a best friend and that friend brings you back to life. I think that my creativity and imagination have helped me navigate those difficult and unexpected times

I often think about the The Talking Heads song, “Once in a Lifetime.” The song deals with the ineffectiveness of not being happy with what you have and going through life not fully aware of what’s going on around you. Part of the song talks about trying to remove the water at the bottom of the ocean, obviously something that can’t be accomplished so why put forth the energy to do it? Be happy with what you have control over and don’t walk through life achieving goals that aren’t your own.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Sometimes I feel like all I do is pivot in life. Right out of highschool I joined the military and was in the army as a 12 Bravo Airborne Combat Engineer in the 37th Engineer Division. I was stationed at Ft. Bragg NC. I married my highschool girlfriend when I was 20 years old. At the end of my three year enlistment we both moved back to Iowa and I enrolled in school and started a five year undergrad journey. I went in thinking I would be doing landscape design but soon realized that I loved the art program and switched to studio art. After a semester in studio art I got nervous about what I was going to do and switched to the art education program. Luckily the University of Northern Iowa at that time offered a dual degree program so I was able to fulfill my BA in Art Ed degree and also work on a BFA studio art degree. After undergrad I did some subbing in the public school system and realized rather quickly that subbing wasn’t going to work for me. Later, after teaching for several years, I realized that teaching full time wasn’t for me either, so now I have transitioned to coffee roasting.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

To summarize, I want to make art, encourage others to make art and help support those endeavors for students and educators, and collaborate with other artists and designers as much as possible.

Contact Info:

• Website: thaddeuserdahl.com and zaggscoffee.com
• Instagram: tjerdahl and zaggscoffee
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/thaddeus.erdahl

Image Credits
Charlie Cummings Charlie did not take all the images. Just let me know which ones you choose.