September 3rd marks 2 years since we landed in Portugal and so much has shifted from the original plans, which at first felt daunting and catastrophic, but in hindsight it has been all for the best (more or less). The high level ideas are still the same: open a community studio (check!), host residencies and artist retreats (check and double check), and get involved in my new local community (check!). We have really made big progress towards all of that in year two!
These are the collabs and some of the artists I partnered with in 2024. Artist collabs included: Adrienne Oates, Tony Young, Delvin Goode (whose pieces were not raffled in 2024 but coming soon), Diana Adams (all pictured below) and Alexis Mixter, Cori Jacobs, Mariana Sampaio, and Ryan Rakhshan.
To rewind a bit, I did several artist collaborations in 2024, as a means to promote our project and raise the money needed for studio equipment. You can read about that and how we spent that money here. Since that blog post, we spent the last $4,626 on a slightly used Skutt KMT 822-3 kiln and a kit of Advancer Kiln shelves that were sold together, along with some other studio odds and ends my friend was selling. So now we have three kilns and only enough electricity to fire the smallest one! More on that in a moment.
While we started this thing with a business partner here, and a plan to find a larger space for the community studio in one of the neighboring cities, all of that fell apart last summer. I'll confess I was massively depressed and defeated most of last year, and despite deciding to transform our garage and bonus kitchen (this is a very Portuguese thing- to have a secondary kitchen for entertaining, and ours is the room that connects our small house with the garage and residency house, so it's kind of perfect) into our studio space, I was full of doubt and fear about how to let people know we were here doing this thing.
But this idea of "if you build it, they will come" well, it's been working! In 2025, we hosted 7 resident artists, and I began teaching beginners wheel throwing classes in the studio. The people that came to classes enjoyed it so much that they kept coming back to open studio so they could practice more. And now we have a regular group of artists from all over the world coming for classes and studio time each week.
This year we will host 9 artist residencies, and the artists have come from Norway, London, the Netherlands, the US and Portugal. I loved getting to know so many other artists and learn about different cultures. I was a little nervous about the residencies, as last year almost everyone that came, wanted a place to explore their own work without interruptions, but nobody really wanted to learn anything specific from me.
This year, was the opposite; almost everyone came with a list of techniques they wanted to learn, and while I knew how to do all of these things, I had never taught someone else how to do it. Turns out, after a lifetime of avoiding it, I really enjoy teaching! Who knew?
We also hosted 2 artist workshops/retreats with visiting artists. We had planned to do four at the start of the year, but we had to cancel two because of the electricity challenges, and not having easy access to a bigger kiln. But that is going to change next year!
If you are unfamiliar with the electricity problems I keep referencing, you can get caught up on the whole saga, here.
The short version is it's been very complicated and we have had lots of false starts and failed attempts, after two years of trying to increase the power so that we can fire a kiln bigger than 60 liters. The good news: electrician number 7 is the guy! After two years of frustrations and failings, we finally have approval to move this upgrade forward! The catch is, we need to rewire both houses and the studio AND it's going to cost us between 15,000-20,000€! We will also need to smash some of the walls we spent so much time repairing and painting last year. And without a clear timeline on the work, we can't accept new resident artists until next spring, at the earliest. So it's a big hiccup, but a very necessary one.
This big project is the impetus for my 6 week trip back to Portland: I need to raise the money to pay for the electricity and I really need all the help I can get. Here's the plan and a few ways you can help:
- I'm offering several of my designs to pre-order in limited quantities. This allows me to make what you want instead of guessing.
- I will make a small collection of pots for a November shop update too. Date will be announced soon but likely around November 20.
- Artists collaborations are back! I will have at least six new one of a kind pieces I have collaborated on with other artists up for raffle- with all proceeds going towards the electricity
- Booking our 2027 ceramics Residencies and Retreats- filling all the retreats early will give us the budget we need to keep the electric project moving forward. Booking will open in late September but you can see who's coming to teach now, and get on the wait list for priority booking.
- My Letter club is back- this is the easiest way to contribute. It's a monthly subscription where each month I will send you a paper letter in the mail with an update of all the behind the scenes of life in the studio and on the farm. It's the stuff I don't always post online, or won't post until after the letters have been sent. Just something fun in your mailbox every month.
I'm hoping that with all of these options and so many lovely people following my adventures and collecting my art, that together we can raise most of the money we need to pay for all the electrical work. Nick and I will be busy smashing and repairing all the walls as the electrician rewires both houses. It's going to be a very busy winter, but we are so excited to finally have a pathway to firing the bigger kilns and be able to grow our studio here.
Thank you for reading. Please feel free to leave comments or questions below, or contact me directly any time. I am always happy to chat and hear from you.
0 comments