Jeremy Ogusky on Pottery and the Art of Fermentation
Show Notes:
Episode Notes:
As an artist, Jeremey Ogusky has found a balance between the art world and the consumer world by created pottery for a wide variety of commercial clients. His work has been sold in Williams Sonoma, and used in hotels and restaurants all over the country.
Through his work as a potter, he has also been involved in the growing field of food fermentation. Most people are familiar with fermentation through micro brews and bread making. However, it encompasses so much more: from Kombucha to kimchi and beyond.
He is also one of the founders of the seven year old Boston Fermentation Festival.
Join us as we talk about his start in the Peace Corp, his definition of art and how his practice has evolved!
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INSIDE THIS EPISODE:
Guest can be found at Bostonpotter.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyogusky
Instagram: @Bostonpotter
Twitter: @Bostonpotter
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This episode was produced by Matt McKee, with help from Suzanne Schultz and http://www.CanvasFineArts.com, the specialists in coaching for creatives, and editing by Bill Shamlian at Orb Sound.
About Cherry Bomb! The Podcast
Join host Matt McKee as he talks with artists, chefs, entrepreneurs and innovators on the subjects of Food, Art and Sustainability.
The Inspiration for Cherry Bomb! The Podcast
After creating Cherry Bomb! and the rest of the Sweet Blasts series of photos, Matt found that every time he showed the works, deep conversations were sparked between him and his viewers as well as between the viewers themselves.
The podcast was the natural next step to continuing the conversation and sharing it with a wider audience.
Episode Credits
This episode was produced by Matt McKee, with consulting help from Suzanne Schultz at Canvas Fine Arts, the Specialists in Coaching for Creative People, and editing from Bill Shamlian at Orb Sound.
Jeremy Ogusky on Pottery and the Art of Fermentation
Cherry Bomb! The Podcast Transcription
Jeremy Ogusky 00:00
I'm not against my work being labeled art. I just don't think of it that way. I think of art more as like the artist the maker has like ideas and choices like you said aesthetic choices that they're making. And the work that I make some of the aesthetic choices or the the way I make it. The design comes from both me and the client, essentially, collaborative process. I'm more interested in what the ultimate user, what they're going to use the piece for, and what the use is
Matt McKee 00:34
Im Matt McKee and welcome to Cherry Bomb the podcast a series of conversations with people about food, art and sustainability. Today I'm speaking in the studio with Jeremy Agus ski, a studio Potter, husband, father and passionate fermenting evangelist which we're going to talk about, as well as founder of The Boston fermentation festival and winner of Best of Boston 2020. This episode is sponsored by do not a part of my sweet blast series of limited edition photos available at the art of Matt McKee. I created a series with a mission to start conversations in the room about bigger topics of art food, and you guessed it sustainability. This podcast is the companion piece to that project where I get to share with you some of the discussions that suite blast has inspired for me. Please share this episode to Facebook, Twitter, and all your social media so your friends can find us and join in the conversation. Jeremy, thank you so much for coming in today. Of course.
Jeremy Ogusky 01:28
Yeah, happy to be here.
Matt McKee 01:30
We were talking beforehand about a whole bunch of different subjects. And I kind of wish we had been rolling at that point. But I wanted to start out with some basic groundwork. Okay. How long have you been slinging mud as you described your practice? Oh, I've said that before I saw that in one of the articles.
Jeremy Ogusky 01:50
I usually describe it as working in clay been using clay but slinging mud also works for over 20 years. Yeah, a long time. 25 years maybe. So I started in high school. Actually, when I was I often tell people I was kind of a slacker in high school. And I was looking for a class that I didn't think would take a lot of work not be difficult. And I went down into the ceramic studio and I was hooked like a lot of butters, or artists will tell you, you know, they take their first class and I was a ceramics teacher brought in a master Korean potter who sat on the potter's wheel. He couldn't speak English. So he just was making pots for, you know, 45 minutes, and I was mesmerized and watch him. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I want to try this. Since I've been using clay in different ways. You know, for many years, I was an amateur. I wasn't doing a full time. But I was still involved in clay in different ways touching it or working with other people, or doing it on my off time.
Matt McKee 02:47
Like so many artists I talked to they came from, quote unquote, real job. And then yeah, morphed over into or embraced their art and their creativity as well as turning it into a business. Yes. So what were you doing during the period where you were not full time Potter,
Jeremy Ogusky 03:04
there's my 10 years, I originally came to Boston to study at Boston University School of Public Health. I got a master's in public health. And then I worked internationally. So I studied specifically global health. And I worked in global health for about 10 years. First, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Lasu. To where is that? It's in southern Africa. It's a little country inside of South Africa. And I was placed there with the Peace Corps. And I was there for two years doing mainly HIV AIDS prevention and treatment education.
Matt McKee 03:35
That's hardcore stuff.
Jeremy Ogusky 03:38
I guess I don't Yeah, I don't know how hardcore I was. It was hard. And I learned a lot. And it was a really great experience, and actually met my wife there. Um, so she was another Peace Corps volunteer. After we both finished the Peace Corps, and we went to Ecuador. I was teaching and involved in public health in different ways in Ecuador for a few years. And then we came back to the United States. We were in Washington, DC. And I worked in global health in DC and did a lot of community based health education, a lot of advocacy in Washington, DC. And then we moved to Boston, actually, I worked for Harvard for a little while, and I lost my job. And that was like what triggered the change. Moving from public health to ceramics. So when I lost my job, it was kind of a reset. For me. It was an opportunity to think about what I wanted to do. And during the 10 years where I was working in public health, I was working in clay also but it was you know, late at night or it was a my off time essentially. Even when I was a Peace Corps volunteer and I was doing public health work doing HIV AIDS education, but I found a bunch of potter's community like super rural that were working in like little hide basically with no electricity or anything and I did a bunch of just like stamp making and simple stuff and I like to work with them. And in Ecuador to actually I apprenticed with a potter who was really successful Potter actually in the town. We were living in and I've always joked that wherever we went, like all these different countries or different places in the United States, I would always find Potter's and I would like make friends with them, basically. Because now I know they're sort of my people. Yeah. But I didn't quite know that at the time.
Matt McKee 05:18
But the observation is that life is a continuum in even though you may be changing what how you make your living. I mean, everything kind of stays together. It's always a continuum. Have you found that what you've learned from being in the Peace Corps from your work in Washington as an advocate? Have you found that that has found its way into your practices? Potter now?
Jeremy Ogusky 05:39
Yeah, yeah, definitely, I would not be a successful entrepreneur, Potter, if I hadn't done the time, spent the time had the experiences that I had before. Like, I'm the person I am, because of the experiences. And because of where I've come to at this point. It's hard to like put my finger on exact ways that I pull in my public health work, or my public policy work, or my community education work. For example, running a fermentation Festival, which not ceramics related, but it grew out of my ceramics, my clay practice my interest in fermentation, and then my interest in the fermentation community, and then pulling all these people from the community together to have a festival. Like that's something that I learned to do in the public health worlds, like doing community education, you know, making relationships, building relationships,
Matt McKee 06:37
and putting together events that would bring together community. Yeah. So like, I've
Jeremy Ogusky 06:43
learned them in other aspects of my life. And I'm doing it now in the clay and fermentation world. Wonderful.
Matt McKee 06:51
Something I asked every artist, how do you define art?
Jeremy Ogusky 06:57
I don't know. I mean, I, some people call me an artist or they label but I make as art, I don't really consider myself an artist. So maybe I'm not the right person. For this podcast, I consider myself more of like a crafts person. So I feel actually a lot more akin to someone who's making widgets, someone who's like making shoes, or like, you know, if you think about other crafts, people that are, you know, making tools or like producing lots and lots of things, I feel a lot more similar to that type of crafts person or maker than I do like an artist who's making sculptures or paintings or individual objects that they spend a lot of time and they put a lot of thought into, like that's not the work that I make, I make stuff that has more utility. And I think a big difference is like I'm making hundreds of pieces at a time. So I'm spending actually as little time as I can with each piece, because I need to make 1000, like I just finished an order for local hotel, have over 1000 pieces, you know, each piece, of course, is unique. I have like another few 100 pieces to make. So I need to like, move quickly. I don't know if I consider the pieces that I'm making art, they're more, they're more objects that have utility,
Matt McKee 08:13
or I have a couple of examples of your work. I look at them as functional art. That's my interpretation of art is a little bit different, I think than yours. But I also understand certainly the Craftsman aspect of being able to technically put something together in a way that is cohesive and also has an aesthetic beauty to it. Mm hmm.
Jeremy Ogusky 08:35
I don't know if I answered your question that he kind of did.
Matt McKee 08:37
He kind of did. I think that your definition of what art is, is a little more narrow, necessarily than my own personal one. And one of the things I keep on coming to with this is this definition of art is something that is very, I don't want to say arbitrary. The definition of what art is, it feels to me like it comes out of somebody's background, in terms of them creating a functional piece versus something that is more decorative. Yeah. But I mean, you combine both worlds with that, are you creating something that is decorative has use, but your aesthetic choices of when you're putting it together? I think you're very much fulfilling a role. It certainly could be called Art. And we have some pottery pieces at the house where we display them on the table, even though they're not as functional as necessarily we would like for multiple things. And there's other pieces that are just the water jug thing that we have gets used every day.
Jeremy Ogusky 09:38
That makes sense. I'm not against my work being labeled artists. I just don't think of it that way. Because I think of art more as like the artist, the person that maker has like ideas and choices like you said aesthetic choices that they're making. And the work that I make some of the aesthetic choices or the the way I I make it the design comes from both me and the client, essentially, you know, I'm whoever, I'm more interested in what ultimate user, what they're going to use the piece for. And what the use is, I work with a lot of chefs and they have ideas about like, it needs to be this shape or this size, because they have a specific dish in mind or specific use. So I guess it's more collaborative in that way. And it's it's not my vision, solely. Okay.
Matt McKee 10:29
In terms of your personal philosophy, it from what you've been describing, it seems like there's a consistency that's going through it, but what drives you to create or to craft? What gets you up in the morning and says, you know, I'm going to go in and create a new? Yeah. client driven side of things. Yeah.
Jeremy Ogusky 10:52
I mean, people often ask me that question, like, when I making work, like, what do I want to make? And it's hard for me to answer because ultimately, like, what drives me is when I have clients that are requesting visas, you know, like, when I have an invoice, and I have like a list of pieces, which is pretty much always, you know, I have like this many pieces to make, and I have a make list. Basically, that's how I start my day, every morning, like, what are the things that I need to make? What are the projects I need to work on? When I don't have people demanding work for me, it's easy to do other things, easier to go hiking, or turn on Netflix, or like do other things. I don't feel that inspired actually, to make a lot of work, I don't really make work for myself anymore.
Matt McKee 11:42
I have to assume that your cupboards are fully stocked with dinner sets, we have mostly
Jeremy Ogusky 11:46
like chipped work or seconds, or pieces that have cracks in it. So it's a common complaint from my family, that we don't have like a beautiful, matching tableware. So I probably should get on that. You know, I'm inspired mostly by people that are
Matt McKee 12:02
asking somebody else's problems. Yeah. Or challenges. They should put it. Yeah, absolutely. You had mentioned earlier about fermentation, the fermentation festival. My only real experience with fermentation was back when I was drinking beer. And that's what I understood fermentation to be after reading a little bit about you on your website. Fermentation is so much more than that. What is your definition of fermentation? And how did you get involved in that aspect of it,
Jeremy Ogusky 12:30
I like to define it just as the transformative action of microorganisms. And actually, that definition comes from Sandra Katz, who's a kind of Godfather in a way the new fermentation movement. So he calls himself a fermentation, revivalist. He's not inventing anything, because, you know, this is a ancient way of preserving food that's 1000s of years old. You know, it's arguably the original way that humans preserve food before, you know, definitely before freezing before modern ways. But like next to drying, like a lot of archaeologists and anthropologists think that fermentation was what even allowed humans to settle down into more like agricultural societies, because, you know, you start growing things, and you need to preserve it in some way. And fermentation was probably one of those earliest ways of preserving food. And I think ceramics plays right into that humans need something. Pottery is one of the earliest art one of the earliest ways humans created things. And those things were used often in fermentation. So for me, you know, it has this like ancient connection, but also like, there's real modern connection for me, you know, I've always loved fermented foods. I didn't know it for many years, my favorite foods like pickles and blue cheese, like ripe, you know, stinky, powerful and potent flavors. They often come from the process of fermentation, basically. Okay, so like you mentioned beer, like, of course, like all alcohol, you know, beer, wine, sakeI, they all created through fermentation. There's like a whole world of foods out there, you know, that can be fermented, like, you know, milk products are fermented into all kinds of things like cheese, obvious, yogurt, kefir, but then like grains are fermented, you know, like bread, obviously, it's a very obvious one. But like, grains are fermented into all different kinds of things. When I discovered that a lot of my favorite foods are fermented. I was a potter at the time. And I said, Okay, well, like how can I do this myself. And so I made my first fermentation vessel. And I started making, you know, just sauerkraut and pickles and simple things like that. And it sort of grew from there. You know, I just started experimenting in other ways. And this was like, 10 years ago, at the time, that sort of newer fermentation community was just starting to grow. People were discovering it and continue to discover it, you know, even now, and I, in a way kind of rode that wave, the fermentation wave, the revivalist wave, I guess. Yeah. So a lot of fermentation crocks and the last 10 years
Matt McKee 15:02
cool if somebody wanted to get started doing fermentation start pickling or making kimchi or me. So what would be the best way to kind of get involved in that?
Jeremy Ogusky 15:13
That's a good question. I always recommend sauerkraut. I feel like it's a good gateway drug to fermentation. Super simple. It's just cabbage salt in time, like tip me, at its core, you know, it's really easy. And I've done a lot of workshops, I've taught people how to do it, workshops where I've collaborated with chefs, where we're like, I'll teach a fermentation workshop. And we'll eat a fermentation themed dinner. And then we'll all make sauerkraut together. And fermentation festivals at farmer's markets. I've taught people on the street, how to make sauerkraut, where we just have put out tables or put out 100 pounds of cabbage. And just like, you know, we call it a crap mob. And basically, people can walk up off the street and like, learn how to make sauerkraut. And we'll have mobsters, which are just people that lead you through the process. And everyone can walk home with a jar of like fermenting cabbage. So it's super easy to do. And it's really empowering. Actually, when you learn that, you know, it's actually not that hard to make sauerkraut to harness microbes and microorganisms yourself. It's easy to then jump from sauerkraut to maybe kimchi, and then you're making pickles and you're trying lots of different things and you go down the rabbit hole.
Matt McKee 16:25
That's awesome. I guess there's risks in any type of food prep, if you're cooking chicken or something like that, you need to make sure that you're killing bacteria. But we attempted when my kids were younger to make our own ginger real one time and what the result of it was beyond inedible. Freaked all of us out. Okay. So you know, we couldn't get past the smell. A little bit on the tongue was like, Okay, this something went very, very horribly wrong. Yeah. Are there risks that people should be aware of?
Jeremy Ogusky 16:58
Yeah, I think with any kind of food preservation preparation, you have that you should follow specific rules, which are pretty basic around like cleanliness
Matt McKee 17:06
that may have been where we are downfall was.
Jeremy Ogusky 17:10
When I answered your earlier question about making sauerkraut and vegetable fermentation, I often start with vegetable fermentation like sauerkraut or kimchi, because it's actually very safe, and you're not going to get botulism, you know, definitely not gonna kill you. Like, there's been no cases, according to the FDA, of someone screwing up a simple vegetable ferment and dying. Like the worst generally that's going to happen is maybe you get like an upset stomach, or you're not going to feel very good if you eat something. But that's only if you don't trust your senses. Like I tell people to really trust your senses. So if you taste something, if you smell something that you're fermenting, and it really smells off, but like, often not a good way, you know, not like the sour, funky way, but like something that's gone, maybe a little bit more is too ripe. You know, just toss it out, trust your senses. But generally, with vegetable ferments, as long as it's submerged under saltwater, there's nothing dangerous, that's going to be able to live under there. Like maybe on the surface, you might get a little bit of mold, or yeast growth on the top, which is fairly common, but you can generally like scrape that away, and you're totally fine.
Matt McKee 18:14
So one of the impressions I'm getting from this is that you can get into it very simply without a ton of like deep knowledge. But you could also if you wanted to get very much into the science of it, the chemistry of it and carry it much further than that if you wanted to.
Jeremy Ogusky 18:29
Definitely yeah, definitely. I mean, people often think I'm like a expert in fermentation, because I know a lot of fermenters and I've organised a fermentation festival, but I'm not I'm like a shallow, you know, fermenter and a lot of different areas. Like I've dabbled in a lot of different types of fermentation. But I'm definitely not an expert in anything. But at this point I've made a lot of friends who are Misa makers are like cider makers or brewers or you know, bakers, and so I get all their delicious professional products. I don't need to make my own bread because you know, I have made bread, of course, I know a lot of baker's now. That's awesome.
Matt McKee 19:08
Let's go back to the business side of things a little bit. So you lost your job in public health, and decided to hang out your shingle as I hate using that phrase. I really, really that one, you decided to start selling pottery that you were creating? Yes. Now you've grown it to the point where a hotel is asked you to make 1000 Dinner settings. What happened in between? I know this is a question that certainly I asked all the time for myself, because I'm always trying to figure out how to build my business better. But a lot of young artists had the same experience going through art school as I did, where you ask somebody, how do you make money doing art and they only talk about like the traditional Galerie pas, which is something that you have not followed. How did you get from point
Jeremy Ogusky 19:55
A to point B? I tried a lot of different things. I mean, I think I definitely never was interested in galleries. Because I didn't really know much about the gallery, I still don't really know about the gallery or the sort of the arts world. And it was never presented to me. So I never thought about that. But when I thought about in the beginning, being a potter and selling my work, what I knew was craft shows, and, you know, art markets. So that's what I tried. And actually, for many years, I did a lot of craft shows, you know, and I did like, the super high end to the super low end, you know, so like, really high cost of entry, and, like, really difficult to get into. And then like, super easy, and, like, on the easy side, I did like, for years, I did like the Rock and Roll yard sale, which was like a lot of fun. You know, it was in Providence. And then it was in Somerville, and it was super cheap. And, you know, it's like a whole mix of, you know, record stores, and like makers of all different types. And I enjoyed it. And I got some cool records, but I didn't really sell very much pottery, and I did like, a lot of farmers markets, you know, it's like an easy entry way. And then I did you know, more expensive shows where I had to travel, you know, out of state and they cost 1000s of dollars. And, you know, for many years, like that was like the approach that I knew.
Matt McKee 21:19
Did you start with a smaller shows first and more local shows? And then so yeah, you know, pottery is not an inexpensive investment for someone to make, because it's takes a long time to create a pot.
Jeremy Ogusky 21:30
Yeah. It takes time, you have to invest in kiln and equipment, I mean, not a ton of equipment, you need to have a kill on the potter's wheel. And like, when I started, I was in a group space. So I shared a lot of equipment with other people. I was at a community run studio called feet of clay pottery in Brookline Village. And I had like a little eight by eight foot space. And there were maybe 30 Other Potter's plus classes. And there were four kilns. And I fit in well, for a little while. And then I got a big contract with William Sonoma. Oh, wow. Yeah. And they were ordering, you know, hundreds of pieces a month. And it was kind of show but it was it was absolutely crazy. And, you know, this is like a communal studio with mostly like a bunch of older women that were spending a lot of time on, like individual pieces, you know, it wasn't made for production, potters. And all of a sudden, I was making hundreds of pieces. And like, you know, 90% of all the work that was coming out of the whole studio was me, you know, everyone would walk into my little eight foot space, and they would just see pottery from the floor to the ceiling just stacked up, like, what are you doing? I'm like, Oh, my God, I'm stressed out, I gotta like, pack up 200 pots tonight at 3am to ship them off to William Sonoma tomorrow. And it was kind of manic and crazy. And I realized I needed to do like, have my own studio after that.
Matt McKee 22:51
No doubt, no doubt, my gosh. So the question that keeps on popping up in my head as an envious artist, is how did you initiate William Sonoma and hotels and these bigger clients? Was it just happenstance that somebody happened to pick up a card at a craft show or art fair? Or was it more that you were proactive and reaching out?
Jeremy Ogusky 23:15
I don't think it was art fairs, I really don't think art shows were various effective for me, I feel like they're kind of a dying thing. They're sort of a dinosaur in a lot of ways. They're not a good way to make a living. I know, they were actually 40 years ago, not so much anymore. And especially for the kind of work I do, you know, my work is not, it's not cheap, but it's not super expensive. The price, you know, and so especially the larger shows where I was spending a lot of money to be there. I do sell a lot of work. Yeah, the people that come to craft shows are older tend to be like more baby boomers, their houses are full mostly. And they're looking for like objects, you know, and I do quantity, you know, like, I do wedding registries, where someone's ordering 60 pieces. I do hundreds of pieces at a time, basically. So that didn't really work. Well, what worked better for me was the internet. Social media has always been really useful for me. I think a lot of people have found me online. So like with William Sonoma, yeah, they found my work online, you know, and they just call me and they didn't know who I was. And I knew about William Sonoma, but I had never thought about working for them. So actually, when they called me, they saw a specific piece that was my fermentation vessel. They said, you know, we'd like to buy 200 of these, can you have them ready in four weeks or whatever? And I was like, Whoa, like, Let me think about this. I called a friend who actually has worked with William Sonoma and worked with similar types of like large scale stores. And I just talked it through with him and you know, he really encouraged me to do it, but also gave me a lot of good advice about like negotiating with them. What are the things I need to think about that? I didn't even know you know, in terms of just like shipping, what are all my shipping costs going to be like? What expectations do I have
Matt McKee 24:57
that part of it the unanticipated costs If you've not experienced it before, it can really hurt somebody.
Jeremy Ogusky 25:02
Totally. I hadn't thought about all that stuff. When I was negotiating with William Sonoma, I was negotiating for a price per piece, you know, and they were buying a fermentation vessel for me, they were paying me $39 per piece. At the time, I was retailing them for $99. So that's a 250% markup seems like a lot. They're paying me less than 50% for the piece that they were going to retail for $99. It seems like a lot of money. But actually, that's sort of common. I learned from my friend, Ted, he said, you know, in this category of home goods, and that makes sense. 250%. But like, $39, it's not a lot of money, actually, when you include what are all my costs? And so like, I created spreadsheets, my wife has an MBA, and she really helped me like, I did it. Like I created a master spreadsheet that really calculated all my costs. And when the cost of things changed, I figured out what were my cost per piece, including my time, and everything.
Matt McKee 26:04
That's another thing that a lot of artists tend to gloss over or forget entirely.
Jeremy Ogusky 26:08
Yeah, I mean, time is so important, especially on the night, before shipping out two pallets worth of work. I was up until three in the morning, packing pottery. I tried to sell them as like fun pizza nights to friends where I would like, like, I'm gonna get pizza, and we're gonna pack up pottery, and that's gonna be great. And like, I did a once and I got a bunch of friends to come and help me wrap up 250 pieces. And at the end, everyone was exhausted. It was two in the morning. And they're like, go, we're not gonna do this again. Yeah, that's not sustainable. Expect friends to do this. But that's what I needed in the beginning. You know, I figured out systems for it. And it was a real good learning experience. It helped me launch my career, my business, and help me think about scale. So now when I get clients coming to me and saying, you know, we want to buy 500 pieces, I don't get anxiety, I just can step back and I can say, Okay, what is the amount of time that I need to create this work? And like, what are the inputs? What what do I need to buy? How do I like budget this out in terms of money and
Matt McKee 27:10
time, a friend of mine, talking to me about systems? And he said, you know, what, do you have a system for how you do things? And I would push back and say, Well, I want to be an artist, I want to be more freeform? And he said, No, no, you have to understand that systems give you freedom. They take away that anxiety, they take away the fact that you're losing money, even though you're making good money on theory. Yes. Yeah. help you to understand that where you need to be where you should walk away from a deal. Yeah, absolutely. That was eye opener for me at that.
Jeremy Ogusky 27:38
I learned how to create those systems through William Sonoma. And since I don't get that anxiety anymore, I mean, I get anxiety with a recent project with another hotel. It was a different type of project, a non functional project. So I was hired to the lingam hotel. The Langham Hotel basically closed for about a year and a half. Towards the end of it. They've gutted the entire building. It's the old Federal Reserve, Boston, okay. Oh, okay. That's right down post office square. It's an amazing, beautiful building. So before the new Federal Reserve building was built, you know, across himself station in the 80s. That was the original one. And it's got these, like, 25 foot tall windows. And there's eight suites that are built around these 20 Plus on Windows. Yeah. So they're lofts. So they have a first floor. And then they have a loft behind where you sleep where the bed is, the ceiling is so tall, and they hired me to do an installation on the wall, which I've never done before. You know, I always think about food or think about utility. And this is very different type of utility was like the utility of aesthetics, I guess, like we needed
Matt McKee 28:48
to look, we're going back to the definition of art here with this. Yeah,
Jeremy Ogusky 28:52
this was like art. This really was art where they hired me to do eight installations. Each installation had about 60 pieces, and they were all placed on the wall in this like really beautiful sort of organic and aquatic feeling. So I made 60 pieces, each piece was around three to five inches wide, like very shallow bowls. And then I mounted each of the pieces in like a really cool sort of coral pattern up to the wall. I never done anything like this before. I never made anything for a wall never made anything that wasn't food focus. And it gave me a lot of anxiety. You know, it was like totally new. I'd never done that. It was really fun. And in the end, like I'm so proud of what I created.
Matt McKee 29:36
What do you wish you knew when you started? Yeah.
Jeremy Ogusky 29:42
In a way, like, it's very general. I wish I knew that. There are many ways to be a professional Potter to run my small business. It's unlimited. There's unlimited ways to do it. Because when I started, I thought there was only one way or I only saw one avenue and that was like doing craft shows and so other Potter's that I knew that were doing craft shows, you know, I looked to them and I said, like, well, how are you doing it? How are you successful? That was what I thought about. And I realized, ultimately after five or six years of like really sweating, really trying craft shows, and it just wasn't working, like my work wasn't right for it. My work wasn't made to be successful crashes, but also I'm not the right person to like, do the craft show scene, you know, like, I'm not the right person to sit in a booth and like, engage people and be extroverted. And it was like, a lot. It was too much. You know, I would come home from a weekend show, and I would just need to like sleep for four days, it would exhaust me, you know,
Matt McKee 30:42
you're on stage, when you're doing something like that. Yeah. Either defending your work or pushing it. It takes a lot out of a person. I know that from firsthand experience.
Jeremy Ogusky 30:50
Yeah, some people really enjoy it. I do not. You know, I learned that that wasn't the right thing. For me. That was a good lesson. There's lots of ways to sell my work to be have a successful business.
Matt McKee 31:03
Like, what would you like your legacy to be?
Jeremy Ogusky 31:08
Hmm, wow, really think about my legacy? Even though I'm making something, you know, I'm making objects that have legacy.
Matt McKee 31:19
Theoretically, these things can last. Oh, yeah. Far beyond multiple lifespans?
Jeremy Ogusky 31:24
Absolutely, yeah. They'll last a long time. So maybe the work is the legacy in a way. I think the work like stands for itself.
Matt McKee 31:34
Yeah, interesting answer. My last question for you. Which I asked everybody, and I'm especially interested to hear your answer to this one. End of the day, hopefully not at two o'clock in the morning, but the day you've been slinging mud. Last eight hours, I don't know how long is your day,
Jeremy Ogusky 31:52
it's a lot shorter these days. And it's a lot more organized. So generally, having a son has been really good for my business, actually, in a lot of ways, because it's, you know, it creates like a end game to the end of the day, like I need to pick him up from school, or he's coming home and I need to make dinner and be with my family. But the days where like, my wife and I both worked around the clock, you know, she was an entrepreneur in the past and, and has built nonprofits and like, we would work all the time, essentially, there's a few different changes to our life getting older, but also having a son has created you know, that that like, hard stop,
Matt McKee 32:32
you know, embrace of life outside of that scenario. Yeah, we have more balance now. At the end of the day, what is your comfort food? Oh, my comfort food, could have anything you want to do. You didn't want to have to think about it. Just wanted something that was just going to relax
Jeremy Ogusky 32:48
you. If it was just me, my comfort food would probably be just eating like a nice loaf of sourdough bread and some cheese over the kitchen sink. You know, I'd be standing next to the counter slicing bread and putting some soft cheese on it or something like that. But that's not how my family rolls. So you know, like we more complex meals. Yeah, and I love cooking. So I'll cook all different kinds of things. But for me like comfort is just like simple.
Matt McKee 33:21
Thanks for listening to this episode of Cherry Bomb podcast. I'm your host, Matt McKee. And today we're speaking with Jeremy Augustine amazing products. Thanks to his website, Potter, calm and social media can be found at the art of Matt mckee.com. Just click on the link for charity Podcast. I'm also available on Twitter for questions and comments after the key photo. This episode cherrybomb the podcast could not have been done without the help of Suzanne Schultz and Canvas Fine Arts, the specialists and coaching for creatives and editing by the always sublime Bill Shamlian editor of sound. Thanks for listening. And let's start the conversation.