Pot luck

A beginners pottery class inspired Arcadia Scott to make a big career leap: at the end of 2017 she left a fast paced job in sales to make ceramics at her home studio in Brunswick. And she’s showing no signs of turning back.

Words by Eliza Campbell

Photos by Louie McNamara and Arcadia

I meet Arcadia Scott in one of her favourite cafes in Brunswick, fittingly surrounded by plants in big, beautiful ceramic pots. Arcadia calls Brunswick home and as of August 2017, it has been her workplace, too. She has real warmth about her: “I don’t usually do this kind of thing. I’m nervous!” she tells me. We order our coffees and I ask her to tell me where her love of ceramics began and, more importantly, how something that began as just a hobby has become her career. Looking for an outlet outside her decade long career in sales, Arcadia says she took a six-week beginner’s ceramics course on a whim. “It will be three years this month,” tells me. Three years since a whim changed the course of her life, she means.

“I had started collecting a repertoire of pottery by local makers in my own home and it morphed into me wanting to learn the creative process behind ceramics,” she says. “I did a six-week wheel throwing beginners course at Northcote Pottery Supplies and I just knew within the first lesson that it felt natural.

“It started as a hobby outside of my day to-day work,” she explains. “Pottery is really internal – it was a good escape.”

From then, ceramics became a regular part of Arcadia’s life. “I was going to the communal studio once a week. I did a marbling workshop, hand building, wheel throwing with flatware. And then it was just purely practice. Playing around, having lots of disasters.”

And from those disasters emerged a product that Arcadia continued to sell in local home ware store, Nature Boy Nrth.

“Ruth Gregson [the owner] was amazing at fostering new, really early-stage potters,” she tells me. “The first six months I was selling there, I worked on store credit so I could go back and spend more money on plants and ceramics,” she laughs. “And then we were selling enough that Ruth started pushing that I invoice her.”

Arcadia Scott’s self-titled brand is now a staple in stores around Melbourne, as well as markets in Victoria and New South Wales. “I look back now to what my current work is and it’s so different,” Arcadia says, musing that starting out in stores and moving to social media and markets is a bit back-to-front compared to most artists’ evolutions. “[Nature Boy Nrth] gave me that early development and exposure to the market. It grew quite organically from that.”

It’s 2018, so I have to ask about Instagram. “I’m terrible at social media,” she laughs. “I’m a bit disorganised at posting when I should. I’m of the generation that didn’t have screen time – so, for me it’s an unnatural attachment to my phone.”

With nearly 7000 followers, Arcadia doesn’t seem bad for a novice. But she insists she’s a bit more old-school when it comes to self-promotion. “It was more word of mouth in the beginning,” she explains. “Being in the career I was in, I had exposure to a lot of businesses. From there I met Jason Chongue who runs The Plant Society and he has been an integral force in my career in terms of the support he’s provided – I’ve loved working on custom projects with him.”

Arcadia only made her foray into markets in July of last year, beginning with Melbourne’s Finders Keepers Market. “I knew I was onto something. Pottery started drawing me in more than my career – there was this strange two way street happening. People started to get to know me, people were collecting my work and expanding to markets helped me lean on that.” With an already loyal following, Arcadia had easy success at the Melbourne Finders Keepers Market – so much so that she signed up for the Sydney one too. “That used to be me! I used to be one of those collectors that would scurry in as soon as the markets opened to go and see my favourites,” she says.

For many creatives starting out, one of the biggest challenges is monetising their passion. Thanks to her background in sales, Arcadia was able to navigate this process with relative ease. “The first piece of advice I would give is: value your work properly,” she says. “Don’t underestimate what your products could be worth.” As an avid collector of local ceramicists, Arcadia had a good idea of what her competitors were putting out into the market and where she stood in comparison. “It’s a really fine balance – if you undervalue your work then it can appear cheap in other people’s eyes and then, if you over-price, you don’t sell anything.”

She also notes the importance of understanding the value of your time and running costs and therefore, what you need to be making to breakeven. “There was a reason that some things were more expensive.” she explains, “My hand-carved work is at a higher price point because it takes me half an hour to carve one piece. That then plays into an aspect of what I’m charging.”

Arcadia’s next tip is to set yourself achieve able goals. “I keep giving myself six months,” she says. “It’s been a year since last month that I’ve been self-employed. Last year it was: ‘get through Christmas’ and then it was: ‘get through ‘til the middle of the year’ and then it was: ‘get to your one-year anniversary’. Now it’s: ‘get through Christmas, again’.”

One of the best parts of being self-employed is being your own boss. But as any creative knows, this comes with its own challenges. Arcadia insists that self-motivation has never been her issue, so much as grappling with her own feelings of insecurity. “The biggest challenge I’ve found has been doubting myself. Having those moments where you completely lose track of what you want to do and achieve – and I find I go through ebbs and flows of feeling not good enough,” she tells me. “But then you get another win and you shake it off.”

For her sales-honed brain, it’s the cash flow that keeps Arcadia driven. “I’ve learnt not to have too much time in-between projects – the longer time I spend outside of the selling aspect, the more I doubt what I am doing.” Her biggest seller remains her handmade, one-of-a-kind ceramic travel cups, “[but] they’re the least creative product that I make,” she says.

Though a commercially-viable product is integral, it’s important not to lose sight of the reason you started: “It’s about staying true to what you love about the process,” she says. Often your more commercially successful product might not be the one that gives you the most satisfaction to make – and herein lies the catch-22 of “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” How do you make sure you don’t become disillusioned and uninspired? Arcadia says it’s all about finding the balance. “Doing things you love gives you motivation. I make sure I allocate time to work on passion projects. The more artistic things may not be as viable from a commercial standpoint, but they satisfy me and slow me down.”

“It’s OK to slow down,” she urges. “Some days, you need to. Make the things that take you longer to produce but that connect you to the more creative process.” And don’t be afraid to fail, too. “I read somewhere that ceramics was a game of disappointments,” Arcadia says. “It’s true – but you have to stay strong. It is definitely a game of disappointments – but then you get those wins and it just sucks you right back in again.”

For a self-taught artist working from a home studio, Arcadia says she cannot stress enough the importance of networking and seeking support from your creative peers. “If you’re by yourself a lot, you don’t have that reassurance of bouncing ideas off people.” She’s now focusing a lot more on making connections within the ceramics world and the people that inspire her. “If I have doubts, I can raise it with them and get some support.” “The most frustrating thing I find is having things go wrong that are outside of your control, like equipment breaking. It might be out of your control, but it has such a big impact on everything that you’re doing.”

Arcadia’s story definitely gives cause to rethink the phrase “Don’t quit your day job.” She says she feels amazed to still be self employed, but it seems like the perfect mix of passion, talent and business savvy much more than it is luck. “It’s all such a learning curve when you’re starting out. Finding out what people are liking, whether it suits your or not,” she says. “I don’t think I would be in this position if I wasn’t a capitalist,” she laughs. “The travel cups pay my mortgage and the rest is the cream on top.”