Check Out Kimberly Hardy’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kimberly Hardy.

Hi Kimberly, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Although I spent the first year of my life on Guam, the first home I can remember was an apartment on top of my Grandma Trudy’s pottery studio, called the Right Place Pottery, on Orcas Island. Just down the road, a mere half mile away, my Great Grandma Julia owned Orcas Island Pottery, which is the oldest studio pottery in the Pacific Northwest. My Grandma Trudy was incredibly passionate about pottery, and the arts in general, and filled my childhood with creativity. She gave me my first wheel lesson when I was a toddler, and often kept me busy by setting me down at a table with a hunk of clay in front of me, or an easel propped up next to her while she and my mom worked. 
When I was four years old, my mom took over Orcas Island Pottery from my great grandmother, and that is where I grew up— in a home that opened up to the studio on one side, and the shop on the other. There I had endless opportunities to observe and learn from the many talented potters who worked in our studio over the years, and I could still easily walk down the beach or shortcut through the woods to go be with my Grandma in hers. Growing up this way, pottery has always been home to me, as much as it is a craft or profession.
That being said, when something is ever-present in your world that way, it can easily be taken for granted, and although I have always felt deeply connected to it, for most of my life I only dabbled with making ceramics here and there. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-30s that I decided I wanted to spend a year dedicating myself to it, with the intention of getting to a point where I could make something I was truly proud of. One year turned into a few, but even then it was difficult to imagine it being anything other than a transition period between other careers. I went as far as finishing half of a graduate program here in LA in a tech-related field before coming to the realization that there was no part of me that wanted to continue in that direction, and what I really wanted to be doing was creating with my hands, not sitting in front of a computer all day.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It could have been a smoother road, if I were better suited towards full-time small island living, but because I am more of a city person and knew I wanted to stay in Los Angeles, it was full of struggles. Initially I tried working out of a community studio where I was extremely limited in space and had to rely on studio employees to handle firing my work. When that became untenable and I knew I had to find my own space, the challenge was finding an art studio with the electrical capacity for kilns. There were many let downs until I finally found my happy place at SRU Studios in the Pico-Union neighborhood just on the edge of DTLA.
One of the most difficult things for me was learning to let go of other ideas I had about what I was supposed to be, and achieve professionally in the world, and to believe that what I do now is “enough”. And practically, it is challenging to turn away from career paths that have high and consistent pay, health insurance, paid time off, and other benefits to one that has none of those things.
The act of making pottery itself is rarely, if ever, totally free of struggles. It is a craft that will humble you again and again, and essentially teaches you the lessons of life — the impermanence of things, and letting go of attachment. For any piece you make, there are dozens of different ways that it can be ruined at various points in the process— some within, and many outside of your control. Things crack, get bumped, dropped, or knocked over and all of that work is lost. I can spend hours carving a piece and put just a little too much pressure on the wrong spot when it is moments away from being finished, and the whole thing falls apart. I could name dozens of factors that effect the outcome in the glaze firing alone. Nothing is guaranteed—it is all precious and fragile, potentially fleeting. At the same time, if handled with care, a finished piece can last a million years.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I make a fairly wide variety of objects—some are purely decorative, others utilitarian, and also work with a wide range of clays from dark, earthy stonewares to the brightest, purest porcelains. If you put them all next to each other it may seem surprising to some that they are all made by the same artist, but I would say that the connecting through line of it all is that I endeavor to create objects that add a sense of grounding and comfort to life’s daily rituals and the spaces we spend our time in— the mug that feels just right in your hands and helps you start your day, highly textured objects that are pleasing both to look at and touch, and hand-carved luminaries that bring light in.

The way we live our lives now is so vastly different from the deeply communal ways humans evolved to be, and I think there is this quiet yearning inside so many of us to find ways of feeling more connected with one another— and as insignificant as it may seem, I think incorporating more thoughtful handmade items into our daily lives is one small way we achieve a piece of that. It genuinely does feel different, and a lot of people connect with that feeling in a meaningful way. Although there are specific pieces I have made that I personally loved the most, or felt were my best on an artistic level, I think I feel the most pride in my work simply when I hear from a customer that something I made has meant something to them and added to their life in some way. It is deeply gratifying to know that on any given day, potentially thousands of people are starting their day with one of my mugs, or ending it with the light of one of my luminaries.

My porcelain luminaries are what I am best known for, and what I spend the most time working on. These are wheel thrown and then trimmed and hand carved when they are about half dry. These pieces are thrown quite thin to begin with, and every cut I make with my carving tool only makes it more fragile and precarious to hold— with just the right amount of tension that there is enough resistance against the tool for the next cut, but not so much that it crumbles under my grasp. Mastering this delicate balance requires a vast amount of patience and practice.

We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
People who know me through my ceramics may not know that I previously had a twelve year career working in science. I read the Hot Zone when I was 8 years old which kindled a lifelong fascination with viruses and infectious diseases. Ironically, during the time period that I worked in the lab (2003-2015), it was very difficult to find work outside academia focused on viruses or infectious diseases, and I spent most of my career on therapeutics for autoimmune diseases and cancer. I was just a bit too early for viruses to be taken seriously in the Western world.

I would say that I am equal parts scientist and artist. I remain fascinated with the natural world, and when I am outside my studio you can often find me nerding out about plants, rocks, or birds. I have an innately curious mind am always seeking to learn something new, to understand more. I think all of this comes through in the variety of my work, that my inspiration spans from the beach I grew up on, to distant galaxies in the universe.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kimiceramics.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/kimi.ceramics