Life & Work with Scotlyn Kent

Today we’d like to introduce you to Scotlyn Kent.

Hi Scotlyn, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My love affair with clay started about twelve years ago. I was born a creative human, yet I had not found my creative home until my first ceramics course at my local community college. From that day forward I was hooked on clay. My bone cried for it. I spent most every free minute I had in the ceramic studio and most definitely every thought was on clay. Clay gave me a connection to Earth and the creative home I had been searching for all those years. Solitude was formed in December 2020 with the push from a few of my dearest friends to put my work out into the world. My pottery tells a story of the mixing of my life events, people I have loved, and inspiration from the bits of earth I have wondered. Solitude is run by just myself, a one-woman show so to speak, and each vessel is made from my hands from start to finish. Each vessel or creation comes from the soul moved by the world.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Oi! Welp I believe that most creative endeavors are never really a smooth road, so no it has not just been a smooth journey yet a very pleasant one. Some of the biggest struggles I face are that of myself. I am my own worst enemy on most days finding the time to juggle all the aspects of life while attempting to prioritize creative production can be a struggle. Some days the creativity is flowing whereas on others I struggle to sit down at the wheel. As a small business owner and creator, it’s just me keeping it all running, which is no easy task and easily overwhelming, yet my pure love of clay overpowers most any struggle I have faced on my journey.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My ceramic works are inspired by Mother Earth and my experiences within it. As a potter, I work with bits of the earth every day. I take balls of clay and transform them into functional items to be held by human hands. I work with material dug from our lands mixed with water from our wells. I am continuously in awe of our planet, full of wonders, I have found inspiration in our waters, lands, skies, and inhabitants. Throughout my ceramic designs, the earth is represented in some form in almost every piece I create. I use the circle as a common theme across glaze design to reference my view on harmony within the circular movement of life between humans and the world. Solitude is a representation of myself in clay form each vessel or sculptor is some form of significance to me which is what sets my work aside from other potters. I strive to put forward work that comes from the depth that I feel passionate about I keep it true to who I am as a human.

Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
As a novice potter clay can be so captivating yet frustrating at the same time. Clay dries funky, cracks where you don’t want it to shrink more than you expect, or is just daunting leaning the pottery wheel. Do not give up! Keep learning listen to the clay and learn from past mistakes. One of the greatest aspects of clay is that each failure is a lesson to be learned a bit of new information resulting in a better potter. Keep each failure in mind as to what to not do the next time around write it down or say it out loud and burn it to memory! Keep growing.

Contact Info:

• Website: Solitudeceramics.com
• Instagram: Solitude Cermaics