Typical Day
At 8:00AM, Madge O'Lica is up and already moving. She starts every day off with a brisk walk around the neighborhood to clear her mind—half an hour of fresh air does wonders for a foggy brain.
When she gets back home, she brews a cup of green tea, sets food out for her two cats, and heads into her studio: a section of the living room cordoned off by a beaded curtain. Madge lives in an unfinished loft apartment. The real estate agent had called it a "fixer-upper," which had been music to Madge's ears. Cheap rent, enough space for her studio and kiln, and the opportunity to DIY for all the décor? Sold.
In the studio Madge keeps a large workbench, two full cupboards of texture rollers and paddles, ribs, trimming tools, clay cutters, and rolling pins. She also has an open-air rack where she stores all her in-process and finished pieces. Her eighteen-inch electric kiln is kept in the corner.
The light is good from the window today, and Madge spends the first part of the morning taking photos for her website of a new series of fern-inspired pots. Because half her sales now come from the website, and the other half from customers who Madge suspects only come to the studio because they've seen her work online, the photos need to be professional-looking.
She can't afford a professional photographer, though, so the whole process takes hours of tinkering with the lighting in Photoshop and iPhoto.
It takes her three-and-a-half hours to get everything on the site and looking the way she wants it to. Once Madge is totally sure that the lighting is perfect, she starts typing up product descriptions.
"Part of the porcelain collection," Madge mutters aloud as she types, "this striking piece mimics the shape of the Ratson bowl, and is..." She fishes for the right word, "embellished with an interlocking fleur-de-lis pattern. Yeah, that sounds good."
After she finishes with the product descriptions, Madge starts to organize her invoices and bank statements for her accountant. Though she does the bookkeeping herself, Madge pays an accountant to do her taxes.
Being self-employed can sometimes make things complicated when the government comes knocking, and Madge has never been all that great with numbers. All those forms and spreadsheets give her a major headache.
By 2:00PM, Madge realizes she hasn't eaten breakfast or lunch. So much for the most important meal of the day. She was so eager to get the computer stuff out of the way that she kind of blanked on everything else. She heads into the kitchen to fix herself a huge farro salad, with tomatoes picked fresh from her plot at the neighborhood urban garden.
As soon as she's eaten, Madge gets behind the wheel—the potter's wheel, that is. With all the business stuff done for the day, Madge can kick back and spend a few hours throwing new pieces. She makes a mug to warm up, then moves on to the tricky stuff: plates.
It's easy for Madge to lose track of time when she's throwing pieces, but at 5:30PM she's forced to call it quits. She teaches a community college class four days a week, from 7:00PM to 9:00PM, and she can't show up there covered in clay. Madge cleans up her workspace, then takes a shower and changes her clothes.
She eats dinner around 6:30PM: pasta, tomato sauce, and some mushrooms, also from her urban garden plot. Then she grabs her keys and heads over to the college. The pay's not great, but it's nice to have a steady gig to help her afford the occasional expensive glaze.
Tonight she's teaching her favorite subject: a low-fire glazing technique called majolica that lets you do all kinds of pretty, intricate patterns if you're skilled enough with a brush. The class seems enthusiastic, even if their plate finishes look a little like they were painted by toddlers.
"That's it, keep it up, Rodrigo," she chirps as she circles around the room. "Lookin' good, Julie!"
The class finishes at 9:00PM, and after answering a few final questions—some students just can't get enough pottery in their lives—Madge heads back home. She takes another quick shower, just to get the last bits of clay dust off, and spends the evening reading a book in bed with one cat on her lap and another on her feet.