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Meet Willi Eggerman

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Willi Eggerman.

Willi, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I moved to Denver from the farmland of Southwest Missouri, “just for the summer” when I was 19. The bluest, sunny skies and the broadest idea horizons I’d ever encountered are why I never left.

I also took my first ever art class at Red Rocks Community College after coming to Colorado. The class was with clay. I was actually dismal at throwing on the wheel, which was the focus of this class. Still, there was something about that material. Clay was this amazing yielding substance. I did take a second class, this time hand-building with it. That clicked. And then I didn’t touch clay again for 10 years. 🙁

I had moved to Boulder and dropped out of school till I decided what I wanted to study. I worked in an array of retail stored and restaurants for several years, did a long driving tour of the US with some friends and after one ski season in the mountains, I came back to my Boulder. In 1982, with a business partner, I opened a small bakery on 9th Street called TREATS. I worked a lot. I got married. Again, I worked a lot. Then I bought out my partner in the bakery and worked more still. Early mornings and long hours are the life of a baker, especially one who also owns the business as well as bakes. I started planning my escape.

I’m a hard worker but finally, that was enough. I sold the bakery ten days before our lovely daughter, Laura was born on Aug 10 of 1986. Treats became a good memory and if I ever wanted to bake again I would do it in my own oven. In September I came back to clay. I took classes at the Pottery Lab in Boulder and I fell in love with clay all over again.

Clay can be enjoyed at every skill level and has so many facets of interest. Working with clay has enough steps in its process that I could move forward without criticizing myself (much) during each phase. Working in a series, one tries to make the next piece better than the one before. There is still a critical eye in lots of ways, but you are moving on and giving yourself another chance with each piece. Judgement and fear are the death of creativity and I have excelled at judging what I do very harshly. So moving on to the next and leaving the harshness behind was and is a great practice for me. No one piece is the be-all, end all. Instead, I’m thinking: Where are you headed with that? What’s the next step? What is your goal?

Clay’s plasticity allows three-dimensional expression in any size from tiny to huge. Its surface creates still more options: drawing or painting on that surface, decisions of color and finish on every part of it you’ve made. The mix of all this is endless. In the early days, I didn’t have a clue about all of that. I didn’t know what made up clay, or glazes. or all it offered. I just loved how I felt when I worked with the medium. What a lovely thing that clay draws you in while you’re naive of all of the chemistry and such. It just encourages you to manipulate it. It takes its shape from your brain and your hands. There are so many ways to use it joyfully, blissfully, that you end up learning more and more as you go along without even knowing you are. So, I followed the steps of clay, followed them again, over and over for 33 years now.

After Laura arrived, I had a supportive mother-in-law who was just itching to watch her granddaughter for a couple of hours each week. My husband was available most Saturdays so I could “clay” much of the day. He brought Laura to me at “lunchtime”. He is a very supportive husband! Back in those days, The Pottery Lab had a lockbox on the door so one could practice at all hours without supervision. I was free from about 11 pm till 2 am, between my baby’s feedings.

In the middle of the night, I had peace and quiet to seriously go about gaining skills on the pottery wheel. I would come home tired yet satisfied, rock and feed my child and go to bed delighted with my day. This was quite the opposite of a baker’s day, going BACK to bed at 3 am. To get more time in the studio I traded childcare with a dear friend one morning per week, then two a week, till we were at whole day trade when the kids were three and four.

I measure most ‘recent’ memories in time by my child’s age. She is now 33, so it’s easy to remember how long I’ve been really working with clay full on. When Laura was two, I joined the Boulder Potters’ Guild as an apprentice. I cleaned in exchange for studio and firing priviledge. I learned so much from the potters there, where I’m still a member and on the Board of Directors now. These potters were generous. From them, I learned to fire kilns and make glazes and how to sell my work. I took classes and workshops through the Guild as well and learned from some amazingly talented and renowned potters.

When my daughter was a junior in high school I went back to the University of Colorado to take sculpture and clay classes, as well as drawing and painting. I learned from the professors there more of the breadth of ceramics than I hadn’t been interested in before. I had concentrated on functional work. There I got interested in expanding into sculpture and thought more about concept. By then, I was already teaching throwing and hand-building classes at the Guild, I did not want to teach at a university so decided that an MFA wasn’t the direction I would go.

I continue to take classes and workshops in clay and art yearly. Many organizations in Colorado bring top-notch educators in and it is my favorite way to spend time, learning from the masters in ceramics or other mediums. I take painting classes and encaustic classes and hope to start some metalsmith classes next year. I’m a maker of the first order, so I will be learning and artistically making till the day I die. My sculpture is starting to incorporate more materials than just clay.

I teach quite a bit now. I desire to inspire that creative flow during the process that culminates in a sculpture, I want to help build my students skills with the material so they can get what they want instead of taking what they get. I usually have an apprentice in my studio for most of the year. They have been a great help and great companions as well. My dogs are also in the studio and beacon me out of my focus for ball time and snuggles.

For the last 15 years, I’ve been doing both sculpture and functional work. My highly decorated or carved tableware is intended to bring joy to your every day through its use. It can elevate your experience through the senses of touch and sight and through emotional connection as well. I love for my work to uplift the moment, the day. Tall order, but so fun to think about this as I make, that each piece will be going to someone’s home and life.

My sculpture can be a bit intense, sometimes a little dark, and sometimes it’s just quirky or humorous to me. I make it for myself with no thought for anyone else. It feels a little selfish which is fine. I love the challenge of the human form and tend to explore the mix of botanical elements with human elements when I sculpt the figure. Our cycles of birth or emergence, growth, seeding, and death play out in both. Important for many years in my work is the seed pod, which represents woman and motherhood to me.

I tend to work with my own deeper topics when I switch gears to sculpt, incorporating what’s going on in my life or what’s swirling below the surface. Sometimes I don’t know why I’m sculpting something in that moment and discover it later on in the finished piece. An example of this is ahead sculpture I made from earthenware that ended with a round cavity in the throat and a hollow ball placed back in that space. Certain for me, there was a block in what I was able to say at that time and it manifested in my sculpture. I made what came to me and felt the sculpture needed.

I’m learning to trust that voice and let it take over while I’m sculpting. I don’t want to explain the meaning of my sculptures but instead, let people connect to the meaning they find. People can manage their own thoughts and feelings without my help and if the sculpture touches the same part of them or a different one, that’s great.

Right now I sell my work online through my website WilliEggerman.Com, at my studio by appointment, at the Boulder Potters’ Guild Shows and many regional art shows.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I’ve battled anxiety my entire life and it has been a bit of a roadblock for me selling my own work. Of course, when I was younger I didn’t know that I had anxiety. In my clay career, I believe I delayed applying to shows thinking I wouldn’t be able to handle it. However, I can do it, I’ve pushed myself into working through the discomfort, and have gotten better at orchestrating how I do shows so I make it work. It’s still a bit of a challenge.

I’m happier meeting the people who buy my artwork than trucking it to a gallery, where I don’t have that connection. That’s my reward. However, I must say that working by myself, in my own studio, is fantastic. I’m very lucky to have the studio I work in. I started with a wheel on a shower curtain to get my home studio started and have now taken over the entire walkout basement.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I don’t think I’ve been especially lucky in my business but not unlucky either. I have always worked very hard and I think that is how I’ve gotten to this place of being able to make my living with clay. People are leapfrogging into this business with social media and selling all over the world. I think I’ve created a business that reflects my style of hard work.

However, I am very lucky in my life with my family. My husband and daughter are so supportive of me and my art. I don’t see many husbands putting in as much time or effort as Mike does to help me. He says he’s just the guy with the truck, but he has championed my art in so many ways. From the very beginning, he was helping me get the time to do art while raising our daughter and now he helps me to set up and break down shows. He fabricates things from metal for me and makes displays. He’s amazing.

Pricing:

  • My work ranges from $20 to $2500

Contact Info:


Image Credit:
All images by Willi Eggerman

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