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Website: http://bradfordceramics.com
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I’m Bradford. I recently completed my MFA from Tyler School of Art & Architecture at Temple University with a concentration in ceramics. I’m also a retired Army Veteran.
I completed my undergrad in the early 2000s, earning a BFA from the University of South Carolina, focused on ceramics. Outside of the traditional education system, I’ve also attended various military schools, artist residencies, and art and craft workshops and studied under various masters of their trade.
I served as an Artillery Officer from 2008 to 2015, deploying in support of Korea and Afghanistan. As a team, I was responsible for battlefield management, to provide infantry units freedom of maneuver across the battlefield. Sometimes this meant providing public relations and building infrastructure like wells, roads, and schools. Sometimes this meant blowing stuff up and engaging the enemy. It was both fun and terrifying.
Around the middle of COVID, I started to realize the negative situation I had let myself slide into. I had been retired from the Army for five years and had created an isolationist lifestyle chasing a false sense of security. I avoided personal interaction at all costs, so far as to even go to the grocery store at 2 am. At first, I was elated by COVID-19 restrictions, but I started to become uneasy seeing my friends struggle with the pandemic. This really opened my eyes to how far down the rabbit hole of PTSD and isolation I had slid.
I started searching for different avenues of therapy and healing outside of the VA and landed back into the ceramics world, my profession prior to the Army. I applied to and was accepted (Thanks Lauren) into a Post Bacc/Special Student program at Tyler.
What I hadn’t considered is that I was coming back to the support and engagement of a community. Military culture is based heavily around community, I hadn’t realized how detrimental to my own mental health the loss of that community was. At Tyler, I found more health and well-being benefits from the community than just education and degree. That’s why I sought out places like The Clay Studio following grad school. Long-term artist residencies heavily focused on community engagement. I’m honored, and a bit in disbelief that I’ve been accepted into their program. I’m very excited to see where the next three years take me.
As part of therapy for PTSD, I’d learned to approach ceramics and art-making as a form of community engagement and personal growth rather than a business. Now, I’m going full circle and bringing the two together. I’m creating a business for my creations – housewares and sculpture; and creating a community for veterans to grow and heal together through the lens of learning ceramics.
I play with mud, so the obvious answer is I’m a potter. I make housewares, things like coffee mugs, plates, and candlesticks. These are functional items that are durable and long-lasting, but also visually aesthetic and tactically exceptional for comfort and desire.
I also do large-scale sculptural installations, which allow me to express more conceptual ideas through my work. All of the installation work I do right now revolves around trauma, and for me is healing through clay. In these pieces, there is some subject of trauma moving on to a type of resilience, continuation, or maybe a breaking point. I express myself by breaking things and repairing them, or creating stress and/or anxiety through multitudes. There might be 75 or 100 of the same type of vessel supported by a single point to create tension or pressure.
The third product I’m formulating is community outreach in connection with and in service toward veteran groups.
Currently, I’m focused on learning how to run my own business. It’s not a hobby anymore. I’m going to devote all my time to it, so it needs to pay for itself. Also, learning how one business can support another, contracting for a nonprofit, so a community of business if you think about it.
I’m also working on R&D on the housewares line. I’m scaling down making it more accessible and asking design questions behind the aesthetics. I’m doing product testing and seeking out the knowledge to understand durability. I’m asking questions like, is this food safe? Legally, ceramic glaze needs to be void of cadmium or lead, but that doesn’t necessarily make it food-safe. It’s important to know things like, is the glaze going to hold up or absorb food particles and break down.
I’ve always been an imaginative person. I experienced a lot of escapism in childhood by spending time in my head and ignoring the world around me. Most creatives can key into that. Non-creatives can understand it, I think. Clay was the first material that allowed me to almost instantly make what my creative mind was thinking. With clay, I could tangibly make the objects occupying my mind. As my skills increased, I could make them out of anything, but clay was the first super malleable material that gave me the relief of the itch of my brain trying to express something that language couldn’t.
Then everything went wrong with it. It was the first material that pissed me off. That gave me the frustration and challenge to become better and continue learning so that I understood it in a more well-rounded way. When faced with a challenge, I need to figure it out.
My work revolves around trauma, specifically mine, and the ways I have come to terms with, accepted, and moved forward with my trauma and life. The hardest part is that when I’m speaking about my experience and how I perceive events, it may not be how someone else perceived or responded to their trauma or similar events. The ways I chose to recover don’t necessarily work for someone else. I have to remember to talk in terms that are transcribable from one person to the next to make a superior product. I need to speak to trauma and recovery, but not be so specific that it becomes flat and isn’t relatable to someone else.
I’m retired from the VA, so I’m in a fortunate position that not a lot of other artists experience. I don’t need to produce a product to pay the bills and I’m very thankful for that. It allows me to focus on quality of life and purpose rather than money making. I’m approaching this as a purpose rather than a need.
In the three legs of my business, I find different aspects beneficial. With housewares, I find comfort and aesthetic beauty in the familiar object we pour our coffee into every day. We often overlook those moments and how powerful they can be. I consider my favorite coffee mug akin to my baby blanket, just to be honest.
For larger-scale sculptures, I have a need to express an opinion or mindset that can’t be done with a mug or a plate. The artistic side of me needs to visually express opinions instead of saying them because language isn’t robust enough for the topic.
When thinking about Veteran outreach, it wasn’t coming back to ceramics that saved my life and helped me heal. It was the community of makers that were all there for a purpose, and interacting with other makers that did the most for me. Creating a monthly group event or class to check in on veterans and provide a sense of community for them will be a huge success. It’s something I found and it’s something that saved me. I want to provide the same opportunities for other veterans.
The veteran community has one of the highest rates of suicides, with government estimates of around 17 veteran suicide daily and private study groups showing that number to be closer to 40-44 veteran suicides each day. There is a ton being done by the government to support veteran mental health, but it’s not widely known. There’s this massive divide between some in the veteran community and the VA hospital or VA services. I would love to bring VA specialists, VA social workers, and or VA art therapists to the group, mix and mingle them with veterans teach them all how to make pottery alongside other Veteran Ceramic instructors, and see what magic happens.
All of this will be through The Clay Studio. We’ve submitted grant requests and the work will begin once we hear back. For anyone interested, they can subscribe to my email list for veteran support on my website to get updates about the program.
It sounds very hippy but being happy. Moreso, the root behind being happy. It’s realizing that just because something didn’t work out or you got broken, it doesn’t mean that’s the end. Through a level of resilience and perspective, there’s always something else.
Our culture is too binary. People often think, if I don’t get this my life is over or if this doesn’t happen for me I’m not going to get any more out of it. Life isn’t black and white, sometimes it takes a change in perspective to realize that.
I’m not sure I’m there yet. I hope that moment will help a veteran, even just one. I want to help him or her in the context of making them realize that they’re not alone and they’re not the only person struggling with demons in their head. I hope that, while I’m not going to be the person actually helping get them better, I can connect them with the resources to get better.
The way that I’m approaching the business by having a multiple-tiered layered effect makes me unique. Most ceramic artists make what they make, and to a degree, that’s what I’m doing. But I’m using one business, that of ceramic housewares, to hopefully feed another business, that of veteran community outreach.
I don’t know yet. I don’t have a lot of CNC experience and NextFab has quite a lot of that. I’m interested in working with NextFab to design a tool based on research I did during my Masters program. It would require a CNC to precision cut gears and ribs of plywood that I could assemble into a vessel form, wrap rope around, and then cover in clay. It’s a tool that creates internal support much like a rubber mold creates external support.
Stop looking at Instagram. Sure it’s fine to see what others are doing, but don’t make that your priority. JUST GO OUT AND DO SOMETHING. There is a time for everything. Instagram can be a good tool for thought and research – to find something interesting that you want to make and learn how they do it. It’s more valuable learning by actually doing it instead of watching other people do it.
Instagram might discourage people from creating if they see that their idea is already being done or done better. Just do it. So what if you fail? It’s actually better if you do fail because it puts you in a position to learn. Do it. Fail. Because if you’re not doing, you’re not learning.
The community – especially coming from academia where it’s all artisans trying to work toward masters with multiple disciplines. NextFab is the same thing, but instead of being in a theory setting it’s a doing setting. People here come from all backgrounds and experiences but they are all doing, sharing, interacting, and forming a hodgepodge community. That’s very powerful.
I enjoy studio practice. There are multiple ways to spend our time as makers. Some of it is research, studying, and understanding what others have done – and that’s beneficial. Another is looking – going to galleries and museums and manufacturing centers to see how others are doing things. But my favorite is doing and learning through trial and error.
My next step is moving into The Clay Studio and starting a long-term residency there. The first order of business is R&D on the houseware line with traditional plates, bowls, cups, and some unexpected things like umbrella stands, planters, butter cups, and various niche items.
I’ll continue interacting with the VA office and keep looking at other cities’ programs for outreach through the arts to see how they’re building their programs and hopefully apply that to Philadelphia.
Another focus is legitimizing business. Through the Artisan Accelerator program, I hope to become comfortable with business terms and practices, so hopefully, everything is funding itself rather than from personal living expenses.
I heard about the Artisan Accelerator program when I was interviewing for the residency at The Clay Studio. One of their executives suggested it after reading over my application. I looked into it and reached out to two people I know who had been part of the program. Through conversations with them, I had access to first-hand experience on how the program was and decided to apply.
Artists coming from an academic community have spent time learning techniques in a conceptual realm, but they don’t get taught business. Most artists make terrible business people – a trope that’s pretty accurate. When I found out that there was a business-focused program for artists, I wanted to be involved because this is not something that’s common. I think more people realizing that business and art can go together would lead to more successful creatives in the business world.
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