Today we’d like to introduce you to Richard Munster.
Hi Richard, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I decided to dedicate myself to a craft-based practice through a tumultuous and meandering path. I have no regrets about that. I made my first bowl at the age of 15 in 1997. And I still have that bowl. My lack of interest in anything pre-scripted or stiff & formal landed me in high school art classes. That disposition also drove me to opt out of a college-oriented experience and explore the seemingly endless landscape of part-time work and part-time school. I could take the classes I wanted, quit the jobs I didn’t like, and have enough income to have a good time when the time called. I kept my hands in clay through those beautifully unstructured years, just a little garage or carport studio, enough to enjoy working but with no real focus on sales or exhibitions. Eventually, I landed a job at Valencia College in the art department as a studio & gallery technician, which was a turning point. Suddenly art & income came together. I learned a lot during that time. I met people that had made lives for themselves or were in the process of doing so from their art practice. Some via teaching, some as full-time artists, some as curators, art handlers, and museum education coordinators, the list grew longer the deeper I sank myself into that world. The prospect of turning the thing I loved into something that could sustain a life I wanted to live began to come out from behind the clouds.
By the time I finally decided that pursuing a degree was the thing to do, I had two children, an amazing partner, and a mortgage on a fabulous little house. The time I spent in the studios at UCF allowed me to dig deeper into my work. It gave me time to refine & define my work & my practice, as well as access to an even broader network of people whose lives were built around the field of visual art. I spent as much time in their ceramics & sculpture studios as I possibly could and squeezed every drop of juice out of the facilities and faculty that were present at that time. Upon graduation, I applied for & was awarded a studio at the Maitland Art & History Museums through their Artists-In-Action program. I spent two years there doing work, developing outreach & education programming, and developing what would become some lifelong friendships. I also planned my strategy for operating out of my home, where I am today.
It’s a much longer story than that. I skipped a lot of the juicy stuff. Angsty teenage years played a major role, as did my introduction to kiln building, a brief brush with blowing glass, and some terrifying incidents along the way that helped define what I didn’t want to do as well, which is important. Knowing what I didn’t want to do was a key player in many stages of my journey. I knew from an early age that I did not want to work in a big office with a phone, a desk, and a computer and the nauseating clickity-clack of a sea of typing, soft-talking people even if they were nice and gave me snacks. I also recognized that I did not want whatever I did for work to take away from everything I saw as more important, which was essentially just time well spent outside of work.
I have learned the value of persistence, vision, and dedication in my career and all facets of life. And I still feel that way. I remain aware of the balance that needs to be kept between work & not work. I teach courses at Valencia College’s east campus a few days a week. Ceramics is my forte, but I’ve led a few sculpture classes and taught a foundations course in three-dimensional design for the visual arts for several years. I make all the work I currently exhibit in my home studio. I have a gallery space in downtown Orlando at FAVO motel studios, which is a fantastic project. I now use that space as an outlet for local sales and a mechanism for elevating ceramic art in central Florida through occasional invitational or thematic group exhibitions of regional artwork, which I feel needs or should be shared with and seen by the public. I know that despite the long and winding road which brought me to where I currently am, I have only just begun. I have so much more to do and look forward to each new project, pot, exhibition, or adventure that is still to come. It’s an excellent place to be.
You wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been smooth?
It’s certainly been a journey. I don’t want to downplay any history by glossing over emotional, personal, or interpersonal struggles or hurdles, as they are an intrinsic part of any record of growth. Still, for now, the heaviest shocks and hurdles have passed. I’m sure I’ll encounter more along the way, but thinking back over all the rocks in the road, the initial jump made my stomach sink. Moving from a household budget that was built from steady & healthy work in the hospitality industry to positions that only operated in the sphere of the visual arts was brutal. Once I adjusted to the temperature of that new water, things became smoother, but it was surely a plunge into a cold fiscal bath.
Please tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others.
It’s easiest to tell people I’m an artist. It’s true, and locally, that career title has some framework that most folks are either familiar with or have an imagined perspective of. But within that niche, I am a potter at heart. I make pottery. And sculpture. Out of clay. I live in it. Mud on my hands and hair; dusty footprints from the backdoor tell the tale of where I’ve been around the house that day. There’s clay on the doorknobs most days. Which I clean. I live with handmade pottery in my cupboards and, on our table, In the garden & on the porch. Everyone in the house has their favorite pots, a great trick for seeing who does and does not rinse their cups & bowls out. I wash the clay off of my clothes and my body daily. At least twice a day in the long & balmy Florida summer. It’s a lifestyle. My artwork also has its own identity within the visual arts landscape, certainly within the scope of the central Florida region.
I fire all of my sculpture and pottery work in a relatively large wood-burning kiln. I designed and constructed the kiln a few years back. It has been not only a source of pride & joy to own and operate but the identity & aesthetics of my artwork are greatly influenced and defined by the labor-intensive and unique approach to making art that is required to work this way. I make all of my clays & glazes from scratch, much like a baker, for those unaware of pottery studio specifics. The forms I make are intentionally crafted to take advantage of the wood-firing process. In these sorts of kilns, the colors, patinas, and physical surfaces of each object in the kiln are a unique product of the clay directly engaging with flame and ash. The color & depth of each object’s surface depends upon the type of wood burned. The length of each firing and the material content of the clay used by the artist. I typically fire my kiln three times a year. I fire for around 48 with a small team, each of us taking shifts to manage and control the flame and temperature as the kiln slowly reaches its peak temperature. At the same time, ceramic arts has grown in leaps & bounds in Orlando over the years. I have had my hands in the mud, so to speak, for somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 years by now. The objects I produce are irrefutably my own. While my interests and intentions regarding what I choose to make my shift with each working cycle, the outcomes & products of my studio practice have developed a clear and readily distinguished presence that can only come from myself. It takes a long time to arrive at that place in the arts, so it feels good to be confident in my work, knowing it exists in a place I can call my own.
What makes you happy?
The fact that this question is easier than ever to answer these days makes me happy, and I am aware of how grateful I am for that. The ease with which I have come to recognize & embrace the Good Things is an incredible place to be. I have a beautiful wife and two exceptional children, so I’d start with them. Time together as well as time alone with each of them. My wife & I are both aware of the fact that time together, as well as time alone, are crucial elements to sustaining happiness & contentment of self. Also, my little dog Ruby, makes all of us happy. These are probably my closest kept sources of joy. On a more daily scale of allowing for or making room for happiness, music would probably top the chart. Loud, fast, short, long, hard, soft, live, old, new. Whatever is Good. Music is a primal mode of communication and has played a huge role in my path. The studio and my work while in that space are key players here. It is, after all, why I do what I do that work extends itself. However, through it, I have found friends, close & social, as well as the means to help all of us elevate ourselves and what we do by joining forces to create a community and personal economies around our respective creative practices. That feels good. And lastly, time spent outside. A good road trip, a day on the river, a walk in the woods, or a week camping in them. My wife is a consummate trip planner, and I am lucky to live with someone who not only shares that passion for adventure but actively works towards the next one every day.
Pricing:
- pottery items: $60 – $300
- sculpture work: $250 – $3500+
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.richardmunster.com
- Instagram: @richard_munster
- Other: https://linktr.ee/richardmunster
Image Credits
Headshot image photographer: Michael Luis Diaz @mike.ideas
