Life & Work with Eli Zemper

Today we’d like to introduce you to Eli Zemper.

Hi Eli, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
In March 2022, after 6 months of converting my garage into a ceramic studio, I launched a mobile clay workshop business called Curiouser Clay. The business model was in response to what I had seen in the previous two years: rampant depression, disconnection, and increasing polarization where people were only interested in hearing their beliefs mirrored back to them and hanging out with others who shared those beliefs. In a bid to help my rural community and the surrounding communities regain some personal and community mental health (which was difficult because all of our art centers had closed), I decided I would pack up everything people would need to do a two-hour clay project, take the materials to them in the community, do the workshop, and then bring everything back to my garage studio to fire and glaze. This kind of “assisted art” began my inquiry into how to help people through co-creating art. Since that beginning, I have conducted workshops for over 1800 people; I opened and then 6, months later, closed a storefront (I learned that I am much more interested in meeting people where they are and doing art than sitting in a gallery waiting for people to come to buy things). I have deepened my focus on making workshops that serve many different kinds of community members. This past year, I have been an artist in residence at St Louis Center, an intentional living community for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Working with this community is the highlight of my week, and through working with them, I am learning more about who I am and what I want to accomplish in this season of my life. The resident artists I work with at St Louis Center teach me joy, compassion, grit, and determination. Their beliefs and mannerisms creep into my daily actions and words. When presenting new materials or projects, Linda’s (one of my artists) first reaction is often, “Sure! Why not?” This enthusiasm and zest for trying new things is infectious, and I am surprised and happy to notice that these words are becoming my daily expressions.

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, has it been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I always love a good movie montage. How easy it is to frame a specific process or collection of feelings to cherry-pick what we want the story to be. The road to inventing new things (yourself, a business model) is only smooth for some. I could do a “greatest hits” montage of the last two years, and it would show how a garage has become a functioning studio. One thousand eight hundred people came, creating 1800 new expressions of things that didn’t exist. It would show the excitement of completing a business boot camp, being awarded artist grants, and finding and preparing a new storefront space. It would show a ribbon cutting, a flurry of holiday warmth and excitement in workshops in the community and my own space. I could also show the opposite montage, the perils of choosing between doing one more thing for the business or putting that task down to spend time with the family. It could show the dwindling bank account as purchases are made to support a new shop, borrowing from a retirement fund to cover my mortgage because the projections of how many people would visit the storefront were not correct, the disentangling of my ego and the “failure” of the storefront, finding extraneous things in the house to sell on Craiglist to be able to pay the monthly household bills, the guilt that I felt/feel about asking my family to make sacrifices in time and resources so I can pursue being a creative business owner. Each is an accurate montage of the last two years—so much personal growth and more room (for all of us) to grow.

Let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a teaching artist. I was a high school teacher for 26 years before I started Curiouser Clay, and during that time, I pursued a lot of creative angles to help my teaching. In those years, my students and I investigated ethics and English through various hands-on projects, including making movies, planting and running a greenhouse, and designing experiences, including interactive games, radio plays, and art podcasts. My current work with clay is another medium I am using to help people explore whatever we/they are working on. In my work with the larger community, the use of clay may help people take a moment and relax; it may help them connect with others and find some peace in creating something in the company of others. For my work with the artists at St Louis Center, clay helps with fine motor and social skills. For everyone, it links to the happiness and inquiry that can happen when you have the materials to build something.

I am most proud of my ability to design and support these inquiries. There is a book that one of my favorite organizations, Passionworks, puts out that has a chapter devoted to this experience design concept. They call it “The Waitress Doesn’t Eat Your Food,” and I love the reminder. Essentially, a waitress’ job is to hand you a menu of choices, make some adjustments for your preferences with those choices, take your order, and serve your food. We would never expect her to sit down and eat the food she brought us. In a clay workshop, I don’t interfere in your project- but I do support you in what you are doing. This analogy captures what I have spent my teaching career striving to do. There is beauty in setting the environment, anticipating and asking what people need, providing those things, and then being attentive to what people need as they go through their experience without taking over/interrupting that process. I am most proud of my ability to facilitate participants’ experiences so they can make personal discoveries. As a facilitator, I learn from their investigations as long as I stay out of their way!

Contact Info:

• Website: curiouserclay.com
• Instagram: @curiouserclay
• Facebook: @curiouserclay

Image Credits
Eli Zemper