By Seth Smith Kauffman
Hello everyone! Nathan here. At the end of January, I welcomed Seth Smith Kauffman into my studio. He had previously reached out on instagram to profile me for his Goshen College class; Reporting for the Public Good. We talked for about an hour about my process, how social media sucks, and my journey to where I am today. Enjoy!
Tucked away along Main Street in Goshen is a small tan house. It is an unassuming and average house, however, in the back, in a revamped laundry room is a potter’s wheel, clay-stained walls, and an impressive assortment of mugs, vases, and pots.
Nathan Pauls, 24, is found in this laundry-turned-studio most evenings, usually between 6 and 10 p.m. “This is my main thing I’m doing,” said Pauls, “but sometimes it doesn’t feel like it, since I do it after hours.”
During the day, Potter Pauls, as he is known on Instagram, works as an office administrator at a local Mennonite church and maintains an apprenticeship with Justin Rothshank. Rothshank, a full time potter and artist, suggested he and Pauls apply for a $15,000 grant through Studio Potter magazine, which they were awarded in 2023. This grant is for one year and gives Pauls money to buy materials and a monthly stipend for his work.
“It’s a good thing because even though I’m doing work for someone else, it’s given me a level of guidance that I need right now,” said Pauls, “I could very much go out on my own but there is only so much that I know.”
Pauls’ love for pottery began in college, when he craved an escape from the stress and pressure of school. Taking an art class led to a ceramics course, which led to a ceramics major and eventually thinking about a career. Originally, he thought that having a career in pottery would be about throwing mugs all day, but in reality about 10% of his time goes to actually making products. “Once I started doing it as a career pursuit, I was like ‘wait a second, now I’m putting a bunch of pressure on myself,’” said Pauls.
The internal pressure of having to manage his own business, as well as external pressures from seeing other people’s careers and pottery on social media. “I was just looking at other people’s lives on Instagram and was doing the same thing with pottery… ‘Oh man I wish that I was that way and selling that many pots,’” he said.
Regardless of the pressure from running a business, pottery is still a mental escape for Pauls’. On his website he states, “my goal is to make pieces that reflect my inner subconscious”. To Pauls’ this means not planning his pieces as much and letting his muscle memory choose how the clay is shaped.
Pauls came to Goshen to attend Goshen College but originally is from Pennsylvania. In an article from Goshen Arts Council, Pauls reflects on staying in the Goshen area after graduating college. “[It’s] the reason I stayed in Goshen after graduation: the pottery community. It’s so strong here. I know I will feel much more supported starting in a much stronger community [than my hometown],” said Pauls.
One learning moment he won’t forget while living in Goshen was at an art show last summer, where Pauls had another potter approach him, observing the mugs at his booth. She commented that his mugs generally have large, thick lips, asking if he ever thought about the feeling of actually drinking out of them. He admittedly hadn’t paid close attention to it, instead focussing on the aesthetics of his creations.
“That’s another one of the reasons why I really like pottery,” Pauls said, “because it’s uniting so many different senses. When you go to the Chicago Art Museum and you’re looking at the really famous paintings you’re not like, ‘how does this feel in my mouth?’.”
Due to his conversation with this fellow potter, Pauls started adding a more gradual lip to his cups, in hopes of improving the overall experience of his mugs.
As I walked into Pauls’ studio space on a chilly night, the sun was setting. Pauls greeted me warmly with a big smile, large glasses covered the upper part of his face and a mane of curly, bushy hair was pulled back under a hat, ending in a ponytail. Wearing rubber clogs and an apron, he may have been ready to cook in a restaurant kitchen, but the brown clay stains on every article of clothing gave away his actual intentions (he explained to me later he in fact does not have pottery clothes, instead just wearing whatever he had on for the day).
While we talked, Pauls carefully grabbed clay and rolled it into small oblong nuggets. A bucket of water sat directly in front of him, ready to make the tough clay for pliable. Also, in front of him were 10 cups, already shaped on the potter’s wheel several days before. Over the course of 45 minutes handles were attached to the cups, creating mugs.
Mugs make up most of Pauls’ work but he doesn’t feel limited to just that shape. “I would say I’m in the late early stages of pottery”, Pauls said. “There’s so much I haven’t done yet”.
Scrolling through Pauls’ Instagram, there are obvious eras of Potter Pauls. Design elements change and stay consistent for 4 or 5 posts, before changing drastically. Recently, Pauls has experimented with larger cookie vases and putting drawings on them.
The mugs that Pauls put handles on while I visited his studio were quick creations, with the 10 of them being shaped in around 25 minutes. Pauls was proud of this fact saying it was because of his stint working as a production potter at Mud Love in Warsaw, IN. The mugs he was tasked with throwing everyday had to be up to specifications provided by Mud Love. It allowed him the experience of making the same type of pot everyday, which now influences his speed with throwing. “Ultimately I’m glad for that specificity [that Mud Love provided],”Pauls said. “It’s the classic learning the rules and then breaking them kind of thing.”
Pauls’ time at Mud Love gave him one side to being a professional potter, but now he is more focussed on his own personal work. With the help of Rothshank, Pauls creates outlines for every month, detailing what he would like to work on. Sometimes it is as simple as saying how many pieces he should throw for that month, and sometimes it’s more focussed on growing his business. In January, Pauls’ specifically focussed on reaching out to galleries and prepping for art shows this summer.
I revisited with Pauls a couple weeks after our first conversation and was again greeted by his smiling face. There were also new faces in his studio, specifically clay ones molded onto the mugs Pauls handled during our previous conversation. Faces have been a theme of his mugs, I found a post on his Instagram from 4 years ago containing them. Some themes may come and go for Pauls, but he has grown since starting on his pottery journey. He lamented on his obsession with sloppy aesthetics in college saying, “I’m realizing that I can still make pots that are not super perfect and have a little more character to them, but they can still be high quality.”
“The thing that I’m learning is that it’s very much a journey, which is super corny,” he said, “I’m not like Justin or other people which is a good thing because if I was them, I wouldn’t be me.”
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