Lunchtime Lecture: Summer Balcom

This week, I attended Summer Balcom's Lunchtime Lecture. She is a Richmond based ceramics artist who owns a business where she sells her work. In her lecture, Summer talked about how her work had developed since high school and how she went about selling her work. During her time in college, Summer found that she liked working with the medium of clay. After college, she became a high school art teacher and eventually picked up wheel throwing again during virtual school. She made mugs that she decorated using the sgraffito technique that she had learned in college. People wanted to buy them, and she was eventually able to work full time making and selling her work. Her work is inspired by tattoo imagery, but she also says that the fact that she sells her work also inspires it's look. For example: people tend to buy her colorful works which is why she has transitioned into doing more of that rather than just black and white. During her talk, Summer said that one of the most important things to do when working as an artist is to network and get to know other people in the community. She said this was important for her journey because she had been able to sell at many venues and have her work at a show because of her ties with different VCU professors.