One might call Darren Mayner a jack of all trades – or at least a jack of all magnitudes.

The senior ceramics student flirted with small-scale and metalwork and large-scale sculpture before uniting with his one true love. Mayner knows one thing to be true as an artist: we really are living in a material world with a lot of choices.

“Jewelry was a little bit too small, sculpture was a little bit too big and ceramics was just right,” Mayner said.

While he still dabbles in other mediums, the California native loves the instant gratification of working with clay.

“Ceramics is extremely responsive. You see your product take shape first, then the process comes after that,” he said.

After working with unforgiving textiles like metal and steel, he feels less pressure on the wheel.

Artist Darren Mayner finds pricing his work difficult due to the amount of time it takes to make even a small piece. Photo by: Lily Price

“Clay can be recycled over and over again,” he said. “If you’re unhappy with the product, you smash it, dry it out, wet it down and start over again. You can be very experimental with forms and shapes. I think you can have more fun.”

Without the burden of cumbersome gadgets, Mayner can manipulate his work on a more personal level.

“People who have worked in steel for years will have thousands of dollars in tools – grinders, saws, band-saws, horizontal band-saws, cutting torches, plasma torches, acetone – everything needed to create a finished product in steel is a garage full of stuff,” he said. “With clay, it’s only your hands between the brain and the material.”

Unlike some other art forms, Mayner has found that selling functional ceramic pieces can make getting his money’s worth a little tricky.

“It’s a strange balance between craftsmanship and production speed,” Mayner said.

As a student scraping by financially, he understands the reactions to pottery sale prices. He also understands, however, that time is money, and even Shakespeare had to get paid.

“You can’t spend that much time [making a cup] because you know you’re going to sell this cup for no more than twenty dollars,” he said “It’s like you’re throwing your time away – but at the same time, you want to create something that is good.”

Mayner was quick to point out the irony of a starving artist slaving for hours, creating something unique, a piece of themselves, only to sell it to someone who resides within the slim percentile of Americans who can pay for it.

“No artists can afford that stuff that we create,” he said. “We rely on this alien group of people – people with stable jobs and disposable income. As sad as it is, art is a luxury.”

Mayner admits that, like most youth trying to make their way into the art world, he sometimes questions the merit of it all.

“Sometimes we [art students] have a complex about ourselves. It’s an issue I struggle with. Sometimes I think, ‘Why are we going to school for this? We’re not helping anyone, we’re not doing anything good,’” he said. “But, if you can snap out of it, you realize that art needs to happen. And why not? For practical concerns, no, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But if we all followed practical concerns, the world would be unexciting, uninteresting. We would all be accountants.”