The Thread

For as long as I can remember, I have been imagining versions of my future.

When I was young, I would picture the woman I might become in almost ridiculous detail.

One of my earliest core memories is of me taking a dandelion and wishing I would grow into a beautiful woman with amazing boobs. (I am happy to say that wish did in fact, come true.)

I imagined having a cozy home of my own. I imagined myself in my late teens and early twenties, living independently and experiencing the world. I imagined moving to Florida and getting my degree. I imagined what I might look like, how I might feel, where I might live, even the kind of car I would drive.

I was always imagining possibility.

Recently, while thinking about why I am building J. Elaine Studio and what I actually want this company to represent, I realized there has been a thread running through this project and, really, through my entire life.

I am fascinated by the human ability to create.

We can imagine something that does not exist and then work to bring some version of it into reality.

An object. A piece of art. A building. A business. An experience. A life.

That doesn't mean everything we imagine will become real simply because we want it badly enough. Imagination is only the beginning.

Making requires action. It requires skill, experimentation, repetition, failure, adaptation, resources, other people, circumstance, and sometimes luck. Reality has a way of responding to our ideas, and sometimes what we eventually create looks nothing like what we first imagined.

But I think that's part of what fascinates me.

When I found ceramics, that fascination suddenly became physical.

I remember making a mug and being genuinely amazed by the fact that I had taken a simple ball of earth and turned it into something I would drink my coffee from every morning.

This didn't exist. And now it does. I made that.

Ceramics is one of humanity's oldest traditions of making. For thousands of years, humans have taken earth and transformed it into objects for eating, drinking, storing, celebrating, decorating, and expressing themselves.

Thousands of years later, I'm still sitting at a wheel, putting my hands into clay and asking the same basic question:

What can I make from this?

And now I realize I'm asking that question on a much larger scale.

J. Elaine Studio began as an idea in my head. Now I'm trying to make it real.

I don't always know what I'm doing. Things don't always work. Sometimes the clay collapses. Sometimes I get scared. Sometimes an idea I was completely convinced about changes the moment it encounters reality.

So I learn something. I adjust. And I make again.

Ironically, I don't think I could have understood the deeper reason I was building this company before I started building it. I had to begin. I had to make something before the process could teach me what I was actually trying to make.

And that's when I finally recognized the thread.

The little girl imagining incredibly specific versions of her future, the woman sitting at a pottery wheel turning earth into objects, and the artist trying to build an entirely new business around her creativity are all fascinated by the same thing:

How much of what we imagine can we actually make real?

J. Elaine Studio is one way I am experimenting with that question.

I want to see what happens when I take an idea seriously. When I act on it. When I continue acting on it consistently, even through uncertainty, failure, changing plans, and the days when I don't feel particularly inspired.

And I want to document that process honestly.

Not from the finish line, looking backward and pretending I knew where all of this was going.

From here.

While I'm still figuring it out.

Because maybe years from now, someone will be able to trace the thread backward and see what happened when I had an idea and decided to find out just how real I could make it.

And maybe they'll start wondering what they could make, too.

With love from the studio,
Jill