Making Instagram your own with Clare Unger.

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of sitting down, virtually, with Ceramic Artist Clare Unger to discuss her approach to Instagram. Thank you, Clare!

When talking to artists and craftspeople about Instagram, there often seems to be a love/hate relationship with it. It’s understandable, I feel the same way sometimes. I was motivated to have this conversation with Clare because when she talked about how she was using Instagram she talked about it in a different way, it was refreshing, and her Instagram was inspiring, engaging and growing in audience.

We cover A LOT in this conversation, including
- How Clare’s reason for Instagram has evolved
- Developing her Instagram ‘look’
- Consideration of the grid
- Composite images using the Layout App
- Cultivating an audience
- Dealing with expectations as an early career artist
- Consistency
- Her different approaches to stories, posts and reels
- What annoys and inspires Clare
- The importance of photography and stepping back from your own work
- Combining words and images, how Clare uses quotes
- Finding pleasure and fun with Instagram
- Making it part of her creative practice
- Not letting Instagram take over your life 😊

CLARE UNGER
Clare’s work explores the untold and undervalued stories that are contained in objects made by women in the domestic realm. She draws on her own history to explore these themes.
A collection of inherited handstitched textiles, including some made by her mother, inspired Clare to begin stitching. Clare remembers watching her mother cutting shapes from a collection of old linen, lace and other pre-used textiles and stitching them onto fabric to create applique designs of birds and flowers reminiscent of the handstitched fabrics that she had inherited, and that Clare now owns. Wanting to connect with this tradition Clare began to experiment with stitching while looking for ways to incorporate it into her ceramic practice. She developed a process of imprinting her own handstitched fabrics onto clay slabs to create a mold which allowed her to transfer the stitching design onto the surface of her work. Clare uses slab building techniques to construct all her work with an interest in folding, tucking and draping the clay to further enhance the connection to fabric.
After completing a Bachelor of Fine Art (majoring in Printmaking) at the University of Cape Town Clare took the opportunity to study ceramics at a community college in London and then a few years later after emigrating to Australia she continued her ceramic education at TAFE NSW completing a Diploma and then an Advanced Diploma of Ceramics.
The work that Clare makes is the result of everything that she has experienced. Clay, stitching and printmaking have come together in an organic and unpremeditated way to express her story. The concepts which drive her creative process add to the story of the humble domestic objects that she chooses to make.

Clare’s Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/clare_unger/

Clare’s website
https://www.clareungerceramics.com/#/

Layout App
https://apps.apple.com/au/app/layout-from-instagram/id967351793

Ceramics Congress
https://ceramic.school/shop/workshops/clare-unger-from-stitch-to-clay/

Clare mentioned the Instagram account of Sophie Moran as inspiration. I highly recommend Sophie’s account too.
https://www.instagram.com/sophiejanemoran/

Thanks for watching. To find out how I help artists and craftspeople you can visit me here.
Website https://www.thedaringartist.com
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/amykennedyceramicartist