The Truth About The Clay Hole and AI

“Why would you ever use AI at The Clay Hole?”

This is a tough topic. I’m going to tackle it anyway.

I occasionally get asked why I use AI in my art business. Sometimes it’s by people trying to have a genuine discussion about it. Usually, it’s by flustered artists who vehemently believe that AI is one of mankind’s greatest evils, the end of art (and art jobs) as we know them, and that using AI puts anyone into a class of people who are ignorant, callous, avaricious, and morally bankrupt.

Come on, now. Let’s save the hyperbole for things like mundane tasks and minor inconveniences. That’s when it’s funny, and that’s when it’s useful.

Here’s the truth: my use of generative AI has become the main talking point for a handful of problem members I had to kick out. They find ways to spread their criticism as far and wide as they can. Some local studios have now picked it up and are running with it, too. It’s not a big problem, but it is a problem nonetheless for The Clay Hole and the community so many of us are working to build and enjoy.

I’m not under the illusion that a page full of my thoughts is going to change the minds of the loudest, most demanding, and most critical people. This isn’t for them. I’m writing this for me and for everyone else. Especially the people who don’t feel safe having a different opinion when a particular group is so loud and demanding about theirs.

Whoever reads this is allowed to think it through and land somewhere different from where I did. That really shouldn’t be a radical thing to say in an art community.

Anyways, art and AI.

As an artist myself, why do I utilize it and why do I “thumb my nose at the angst and outcries of so many artists who denounce it?”

There are actually a lot of different reasons I use AI in some of what I do here in my art business, all of which I’ve contemplated deeply. But I can’t share them without first saying and asking the following:

1. I understand that there are perils, risks, and dangers with AI. I understand that data centers use massive amounts of energy and resources. I understand that creative jobs are at risk, and that artists have real concerns about their work being used without permission. I understand that there is a lot of potential harm and even an existential threat that comes with the evolution of AI. I have heard these arguments over and over. I have weighed them. I still question it all, constantly. Hearing an argument and disagreeing with it are not the same as ignoring it.

2. Are you, the artist or hobbyist reading this, willing to put down your sword for a moment, hear what I have to say, weigh it honestly, and have a real discussion about it? If so, let’s dive in.

There are a few things you should know about me.

First, I don’t do anything (or not do anything) in my life just because the volume of the many gets loud. I have always lived dancing my way across a moral and ethical balance sheet that recognizes these few truths: there is good and evil in almost all things and all people; human nature is to fear the unknown; loud doesn’t mean right; egos are usually fragile; and the best path forward always lives in extrapolation.

Second, I do my best to do no harm in this world.

Third, I do my best to better the world.

For those last two, I can only claim I’m doing my best because at the end of the day I am a deeply flawed human. I make mistakes, I calculate incorrectly, I misread people and situations, my ego sometimes rules the moment, I have triggers, I have emotions, and… Despite my best efforts to always do my best, sometimes I just get it wrong.

Back to AI, art, my art business, and my relationship with artists.

I own and operate The Clay Hole. Our official name on the sign is “The Clay Hole Pottery & Art Community.”

It is a 10k-square-foot mega pottery and art studio here in Utah.

I spent what was required to build a community pottery studio that could handle 400-600 active potters as well as a constant flow of outside artists coming to teach both pottery workshops and non-pottery art workshops.

I admittedly decked this thing out to the nines, more than I probably had to. I made sure it was a place people would want to come and play, come and escape, come and process, come and balance themselves, come and find community… All the good things that a space like this can bring.

Building something like that comes with artist jobs and lots of them. At 40% capacity (as of writing this), I currently have 22 people on my team.

That’s at this one location. Only 40% capacity.

By the time we’re at full capacity, we will easily have more than 30 people on our team.

Ahem. I do plan to expand this. It’s too good in the lives of too many people not to expand it. In fact, if all goes well and I can get investors, I plan to eventually expand The Clay Hole to 300 locations (both bigger and smaller) across the country.

Now the fun part, and why I want to do that: if we reach that goal and this location represents our average-size facility and market, that means The Clay Hole could one day create between 5,000 and 10,000 artist jobs and give 100,000-200,000 people a place at any given time to come experience what everyone here has gotten to experience already.

The first part is done. The studio is built. The foundation for the rest is in place.

Oh, and I used AI to help me do it.

On our website, we have an enormous collection of free resources, not just for our members but for the entire pottery world. Hundreds of free pottery lessons and guides, articles, helpful tools/calculators, and comprehensive, curated data on glazes and clay all brought together in one place… Envisioned by me, instructed by me, created by me, with the help of AI.

Here at our studio, we have some incredible hands-on tabletop resources:

Our Glaze Bible doesn’t just feature sample images of our 650+ glazes and 150+ underglazes. Every single one has a QR code that takes our members deeper into understanding that product: which clays it works best on, other glazes it plays nice with, common struggles and their solutions, in-depth application instructions, and more. The Glaze Bible also includes dozens of pages of education, guides, and tools our members can flip through. Not just to see what their ceramics might look like, but to better understand how and why they get those results, if that’s how deep they want to go.

Our Book of Molds doesn’t just show a catalog of our nearly 150 unique slab molds that our members can use here at the studio. It shows examples of what finished pieces of pottery made with every single mold might look like. It shows beautiful glaze jobs, shelf locations, recommended clay amounts, difficulty level, and more.

We have our Glaze Finder tool, which lets our members type the name of any glaze and immediately (visually) see exactly where that glaze is on the glaze shelves. Our Mega glaze tool lets our members filter their glaze choices down by membership level, translucency, texture friendliness, color, sheen, and more.

We have The Clay Hole University, an online resource for our members and all potters that has detailed instructional pottery guides covering hundreds of topics, along with curated videos from other potters, all in one place. It also features free quizzes for every single guide so that potters can test themselves on what they’re learning. All free. All envisioned by me, curated by me, instructed by me, created by me and my team, with the help of AI.

We have our new member welcome booklet, which is an incredible resource for new and experienced potters alike to help them navigate pottery and The Clay Hole. It has 56 really beautifully organized and well-thought-out pages to help those who join us here. Also free.

Must I go on? Sure.

We have a tool that helps potters learn how to tap center before they sit down at the wheel. We have a firing calculator to help our members calculate firing costs for their pieces easily and accurately.

We have a tool that lets our members (or anyone) type/scream out their frustrations, free of judgments, without the need for filters, and have a humorous and uplifting experience doing so that helps them let go of whatever is upsetting them.

We let our members (or anyone) digitally destroy our glaze wall because… Why not? Our glaze wall is the most guarded, most meticulously kept, most rule-bound part of The Clay Hole, and that can be a bit frustrating, especially to free spirits.

We have a page that lets our members make an offering to our kiln god to protect their pottery in the kiln. It’s built completely to promote positivity and self-acceptance, and to let members have a little fun watching our physical representation of Icarus (in the studio) come to life (online) once the offering is submitted.

There are dozens of other cool things I’ve done with it, but you get the point. All free for everyone (not just my members). All envisioned by me, curated by me, instructed by me, created by me and my team, with the help of AI.

And the website is just one of many things I’ve used AI to help with.

I’ve used it to help me figure out where to shift money, save money, and spend money so that I could afford to hire new artists in new positions.

I’ve used it to help me structure employee resources where they can get help, report problems, or learn more about how to deal with the same things I have struggled with in a community art space.

I’ve used it to help me be more profitable so that I can keep everyone’s jobs more secure.

I’ve used it to help me resolve common member concerns that I couldn’t quite figure out how to tackle myself.

I’ve used it to help me know what to do when members were going through hard times and I didn’t know how to be there for them.

My son and I used it to create a virtual studio tour so that everyone who wants an in-depth look at this place can have one.

And yes. I’ve also used it to generate hundreds of images, replace the need for some photography, render fun videos, and the like.

And that is the part of my AI use that so many artists get hung up on.

I get it. It sucks to believe that what you want to do for a living might be affected, jobs might be unavailable, your creativity might get stolen, and the human soul that is art might be in danger of disappearing. Those are all valid fears and concerns. As an artist myself, I empathize with you in feeling those feelings.

Now let me tackle my reasoning for using generative AI in my life and art business. These are the five reasons I keep coming back to. I stand by my reasoning, I reserve the right to change my mind, and I hope we can have a real conversation about them here today.

1. Placeholders and mental exhaustion. I didn’t have investors to fund creative, planning, or build-out teams when I conceptualized and built The Clay Hole. I had to handle every idea, every detail, every plan, every dollar spent, every corner of the studio and website, every administrative task, every license and permit, every legal matter, every form of advertising, every member program, every member resource, and every next move, all while navigating my own very real learning curve. It was exhausting and depleting in a way that’s hard to explain.

   So many of the things I used AI for, such as bathroom signs, certain web graphics, and our original member welcome booklet, were always meant to be placeholders. AI helped me keep building what I wanted to build while holding onto what was left of my sanity. Without it, I might have given up or taken an easier route that never became what I set out to create.

   I am a photographer. I am an illustrator. I have these skills, so why not just do it myself? The answer is mental exhaustion. Having the skills didn’t mean I had the time or mental energy to use them while handling everything else it took to build this place. I simply didn’t have it in me. Now, as I find the time and energy, I’m replacing those placeholders, one at a time.

2. Affordability. The reality is, I simply don’t have the resources to hire professional artists and photographers for every resource I make here at The Clay Hole. Trying to do so would put a serious strain on my finances and leave the company (and the people who rely on it for income) in a much more vulnerable position, if not now, then when that rainy day or year inevitably comes.

   Sometimes the choice is between using AI to help me make a resource and not making it at all. Sometimes it’s a question of which work I can afford to hire out and which work I need to handle another way. Those are real decisions with real consequences for the people who work here.

3. I don’t like using the real people who support me here at The Clay Hole in constant marketing or as the featured images for content and tools that I release. It creates more negative dynamics than positive ones, more friction than not, and it’s not what they signed up for when they joined The Clay Hole. While we have a few well-placed images on our website of real people enjoying the place, we reserve sharing images of real people doing real pottery for our Class Photos, Member Show & Tell, and Member Spotlights. While many members wouldn’t mind at all being featured across the website, I have to be way more mindful of the ones who wouldn’t. And that’s where AI-generated images fill a very important gap for me.

4. “The Problem of the One and the Many.” Which projects do I hire a photographer or illustrator for now, and where could using AI help me put more resources toward the jobs and community I’m trying to build? The possibility of creating dozens and eventually thousands of jobs matters to me. So do the jobs that already exist here. That is why I weigh these decisions against my long-term goals and what I believe our future can be.

5. I do not fully get behind the water consumption argument as an end-all-be-all. AI’s resource use deserves scrutiny. So do the alternatives. If we’re comparing the impact of AI with the impact of hiring someone, the equipment, infrastructure, energy, and water belong on both sides of that comparison.

   The water usage problem becomes worrisome and immoral to me when AI companies deplete local watersheds or their wastewater harms the environment. The fight, it seems to me, should be against companies using water irresponsibly, greedily, and recklessly. Pointing out that AI uses resources doesn’t, by itself, tell me which choice is more responsible.

I come from a family full of artists. I’ve had family members get up and leave the dinner table over my use of AI.

I’ve had potential employees refuse to work here over it and avid potters refuse to consider creating ceramics here.

I’ve had artist friends bring it up. Some have had rational conversations about it; others are too flustered to even converse.

People are allowed to disagree with me. But turning that disagreement into a reason to shame everyone who thinks differently is something else. That is the part I’m pushing back on.

So, why do some people put so much energy into spreading this around the community, anyway?

I think part of the answer is that it’s easy. AI is currently enemy #1 for a lot of artists. It’s an easy way to sow discord with people in our pottery community without sounding petty or scared. It’s a simple low-cost way for them to rally against a common enemy, which is apparently a great way to make a friend. Or so they say.

Sigh. They’re all gonna do what they’re gonna do and say what they’re gonna say.

That doesn’t mean the rest of us have to let them set the terms of every conversation.

We are artists, sure.

But we are also humans. All of us. Humans with all of our flaws and insecurities.

I ain’t all that.

You ain’t all that.

We ain’t all that.

I mean that as kindly as I can say it. Being an artist does not make anyone better than anyone else. It does not automatically make someone smarter, more righteous, more moral, more evolved, or more right than other humans. In my experience, the faster artists learn that, the happier their lives tend to be.

Being an artist does not make what a person declares true or right, even though many in the community can be extremely loud about things. Doing research, weighing the data, and making informed decisions will always earn my respect much faster.

You can have a deeply held conviction about AI. You do not get to declare the conversation over for everyone else.

If I know anything from decades in the arts, the art world is full of some of the absolute best, most accepting, most incredible people. It’s also got some of the absolute most toxic, overbearing, and judgmental people.

I know which side of the artist divide I like to hang with. I know who I like filling my building with. I know who I like sitting down next to while working on my own art. I know who fills my cup at the end of every art session.

If knowing who I want around me, and supporting those people, and using AI from time to time to help me with it means I and my community are on the outside, so be it. Being on the outside my entire life has taught me that that’s almost always where I’d rather be. This issue is no different.

If you disagree with me, you still have a place in this conversation. I expect you to give that same space to the people who disagree with you.

I am one who believes that all of our studios existing side by side in more harmony would only help all of us and the local pottery scene grow. We each have different business models, owners, patrons, ways of doing things, lessons & structures, locations, rules, and the like. Plenty of people who join The Clay Hole fall in love with pottery and go find a quieter, quainter studio to work in because that’s what they want. I’m also not everyone’s cup of tea. I’m okay with both those things. I just want people enjoying and doing pottery, wherever that is.

I’m not saying that in passing. I feel so strongly about this that I list all of the other local studios on The Clay Hole website in a fair comparison in our main menu. Elsewhere on the website, I share locations and factoids about all the local studios in a positive light, including those who have actively badmouthed me, my business, or this AI dynamic. I have no interest in spreading anything but a love for the craft.

I encourage all studio owners, potters, and artists who have been declaring The Clay Hole and its use of AI the worst thing since unsliced bread to stop by and meet me for yourselves. See the place for yourselves. See our community for yourselves. Maybe you’ll realize that it’s just another place in the valley that people come to escape, have fun, meet their people, and put their hands in real, actual mud. Just like they do at any other pottery studio.

Nearly everything has both its dark and its light sides. Its yin and its yang. Its evil and its goodness. Its potential for growth and its potential for destruction. Me, you, our studios, our people, our beliefs, our passions, our paradigms, and yes, even AI…

There are many great and wonderful parts of AI. We all know the dark sides of it, too. Judge me on how I use it, not on the fact that I use it. That’s all I ask.

Dan Pearce | Founder, The Clay Hole

Keep up with the studio: Instagram · TikTok · Facebook · YouTube

About the author

Dan Pearce

Founder of The Clay Hole · Draper, Utah

Dan Pearce is an author, artist, and the founder of The Clay Hole in Draper, Utah. Before pottery, he spent a decade as one of the most-read bloggers in the world. His blog, Single Dad Laughing, ranked #2 among personal blogs worldwide and drew more than a billion reads before he retired it in 2020. He has published six books, including the memoir The All-Important, Well-Fed, Giant White Man, and built an audience of more than three million followers. He has also worked professionally as an animal artist, illustrator, body painter, and poker player. Not in that order, and yes, all of those are real.

In 2022 he launched Dan Pearce Ceramics, known for one-of-a-kind pieces he has never once duplicated, and every sale went toward building The Clay Hole: 10,000 square feet, more than a million dollars invested, and a community of hundreds of members built from the ground up to put people first. Of everything he has made in twenty-five years of chasing creative work, he considers the community the best of it.

Read more ↓ The full story, wins and faceplants included →