Editor's Note: Studio Potter gave free access to the online journal to 387 educational institutions, supporting their unexpected transition to remote learning in the spring of 2020. We invited educators, from all classrooms, regardless of how “classroom” was defined, to give their students a writing assignment and send us the top three for publication consideration. Selected student authors receive a personal one-year membership to Studio Potter. Alex Kraft, associate professor at the University of North Georgia, Dahlonega, asked her students to write comparative essays based on resources from the Studio Potter archives.
No matter what form of art a person may focus on, failure represents an integral step in the learning process of that artform. Without failure, nothing can be learned and knowledge cannot grow. For each artist, failure may come in various forms, whether it be a financial collapse or a creative failure. Whatever the failure is, all artists have experienced it in some way. Failure is non-uniform, it evolves, and as much as one would want to prevent failure, it is ultimately unavoidable. Without it, people could never grow personally or professionally. Failure has always been a part of my life. It manifested itself through lost internships, messing up while throwing on the wheel, or losing in art competitions. My downfalls felt like isolated experiences. It seemed as though others were exceeding expectations at every opportunity. This isolated feeling piqued my interest in understanding other artist’s struggles and how I might learn to accept my own.
