An L.A. mom makes bold pottery at home that’s ‘Midcentury Modern meets ’70s surf wear’

Like most working moms, Los Angeles ceramist Emily Haynes has mastered the art of multitasking.

“Please excuse the boxes of popcorn,” she says with a warm smile, leading the way to her ceramics studio in the garage behind her Valley Village home.

“Our garage is the holding container for the Cub Scouts’ popcorn,” adds the den leader. Next to the stacks of popcorn, across from her potter’s wheel, a child’s kite rests next to a pop-up tent.

In this series, we highlight independent makers and artists, from glassblowers to fiber artists, who are creating and producing original products in Los Angeles.

Read more

It’s a scene that perfectly captures the diversity of her roles, further emphasized by a small table opposite her potter’s wheel where her sons Kiran, 7, and Arjun, 11, often work alongside her.

Here in the garage, steps from the main house where the boys are making paper airplanes and discussing Dungeons & Dragons with her husband, acclaimed illustrator and animator Sanjay Patel, Haynes steals time to throw her distinctive line of boldly graphic ceramics.

“The biggest struggle for me is balancing everything,” says Haynes, who has worked as an editor for Penguin and Chronicle Books and is now a copy director for Airbnb. “I often paint my ceramics from 9 to 11 p.m. after the kids have gone to bed.”

“My process is slow,” Haynes says. “I’m a fast thrower, but the painting takes a long time.”

For Haynes, who took her first wheel-throwing class at Choplet Ceramics Studio in New York when she was 25, ceramics “hit all of the buttons in terms of hands-on creation and glazing.”

“I loved it right away,” she says. “It is one of those endeavors where there’s always more to learn no matter how long you’ve done it. That’s what I miss now — going to class and connecting with the studio community.”

Five years after that first class — for her 30th birthday — her parents treated her to a wood-firing workshop with Scott Parady and Christa Assad at Anderson Ranch in Aspen, Colo. “I loved the process,” Haynes says of using wood as a fuel source. “After the class, [Parady] invited me out to help fire his wood kiln in Lake County, Calif., with a crew of Bay Area potters. From then on, I was hooked.”

A petal power jar, $280; blues egg drop fruit bowl, $230; and petal reflection vase, $260. (Emily Haynes)

The experience eventually influenced her move to the Bay Area, where she lived for eight years. “I felt that I needed to move on from New York City, which had been my home since I was 18,” Haynes says. “I craved a fresh start and more time and space to explore ceramics.”

Now 47, Haynes says her pottery practice has always been a balancing force in her life, alongside her other work, including writing the children’s books “Ganesha’s Great Race” and “Ganesha’s Sweet Tooth” with Patel.

But after her first son, Arjun, was born, Haynes stopped making ceramics for four years. “We lived in an apartment in Oakland, and I had a full-time job at Chronicle Books. It was all too much,” she says.

Kiran Patel removes a piece of painter’s tape from one of his mother’s vases.

“The underglaze paints are fun to use because they are so vibrant,” Haynes says.

Then, when the couple moved to Los Angeles in 2016, Haynes started taking classes at Berman Ceramic Arts in North Hollywood, and her pottery changed dramatically as she “absorbed the Southern California aesthetic” of her new home.

“It dovetailed with the creative life that I share with Sanjay,” says Haynes, who grew up in Minneapolis. “When I moved here, I felt like I needed to lean into ceramics. I thought, ‘How do I fit in in the maker world? What’s my aesthetic?’ I didn’t paint my vessels the way I do now until I moved to L.A.”

Inspired by the captivating Southern California landscape, she began decorating her ceramics with colorful, wavy sunset patterns and rainbows and clean lines and drips inspired by the Midcentury Modern architecture of L.A. The more she experimented with color and design, the more her unique style emerged. She describes it in California terms: “Retro Midcentury Modern meets ’70s surf wear beach vibe.”

A purple and red painted vase by Haynes.

(Jenna Schoenefeld / For The Times)

Haynes left Berman Ceramic Arts before the COVID-19 pandemic because she was making too many pots, and the studio couldn’t support her output. When the pandemic hit, she turned her two-car garage into a creative space for herself and her entire family. It was during that time that she invested in an electric kiln, built a slab where the kiln now sits and enclosed it in a shed. When the couple remodeled their home, they added an office nook for Haynes just off the kitchen in the main house, where she now paints her vases, bowls, coffee mugs and potbellied teapots.

“The only thing that is hard is that there is no transition between work and home, my children, dinner and all the other things,” she says of painting in her office on weekends, at lunch and after the kids go to bed.

Describing her home life as “an intermeshed creative family,” Haynes’ home, as a result, is an art-filled oasis. With her parents’ vintage Marimekko Kaivo textile in the entryway, her own ceramics representing beloved family members in the living room and her children’s artwork on the dining room walls, the house bears an uplifting quality that informs the lives of the couple, who both work from home.

Haynes’ colorful work has a retro feel featuring clean lines and Mod teardrops.

Haynes embellishes the bottom of each piece with a pilcrow, a paragraph symbol used in editing.

A kitchen window filled with miniature versions of Haynes’ ceramics adds to the home’s creative spirit, and in her office, a painting by Patel from his early days at Pixar hangs behind her desk as if to offer encouragement. “It’s a master study of a painting by Odd Nerdrum, a modern painter who is inspired by Rembrandt,” she explains. Clearly proud of his creative parents, Arjun offers a tour of Patel’s office, which is filled with wooden dolls, Hindu gods and goddesses, illustrations and his and his brother’s artworks.

Such admiration undoubtedly stems from his parents, who openly encourage each other’s creative pursuits. “Emily, the goddess who graces our home, breathes life into clay at her wheel,” Patel said in an email. “Each vessel bears her unique touch, boldly showcasing the alchemy of desert-inspired designs and sun-dipped glazes — fired in her kiln at a bajillion degrees into art that’s gloriously AI proof and rivals the stars. And that’s just her side hustle.”

Miniature versions of Haynes’ ceramics are on display in the pop-out window of her kitchen.

Haynes acknowledges challenges with work-life balance while juggling two sons, her full-time job with Airbnb and her ceramics. At the moment, she is content to keep Blue Pen Ceramics small, even though many of her pieces sell out when she updates her online shop. But for now, she is satisfied with the slow process of throwing pieces quickly and spending weeks at a time painting them. “I’m a fast thrower, but the painting takes a long time,” she says.

She reached this decision after a six-month stint as a full-time ceramist that left her feeling unfulfilled. “I wasn’t happy,” she says. “I did a ton of work, but it felt unbalanced and stressful because my family needed income. When I got the opportunity to have a full-time job, I leaned into that.” Now, as she transitions into this new role, she is optimistic about finding a better balance for her ceramics.

Haynes paints a vase in her office, surrounded by artworks by her children and husband, Sanjay Patel.

(Lisa Boone / Los Angeles Times )

Today, Haynes tries to replicate 70% of her most popular core patterns such as sunrise travel mugs, petal power vases and flower power butter keepers. She fires the white, more vibrant pieces at home in her electric kiln, while the darker ones go through a reduction firing in a gas kiln at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona. “It’s a chemical reaction that happens,” she says. “The iron in the clay gets pulled into the surface — it almost gets in the paint.” The remaining 30% of her vessels are “new designs or evolutions of existing patterns,” she says. “[It’s] fun for me to experiment, although I have a lot of not-quite-right patterns in my cupboards.”

“Emily has such a keen eye and sense of color that’s hard to find in the ceramic world,” says longtime supporter Philip Seastrom, designer and founder of the Los Angeles-based clothing brand Big Bud Press. “Her work is distinctive and truly her own.”

Many people approach ceramics as an outlet, says Haynes. But it’s fulfilling to be paid for your art and “share it with the world,” she says. “I get to be a part of the creative community in Los Angeles and connect with people who love my work and have it in their homes. For me, that’s the point.”

Haynes throws a pot on the potter’s wheel in her garage.

Haynes quickly throws a pot in her garage studio.