Many of us would be considered lucky to be decent at just one thing creatively, while local artist Lindsey Hampton has made a name for herself both as a ceramicist and a graphic designer. She splits her time between graphic design and ceramics, though mediums under the “design umbrella” inform her work, whether they be music, photography, or experimenting with different materials. 

For this artist, graphic design came first, and ceramics came later. She took up a six-week ceramics course as a hobby, and what started as “just something to do” evolved into a business selling ceramics both online and through local and international stockists such as Vancouver Special, Easy Tiger Goods (Toronto), and Coming Soon (New York City). 

Lindsey Hampton’s work reaches far and wide. She was recently featured in Creative Spaces, a publication by the founders of lifestyle brand Poketo. Her work has also appeared in Bon Appetit, Frankie Magazine, and the New York Times. In Vancouver, you may have seen her designs for the Vancouver Art Book Fair or for artist Andy Dixon. She has a following of over 30k on Instagram, though it was during IG’s “heyday” circa 2012 that Hampton established relationships with shops, brands, and other artists—before influencers, “artists and stores were trying to find each other, there was this beautiful time when people were excited to discover people...the stakes were low.”

One look through Hampton’s website and Instagram page reveals her signature ceramic design style; product shots cleverly display each piece’s function; the pieces pair unique colour combinations with speckles, squiggles, and other shapes. This style and her process, she says, developed through her work as a graphic designer. 

One instance where she was able to hone in on her personal style and fine tune what she liked was when designing show posters for Sealed With a Kiss, a local indie show promoter. Every poster was like a “singular piece of art…with very few parameters other than the show information. There wasn’t a lot to go off of.” Over time, she developed a style she liked. “In terms of getting to where I am now, it was about learning what I can through osmosis.”

Working almost entirely independently, Hampton has always learned by doing, and her current goal is to consciously try to “find the time to explore more,” returning to the “design aspects of ceramics rather than the production side.” For the rest of 2019 and into 2010, she’ll have some stock updates to do for shops and a holiday studio sale, but she looks forward to creating “one-off pieces, finding what works and what doesn’t work, and focusing less on how to make a ton of one thing.”