After burning out making video games, she quit and found bliss at the potter’s wheel

Sitting with Ana Cho within the pottery studio behind her Eagle Rock bungalow, it’s laborious to imagine the relaxed ceramist as soon as endured a piece grind so irritating, she left a profitable profession as a online game designer.

“It received to the purpose the place I felt like I had to decide on between work or life,” Cho says of being on the job 12 hours a day. “It might be chill after which ramp as much as 80 hours per week. It was laborious to not have time for outdoor actions. My nervousness and despair made every little thing actually laborious.”

Ana Cho holds considered one of her high-fired stoneware items.

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Instances)

When she was initially supplied a job as a online game artist in Los Angeles in 2011, the Korean-born graphic designer was dwelling in Vancouver following an unusually moist spring. Weary of grey skies, she jumped on the likelihood to maneuver to sunny Southern California regardless that she had by no means set foot in Los Angeles. “I assumed ‘I’m out of right here,’” she says with amusing. “It helped that I used to be 28-years outdated.”

She loved working for Naughty Canine in Santa Monica, however when her mom was identified with endometrial most cancers in 2013, and died quickly after, Cho was left uncertain of her place on this planet.

Cho remembers feeling disconnected from every little thing. “I took a month off, however I wasn’t the identical,” Cho says. “I used to be burned out at work and couldn’t bounce again after shedding my mom.”

A pair of Ana Cho’s handcrafted Joshua Tree tumblers.

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Instances)

In some methods, accepting demise is less complicated than the empty days that observe. So Cho pushed herself to make life-style modifications that may profit her psychological well being. She began taking pottery lessons at Echo Artwork Studio in West L.A. and within the course of, discovered that working with clay soothed her.

“It was mind-blowing,” she says of pottery class. “I assumed that maybe I’d discover a new interest and like-minded group, however it was greater than that. There have been a whole lot of older girls on the studio and I beloved that. After shedding my very own mom, it was so good to be round them.”

Within the midst of a lot inside turmoil, Cho turned to her fingers for help. She saved coming again to pottery class. She began cooking extra. She signed up for woodworking lessons at Otis School of Artwork and Design within the evenings and the woman-owned Allied Woodshop in downtown Los Angeles on the weekends.

“There’s something about working along with your fingers. It does one thing good to your mind,” she says of research which have proven that working with clay may also help ease despair. “It was therapeutic for me. Having that single mindedness and literal connection to the clay was so calming.”

The start of a handcrafted piece on Ana Cho’s pottery wheel.

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Instances)

A have a look at Ana Cho’s course of from clay to completed product.

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Instances)

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For 3 years she had entertained a pipe dream — attending the Krenov College of Advantageous Furnishings, a woodworking faculty in Fort Bragg, Calif., that gives a nine-month program in effective cupboard and furniture-making. In 2019, Cho made it a actuality when she utilized and was accepted. As a substitute of sitting in entrance of a pc display all day, she can be working with conventional hand instruments from 8:30 a.m. to five:30 p.m. Monday via Saturday.

In an indication of how sad she was, she give up her job earlier than she was accepted to the varsity.

“It was such a giant deal to give up my job,” she says. “It was actually scary. It was a mix of braveness and desperation. However I didn’t remorse it as a result of I knew how sad I used to be. It was actually a leap of religion to imagine that I used to be going to be alright.”

In Fort Bragg, she rented a visitor home close to the ocean and loved “an expertise of a lifetime” with 22 different college students, together with a retired scientist, a movie editor from L.A. and a bunch of males of their 20s from around the globe.

When the immersive program was lower brief attributable to COVID-19, Cho moved again to L.A. in July of 2020 and received a bench area at Allied Woodshop.

A planter designed by Ana Cho in her potting studio.

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Instances)

Cho designs dinnerware in a muted palette.

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Instances)

“I couldn’t do pottery at the moment so having Allied to go to a number of instances per week, even in a masks, saved me,” she says. Armed with a function, she centered on making furnishings for her 100-year-old California bungalow.

After she reworked the house’s storage right into a ceramics studio, Cho was capable of give attention to creating pottery full time whereas instructing introduction to woodworking at Allied.

“After I took my first woodworking class, I got here house feeling excessive,” she says. Now she will be able to share that have with others, and particularly enjoys lessons she teaches for youth and girls, trans and nonbinary college students. “Girls discover it very empowering to make use of the machines and saws. I really like seeing their response. It’s good to be reminded of how I felt at first — the enjoyment you’re feeling while you first uncover one thing.”

For now, Cho plans to stay a small batch manufacturing. She hosted her first on-line sale final November, and in April, offered out of her total line of ceramic plates, bowls, mugs and planters. It gave her a lift of self-confidence, she says, and she or he is planning one other sale on July 14 at 9 a.m. on her web site.

Behind the scenes at Ana Cho’s pottery studio.

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Instances)

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Sitting in her sunlit studio with its baggage of clay, houseplants and cabinets lined with high-fired stoneware in muted, earthy tones, Cho says her new work life couldn’t be extra totally different than her earlier job.

“I really feel so significantly better,” she says of making a brand new life for herself. “I as soon as heard a quote that goes one thing like ‘You possibly can’t clear up the issue with the identical thoughts that created it.’ After I’m feeling caught, it’s at all times helped me to get a distinct perspective on issues from individuals I belief or who’re professionals,” she says, noting that she is supportive of assorted psychological well being journeys, be that remedy, medicine or a help group.

She additionally research meditation and says the relationships she’s constructed with different makers and college students maintain her, as does her craft. “After all, working with clay and wooden continues to present me the psychological help I would like.”

Taking a leap of religion is terrifying, Cho says, however it doesn’t need to be “a giant soar from a tall cliff.” Taking the method one step at a time made issues extra manageable — and pleasant — for her.

“I’ve gravitated in direction of what makes me really feel good,” she says.

“I’ve gravitated in direction of what makes me really feel good,” Ana Cho says of working together with her fingers.

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Instances)