Positive body image, cooperative artwork and green, leafy flora: these are the ingredients for a great America, and it was over a decade ago that Isaac Nichols co-hatched Group Partner with communal, shop-local intent.
“Group Partner was my Instagram handle before I started making the pots,” says Nichols. “If you scroll back far enough you can see the first pots I ever made and their subsequent development. I think I made my first few pots in 2012. So, in the past five years, it’s grown from my personal Instagram into a five-person company.”
Community is ingrained in the Brooklyn-based ceramic studio’s identity and celebrated in each vessel’s shape, color and concept (a friend’s smiling mug on a planter, a headless bust of an ex’s bust); those integral connections that both entice and entrust with intimacy.
“I have an amazing community of people that I can rely on for help when I need it, and vice versa. The people I see regularly, my laundromat, deli, the post man, these are all people I share experiences with and we can talk about the weather, local politics, etc. I like this community; it’s geographic and tangible,” says Nichols. “But that’s not the extent to which community shows up in our lives. Group Partner has shifted and helped me to understand community differently. Social media is like community based entirely off of what we like (no pun intended), or rather, what we choose to be current with. We generate content that stands in for our position in more global issues. While I can’t say, ‘nice weather we’re having,’ since it’s not something we share, I can say, ‘nudity is good, people are fun, butts are funny,’ and that will resonate with people everywhere. And this is how I think of community working now, too. “
Read our full interview with Group Partner in issue 11 out June 24th. For more from Group Partner follow them on Instagram.
