Joanna Nikas grew up in Athens, Greece, although her family is originally from Kalamata (“like the olives,” she tells me.) At 18, she moved to New York City to study journalism at NYU, where she now teaches a course on fashion journalism. She is The Cut's deputy style editor, overseeing the site’s fashion, beauty, and shopping coverage. As a hobby, she makes ceramics and works out of a studio in New York City, focusing on vessels. “Everything I make just ends up looking Greek,” she said with a laugh. “Even when I try not to.” Before joining The Cut, she was an editor at the New York Times for ten years, focusing on fashion and wellness. She also worked closely with street-style-photography pioneer Bill Cunningham on editing his “On the Street” videos. She credits Cunningham for her approach to fashion: “He taught me that the most interesting people are not the ones dressed head-to-toe in one designer, but the eccentrics who are outside the shows trying to crash,” she said. “He really loved an oddball.”

1. Do you have an early memory that you think connects to your creative path now?

As a child, I preferred to be in nature, and I don’t remember being creative. For most of my life, I didn’t even think about myself in the context of making art; I have no formal training or ceramics background. I did weave a stool once as part of a class and really loved that. I still have the stool at my home in Athens. But when I got sober, was when I connected, for the first time, with a more creative side. And if you look at the first piece I ever made in 2021, it still looks like the stuff I am making today.

2. How would you explain your rituals, process and practice? [I thought you could speak about both fashion and ceramics and how they do or don’t inform each other here and how you juggle all your creative thoughts etc].

I work intuitively, so for me, that means I don’t sketch something ahead of time or look at another piece and try to recreate the shape. I usually don’t even know what I am setting out to make when I start a piece. I have a general idea, for example, if I am making a bowl, I start by rolling out a slab and if I am making a vessel, I start with a block of clay and a dowel. But I rarely know what shape it will be, how big it will be, or whether it will have handles. So it’s really about feeling. Which is also what working in fashion is in many ways; if I look at a piece of fashion, I experience an emotion that draws me to it or repels me from it. The glazes I use are very inspired by fashion; and color combinations that I see. I’ve been wearing red more now that my pieces are red.

3. Whose work has been the biggest influence on you to date?

I go to a community studio called Greenwich House Pottery and the women in my class influence me greatly. My teacher, Claudia Alvarez, is an amazing sculptor and painter and helped me find language around the feeling of working intuitively. She also helped me develop glazes, as well as sometimes helps me glaze if a piece is too big to do on my own. Monica Forrestall is another ceramic artist, with whom I have class, and she makes incredible sculptures with earthenware clay. I also was briefly in class with Alice Mackler, who made these freaky little figurines and I am very inspired by her. My friend Lynette Nylander is also doing ceramics now, and we send each other different techniques and styles back and forth.

4. What is joy?

Joy is slowing down. I actually asked some women whom I admire in my life what they do for joy and made a list recently: reading a book, taking a walk, buying myself flowers, dancing, spending time with friends, biking, and spending time in nature are just a few of the ones I heard.

5. How would you define beauty?

Beauty is a familiar feeling. Looking at something and feeling at peace, at home, and in my body.