(upbeat music) - One of my favorite things about being an artist in Nashville is that there's so much access to very, very accepting artist communities.

(funky music) My name is Alexia Marcelle Abegg, and I design textiles and I'm a potter, work in ceramics.

(pottery wheel spinning) I'm really inspired by color, and a lot of my work tends to be very happy.

Some of that is I'm trying to create a balance for like the internal existential crisis that I always kind of have underlying everything.

Being an artist, there's a lot of self-doubt and I think creating things that bring joy to me, there's a natural connection that brings joy to other people.

(machine whirring) So I have a couple pieces that really mean a lot to me but there's one in particular that I feel a real connection with because it's one of the first designs that I put on a mug when I was first learning how to do this.

I had come from a period of burnout with some of the design work and things I had done before and I just had this image of a bird rising over a rainbow.

It kind of felt a little bit like, oh, the idea of the phoenix rising from fire, but to me creativity lies so much in color that the idea of a bird rising from a rainbow just represented what I was going through at the time, and I tweaked the design, tried to apply it to a couple things, and then put it on a mug, and it just made me happy.

(pottery wheel whirring) You don't always know where you're headed, but if you show up and do the work and try and let your personality and your creative spirit guide you, I think that's the space where you can really get in touch with what you want to say.

And what's your unique voice.

(funky upbeat music) - [Voiceover] This NPT Arts Break is made possible by the generous support of the Martha Rivers Ingram Advised Fund of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.

(upbeat music)