How do ceramic artists come up with ideas for their work? It's a question that interests students here at Yourist Studio Gallery but which may occur to all of us during these frigid, snowy days, when we suspect that our muse has deserted us and fled south for the winter.

So we asked some of the teachers at the studio to tell us what inspires them to keep creating, and here's what they had to say:

Nancy Bulkley: "Nature is a great inspiration, from shapes of leaves to feathers and snowflakes, to name a few. I love seeing other artists' work and looking at fabric designs. I am encouraged to make functional ceramic work by the thought that it might have a future in someone's heart and home. I like to look at art as serious play, you never know what will happen."

Sarah Gelsanliter: "My work is influenced by Asian art, Japanese brushwork, and Arts & Crafts design. I am also drawn to patterns in nature, such as leaves, grasses, pebbles, and vines, and draw from them when thinking of decorations. I like clean lines, angular pots, and glazes that pool in any texture or designs I've added. I want my work to be comfortable in the hand of the user and beautiful on a shelf or counter when not in use."

Inge Merlin: "I am very much inspired by nature, especially mountains and fields seen from an airplane. The shapes and colors seen from up high are magnificent, and I very often incorporate designs in a very abstract way into my wall art and in my functional pots."

Shannon Nelson: "From the full and voluptuous forms of 18th century Sèvres presentation porcelain to the beauty I find in the natural world, my work is an amalgam of various influences, ideas, and imagination. Clay, with its ability to change shape and respond to the slightest touch, is an ideal material to explore shape, form, and surface. In a world that is increasingly technical, virtual, and fast-paced, I am interested in making handmade objects that encourage reflection and convey a sense of deliberateness, permanence, and attention to detail."

So keep your eyes open to the world around you. Almost anything can serve as the spark for artistic creativity, from a brick wall with peeling paint to the nearly logarithmic spiral of a nautilus shell, from rusty scraps of metal to the shimmering compound soap bubble that foams up when you immerse a narrow-necked bottle in dish water. And keep asking yourself those important questions like "What if I tried this?" and "I wonder if that would work?"

Q. As a hand builder, I find it challenging to roll out and work with thin slabs of clay. Do you have any advice on how I can get more control over them?

What happens when a curator of Italian Renaissance painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art leaves his comfort zone to become head of the Met's Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts?

Watch and listen as Luke Syson tells us in this witty TED talk how he learned to love and be inspired by an elaborate Sèvres porcelain elephant vase (no, wait, there are two of them!) from which he had at first recoiled.

Luke Syson at TEDxMet

As Syson revisited and studied the vases, created by master artist Jean-Claude duPlessis, he says a firework went off in his brain as he recognized the objects as a supreme piece of design that brings fantasy and imagination into daily life.