Ceramic Artist – Goodleigh, Devon

Taz Pollard has been interested in beauty and perfection in the context of Eastern art particularly Wabi Sabi aesthetics for a number of years. She was searching for something in the mysticism of the East, an unattainable value perhaps, but through her MA research she has come to realise that the ordinariness which so inspired that aesthetic movement was there in my everyday if she just opened her eyes to see it.

Taz studied 16th century Barnstaple pottery as a creative starting point. Barnstaple potters, like those who first inspired Wabi Sabi, were anonymous, producing utilitarian wares for domestic use. However when their work is presented in a totally different context, that of ceramic art in the twenty first century, it takes on an entirely different value.

Taz’s work is playful and curious. She has taken traditional pottery forms such as the Pancheon, Pipkin, Costrel, Baluster jug and Tyg and given them a 21st Century twist, a bright glaze, a plastic handle or a plastic ceramic hybrid. Costrels were a type of hip flask the modern day equivalent being a plastic drink bottle, Taz has ‘cut and shut’ the two forms together creating tension between the forms and the material, a point of interest at the join. The handmade part of her work act as real resistance to the mass produced commodity of the plastic section thus creating a spectacle.