ArtBeat
In 2024, studio pottery maintains its authority and presence throughout Aotearoa. Currently, it is particularly active at 27 Essex Street with potters and educators, Tatyanna Meharry and Gwen Parson teaming up to supply, teach and offer advice for potters. Joining in is printmaker Carrie Dingwall who makes and teaches a range of printmaking processes on site too.
Three creative businesses in one location, Gwen’s “General Pottery”, establishing her services in 2018 as a bricks and mortar alternative to online shopping with locally sourced and created resources for pottery that she hopes encourages makers to treasure what they use and how they work with it.
Tatyanna’s business name is “Clae” providing makers with an instructive learning space. She maintains that although ‘you are just squishing clay, you still need to technically know what you are doing’. After 20 years of teaching, she is now ready to step back to explore her own practice… ‘I was there at the beginning run of a renewed and wider popular community interest in pottery from 2010 to a now frenetic interest in it’. On reflection, Tatyanna believes that the enthusiasm for her craft may have something to do with a society that needs to have creativity that tethers them back down to the earth.
Carrie from “Starling Studio” studied at the Otago Polytechnic, describing it as ‘a great art school. She entered into a unique program at a time when the school was changing and growing, where learning philosophies were “Bauhaus like” dealing with how materials work and the facilitation of your own ideas and work. Carrie studied under renowned printmaker Marilyn Webb…‘I knew we were working alongside well experienced people who had a genuine passion to grow the next generation of artists’. She, along with Gwen and Tatyanna, has a passion for passing on creative knowledge.
Since the 2011 earthquakes and period of the lockdown, people have needed an emotional physical outlet from their lives. It helps you to cope with other things. 27 Essex St is responding to this need.
In 2024, the space is extending its programme with an evolving gallery space for the artists’ work. Giving room to experimental printmaking, works on paper and sculptural ceramics. The classes offered will also reflect these interests. Tatyanna adds: ‘Here at 27 Essex St, what is nice about this space is that we all bring something to the table. It is fundamentally supportive, whether about advice, materials, or contributing hands-on to each other’s arts practice there is always something creative evolving’.
DETAILS
27 Essex Street Studio
Christchurch 8011
Wednesday - Saturday 10am – 4pm
https://www.generalpottery.co.nz
IMAGE: 27 Essex Street and “Hands-On” in its Studio and Exhibition Space