Ceramic Artist
Biography
Merilyn Wiseman - Ceramic Artist"Ceramics has its own language and inherent laws. It is an art with a science affliction. Clay is hands-on stuff, hands-in stuff. New ideas grow out of past work and from the exploration of ceramic materials. The unique structural and textural qualities of these materials, in combination, are infinite, and for me remain a constant source of fascination.”
Merilyn was born in Auckland in 1941. She completed a Preliminary Diploma at the Elam School of Art in 1959 and continued her studies at Goldsmiths School of Art, University of London, graduating in 1963 with a National Diploma of Design specialising in painting. She discovered, however, that she was more interested in working with clay and began doing so while on a working holiday in Ireland. Merilyn said "I'd spent the previous four years at Goldsmiths school of Art, specialising in painting, and was gradually coming to realize that painting was not my medium...and then I watched someone throw a pot on a wheel......an amorphous, lump of clay, two hands, a little water and a slowly turning wheel. It was like watching a dance in slow motion. I was hooked."
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| Swirl. Image by Haru Samishima |
Merilyn returned to New Zealand and has worked as a professional ceramicist since 1976. She was selected to participate in the National ceramic symposium held in Dunedin in 1989, and in the First International Ceramics Symposium at the Canberra School of Art in 1989. She has received several QE11 Arts Council grants, and her work has been recognised with many awards, including the Fletcher Challenge Pottery Award, and the Premiere Portage Ceramic Award in 2005 for Arctic Rim. In 2002 Merilyn's Pacific Rim, a white earthenware clay piece, was featured on a special edition of stamps issued by New Zealand Post and Sweden Post called ‘Art Meets Craft.'
Merilyn received an Arts Foundation Laureate Award in 2007. The Award money went toward the development of a new studio space in Auckland.
Merilyn's works are held in many national collections. She gradually moved away from the Anglo Oriental influenced style that dominated ceramics early in the contemporary craft movement in New Zealand, developing her own personal approach which has come to demonstrate a strong sense of place.
"The Pacific Rim series, like earlier works, is based on the notion of containment. Large, generous forms stretch out gracefully like dancers with outstretched limbs, their scale seemingly determined by human arm spans... Her objective to have the work appear effortless, rather than laboured or technically difficult, is realised."
(Helen Schamroth, 100 New Zealand Craft Artists. Godwit: Auckland, 1998)
