taiwan - nomadic makers
due to my itinerant work-life, my practice has become somewhat experimental. working as a freelancer on a global level and being away from home and workshop i have had to embrace this nomadic lifestyle. having to adapt and seek out making opportunities wherever i work, locating ceramic workshops and potters who would consider renting a wheel, material and kiln to a travelling potter.
i was fortunate to meet fellow freelancer and potter, maya kitti. this was a very exciting time, to discover someone who was not only a ceramic maker but that also lived the same nomadic lifestyle - and someone to share the experiences with. so, we decided to use this time travelling as an opportunity to reach out to local makers and communities, to try and connect with them, to allow us the chance to still make while being contracted to a project.
expanding on the ideas of transience and the temporal, we realised that we had connected our nomadic lifestyle with our making and so we co-founded ‘nomadic makers’.
we are a group of global makers that connect with making on our travels -engaging with makers, making methods and local materials that are available to us, whilst being open to new ideas and techniques. we look to the place and its culture to feed our work. form, colour, texture and materials are all inspired by the people, the place and their stories…. making on the move.
nomadic makers are currently putting together their own website so please watch this space……..
taiwan - kaohsiung
last year, a year-long project meant that we would both be based in kaohsiung, taiwan. so we could continue with our making, we decided to try to find a ceramic workshop. initially we had no luck in connecting with anyone - obviously language was an obstacle to this. but with lots of help and support from our project leader and her local team and the very supportive dan castelaz, an art teacher with kaohsiung american high school, we set up our own ‘nomadic makers - ceramic studio’. self-funding a small workshop, renting a space and two wheels from the hotel that we lived in, hotel yam, and buying our own kiln.
we know that this is a temporary situation but that only seems to give more value to the making and the time we have - as nomads we know that the time will come to move on, but until then we plan to make, experience, make, connect, make, discover and…..make!
