Artist Statement
Curvilinear, soft, and voluminous, my pots have an expansive feeling that connotes growth, abundance, and generosity. Vessels are divided symmetrically using embossed lines as a means of projecting order onto their forms and enhancing their volume and curvature. This evokes the structured, recurring, and purposeful aspect of nature. I look to the experience of vitality and beauty that nature provides and translate these qualities into something tangible, useful, and nourishing in the form of functional ceramics.
By reinforcing and reflecting formal relationships throughout my vessels, I create unified, harmonious designs in which every element is considered and purposeful. Surfaces are employed to encourage and reward tactile interaction and which enhance formal decisions. It is my hope that the care of their making may translate to their user, and that this visual language may enhance the sensual experience through use.
As a potter, utility is among my primary concerns. Far from a hindrance, utility opens up new lanes of creative expression and engagement. Pots are not a mere reflection of life, but a participant in it. They invite you into the experience and are incomplete absent your participation. I believe that in this capacity, as a thing that is a part of life, that something as mundane as a cup can act as both a conduit of culture and community and as an object of aesthetic and intellectual contemplation. Pots are tools set in service of a greater whole. Much of their content, the way we perceive and understand them, comes from their relationship to us and to our needs. Covered jars speak to preservation, separation, commemoration, even mourning; teapots, pitchers, and serving bowls become icons of community, speaking to ideas related to gathering, sharing, and generosity. In this way, these vessels speak to fundamental realities of what it is to be human.
Chance Taylor, December 2025
Teaching Philosophy
I have a passion for both making and teaching, and find both elements of my practice to be deeply fulfilling. I am proud of the work that my students have done, and hope to continue to share what I know with new generations of artists, craftspeople, and thinkers.
I subscribe to a Constructivist teaching philosophy in which students are active participants in their education. It is my goal to provide a firm basis of technical and theoretical knowledge that students can build off of to pursue their own goals and interests. This requires the removal of hurdles that hinder students from realizing their creative ambitions: to get them beyond the stage where they are asking “how?’ so they can explore the larger questions of "why?" and "towards what end?”. I aim to model a well rounded creative practice to my students by actively working alongside them in the classroom, discussing new ideas I am grappling with or find interesting, and inviting them to participate in firings, discussions, equipment maintenance, or tea time in the studio. My mentors and teachers have shown a tremendous generosity with their time and willingness to share what they know. I try to keep that tradition alive in the classroom.
It is important that students are able to contextualize their work within a larger cosmos of influences and ideas. This begins with a familiarity with history, seeing how artists and craftspeople respond to changes in culture, technology, and thought to create works which speak to their experience in their own time. I reinforce this historical understanding through the introduction of a variety of theoretical frameworks which can be applied to a wide range of creative pursuits. I use Gaston Bachelard’s phenomenology as an introduction to the poetics of the every day, Villem Flusser's theory of Gestures to explore how our actions have symbolic weight that communicates our values, and an investigation of the power of domestic objects rooted in Thing Theory, Social History, and the philosophy of Soetsu Yanagi. In short, I try to take students through the problems I deal with in my own practice and the ideas that have helped me confront them.
My assignments are varied. Early assignments are focused on technical goals: developing proficiency on the wheel, learning a variety of surface decorating techniques, making objects that are formally and conceptually related. As these skills are developed the assignments ask more of students, asking them to make objects that speak to who they are and what they value. In “Holding History, Honoring Memory” students are asked to design a set of dishes for presenting and serving a family recipe. The research component of the project asks students to do a deep investigation of a family recipe, exploring its origins, the memories it is tied to, and what it means to them and their families. These recipes and stories are then compiled into a cookbook that doubles as a collective and personal history. During critique, students present their dish in the vessels they made and share their stories with the class. What better way to bring a group of people together than over a shared meal?
Skills are developed both through assignments and participation in the running and operation of the studio. Students are expected to approach their practice holistically, participating and making decisions in every aspect of their work. They are involved in making clay, mixing glazes, firing kilns, and the maintenance of shared spaces – all of the technical work that becomes the scaffolding of their practice. I believe that this collaborative, participatory approach is beneficial to students as they are exposed to a diverse set of situations that offer learning and teaching opportunities, and to the studio, because this group dynamic allows us to achieve more together. A successful woodfiring, for example, is not possible without this sort of dynamic. My goal is to cultivate students I would be happy to work alongside.
Chance Taylor, December 2025