At the grassroots Kings Beach art tour held in August, ceramics maker Joe Taylor is perched in front of a beautiful array of one-of-a-kind hand-sculpted pots, bowls, jars, vases, coffee mugs and more. His style shines through in his craft, from the ceramic fermenting crocks to the pots shaped with serene faces, beckoning one to grab them by their ears.
Taylor earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Sierra Nevada College. He dabbled in all types of aesthetics but found his love of ceramics when he took a job as an art specialist at the Boys & Girls Club of North Lake Tahoe. With the club’s ceramic kiln, he taught kids how to make coffee cups and funny little animals.
“I was frustrated that a lot of my friends were … being driven out of Tahoe due to high rent prices, so I took photos of houses in my neighborhood that were always vacant and sculpted smaller versions of them, then put them up on Craigslist for rent.”
–Joe Taylor
“(Ceramics) is great for all elementary-age students because it helps them develop their fine motor skills,” Taylor says. He did that for 4.5 years before taking a job at Tahoe Expedition Academy teaching students from pre-K to high school everything from the basic principles of art to how it applies to the modern world.
“We were studying things like how ancient cultures used ceramics to alleviate some of the uncertainties in their lives, such as creating clay vessels to hold water and food while also keeping a connection to the earth,” he says.
“With middle school we ask ourselves a lot, ‘What is art? What is craft?’ And the changing value of manmade objects,” Taylor adds.
There are two sides to Taylor’s own work, though, which includes Sierra Ceramics functional ware and large sculptures and wall hangings.
“I like [pots, bowls, mugs and flasks] as handmade items. Each one is a little different and a little bit strange, like there’s a story behind them,” he says.
The fine art sculptural side of his work is what he uses to express his views. For instance, he’s currently in the middle of a project that brings to light Tahoe’s housing shortage problem.
“I was frustrated that a lot of my friends were moving away, being driven out of Tahoe due to high rent prices, so I took photos of houses in my neighborhood that were always vacant and sculpted smaller versions of them then put them up on Craigslist for rent,” he says.
These small, playful, abstract house sculptures range from 36 to 60 square inches; he named them after real Craigslist long-term rental listings.
“This is a project aimed at bringing awareness to the lack of affordable housing in the Tahoe/Truckee area. The houses on display are sculptures of homes that sit empty in our local neighborhoods most or all of the year. If these homes were available as rentals it would greatly strengthen our community by allowing our workforce to live locally long term,” Taylor says.
The miniature house sculptures will soon be available for sale and the proceeds will go toward raising money to help people put down deposits on a long-term housing lease.
In comparing both sides of his business, Taylor enjoys making small functional art like unique coffee cups, as well as making large, coiled statues that are 5 to 6 feet tall. While Taylor works out of his art studio in Kings Beach, he fires his ceramics at one of the three wood-fired anagama climbing kilns at Penryn Workshop in northern California and he also uses a small propane-gas salt kiln that’s on his dad’s property in Walker Lake.
“What’s cool about wood firing is that the pots that come out are unpredictable. That wood ash builds up and gets hot enough to melt into the clay and create a unique glaze that also acts as a food safe surface,” Taylor says.
However, an anagama kiln takes a team of people and a lot of wood to manage while his salt kiln in Walker Lake is smaller and a lot less work.
“I can get it hot in a little over 16 hours and then I add table salt into the chambers. The way that the salt melts creates a unique glaze that comes out smooth like glass but with a bit of a ripple to it,” Taylor says.
While he’s involved in the ceramics-making process from start to finish, his favorite part is still the sculpting.
“I’m more thinking with my hands, letting go of the chatter of my brain of trying to make sense of it, following my intuition. I try to let the clay lead me,” Taylor says. | sierraceramics.com
