Paul Melser, potter

Paul Melser is 22 and owns his own pottery in Featherston where he has worked and supported himself, mostly alone, for two years. Salient asked him: —

Do you earn a comfortable living?

No, a low income by New Zealand standards, and most of this goes into property maintenance, tool and building expenditure and financing periods of relatively unprofitable yet essential experimental work —for example my exhibition of sculptural pots in Wellington last year barely paid its way but the techniques developed in the two months spent preparing it have proved invaluable.

Do you work hard?

You've got to work really bloody hard for long stretches in order to get established in the first place, and later on to support the experimental work which any artist needs if he is to improve, and also to keep at bay the kind of anxieties about money that can kill the joy in creative work. Yet no matter how hard the work seems sometimes (and I often work all day and all night) the thought of working for someone else or for the government seems a kind of living death by comparison. I work when I want to and work hard when I do.

Do you feel you're serving the community at all?

I'd like to think so. Obviously in the trivial sense of producing a desired commodity (I suppose pottery too is a consumer product), I serve the community in the same way as any manufacturer and perhaps incidentally educate the public a little as well, getting them to appreciate new aspects of things, livening up their sensibilities a bit. But the reason why I make pottery and the tremendous satisfactions I get out of it have nothing to do essentially with either the community of its money.

What kind of pottery is being exhibited at your Willeston Gallery exhibition this week?

Mainly domestic ware, functional household stuff. I used to think that domestic pots were not suitable for exhibitions and that only sculptural and nonfunctional work could be aesthetically suitable enough to justify a special showing, but recently I've realised the full aesthetic possibilities of domestic ware.

What about assistance from organisations?

Pretty bloody hopeless. It's difficult to get a bursary unless you attend a recognised school of instruction. But it's fairly difficult for any organisation to make grants because of their so-called responsibility to the public. Grants have a sort of taint in some ways because they are official and from formal institutions. And there is the problem that it is very difficult for committees to make inspired choices. The alternative is to have dictator who would at least be consistent in his selections, But more important than grants are big businesses. It's much more satisfying to be able to sell something, rather than getting a grant. I understand there is a system in Holland whereby a section of the cost of a building is compulsprily spent on some art Work. There's just beginning to be a link between the architect and the artist in this country. It is very difficult to design an art work for a building when there is little communication between the two.

Photos: Peter Craven