Page 158 - Constructing Craft

Melanie Cooper

Melanie Cooper wanted to make a living as a ceramic artist but training overseas

did not open up the market in New Zealand in a way that she might have hoped.
The problem was an enduring one for artists, and now the craft design students like

Cooper had to face up to it. Jenny Pattrick, a jeweller and writer, had identified the
problem as early as 1983, even before formal certificate qualifications were wide-

spread. Pattrick, writing about the New Zealand graduate of the Bachelor of Design

– Ceramics course at the South Australian College of Advanced Education, stated:
‘At 28 she [Cooper] is one of New Zealand’s best qualified potters. She is also

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without a reputation in her own country and broke.’ Cooper had trained as a
teacher in New Zealand and then undertaken the one-year Ceramics Certificate
course at Otago Polytechnic. She enjoyed the course but lamented that, ‘I came out
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thinking I knew everything, built my kiln and fell flat on my face.’ She was
convinced that the old ways – ‘learning … the hard way through hobby classes,

weekend courses and ingenuity is a thing of the past,’ and feared “New Zealand will
lose its high place in ceramics unless we do something about top quality craft

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education”. Pattrick was familiar with earlier training pathways but was not
convinced they were relevant any more.
Here [in New Zealand], reputations are made the slow way. You
learn to pot while you hold down a job. After becoming known
as a hobbyist, having built your kiln in your spare time and with
savings from your regular job, you dare to go professional. It’s
not a system that favours someone who wants to train formally
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and fully for the job.

In conclusion she summarised Cooper’s situation:

Melanie has trained for six years. She has a degree that is
equal to a law degree or a BA Hons. But there is no way that
she can be helped into her career now. An equipment grant
from the Arts Council or a grant to work towards an exhibition
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are the only possibilities.

Pattrick’s article, which failed to explain why Cooper could not, after six years of
training, earn a living from her craft, received a predictable response from potters

who had been trained in the old way. Shona Carstens wrote:

Having read the Melanie Cooper article … I feel sufficiently
irritated to comment that, firstly, qualification(s) don’t

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