Merilyn Wiseman

2007 Laureate
Ceramic Artist

Merilyn Wiseman is an established ceramicist who has exhibited and lectured widely throughout New Zealand.

Merilyn was born in Auckland in 1941.  She completed a Preliminary Diploma at the Elam School of Art in 1959 and continued her studies at Goldsmiths School of Art, University of London, graduating in 1963 with a National Diploma of Design specialising in painting. She discovered, however, that she was more interested in working with clay and began doing so while on a working holiday in Ireland.  Marilyn said "I’d spent the previous four years at Goldsmiths school of Art, specialising in painting, and was gradually coming to realize that painting was not my medium…and then I watched someone throw a pot on a wheel……an amorphous, lump of clay, two hands, a little water and a slowly turning wheel. It was like watching a dance in slow motion. I was hooked." On returning to New Zealand and found herself involved with the beginning of the contemporary crafts movement here.

Working as a professional ceramicist since 1976, Merilyn was selected to participate in the First International Ceramics Symposium at the Canberra School of Art in 1988.  Her work has been recognised with many awards, including the Fletcher Challenge Pottery Award, several QEII Arts Council Major Creative Development grants, and the Premiere Portage Ceramic Award in 2005 for Arctic Rim. In 2002 Merilyn’s Pacific Rim, a white earthenware clay piece, was featured on a special edition of stamps issued by New Zealand Post and Sweden Post called ‘Art Meets Craft.’

Merilyn’s works are held in many national collections.  The works are largely concerned with colour and texture. She gradually moved away from the Japanese influenced style that dominated ceramics early in the contemporary craft movement in New Zealand, developing her own personal approach which has come to demonstrate a strong sense of place. “The Pacific Rimseries, like earlier works, is based on the notion of containment. Large, generous forms stretch out gracefully like dancers with outstretched limbs, their scale seemingly determined by human arm spans… Her objective to have the work appear effortless, rather than laboured or technically difficult, is realised.” (Helen Schamroth, 100 New Zealand Craft Artists. Godwit: Auckland, 1998)

More information on Merilyn here