JANEEN PAGE
Janeen Page got the keys to her first home 20 years ago, on the same day she became a mum. The ex-state house has been a source of comfort and security for her little family ever since. Now one of New Zealand’s foremost domestic ware potters, Page lives alone – now grown, her child lives in Melbourne – and spends her time biking around the country, and researching and making locally-sourced mudstone glazes from historical recipes.
JANEEN: My kid was 1, and I did a ceramics night class, because it was the only education I could get as a single mum in New Plymouth. I could get my mum to babysit for me and sneak out.
It was just a wealth of older women who had gained this pottery knowledge and were willing to share it with us. We didn’t have polytechnics teaching crafts any more, so this was available to me.
I came from fine arts background, I had a degree from Elam (University of Auckland Fine Arts School), but I’m a maker. I just have to make, that’s my calm. What kept me in ceramics was that space you get into when you are making, having that as a daily practice and knowing that was where I function at my best. The product is the end result of that. The process, being able to live that lifestyle and make on a daily basis is the important part.
Art is often not accessible to the everyday person. But for me, domestic ware is both art and useful.
A lot of what I’m doing is researching old New Zealand glazes and keeping that knowledge alive and functional. It’s a real practice for me to retain that knowledge it has to be kept in motion, it has to be used.
I make all of my own glazes. When you start pottery glaze is just a bucket of wet, sloppy material, you don’t actually know what it’s made of, you just dip your pot in it, put it in a kiln, and it comes out a different colour. It’s alchemy. It’s heat and time and minerals that change.
The garden was a lawn when I first moved here. I’d been living in Melbourne, doing a lot of activism, which was pretty confronting and quite violent. When I came home, I thought, “how do I live the life I want to live, without having to push back so hard at society?” I realised if I could have a garden and grow my own food, that would solve a lot of my wants.
Food security was important to me. I was part of the slow food, local food movement in the early 2000s. I planted fruit trees 20 years ago. New Plymouth is a good-sized community. It’s a sustainable-sized city. It feels like, if we grow enough food for ourselves, we can cope.
Op-shopping has always been more important to me than the end result – affordable objects and objects that have history have always been more of an influence than decor itself. I was a single parent, so op-shops were a way that I could buy things sustainable and affordably.
I think objects always hold stories – to other people they hold no value but to me, they have a story. I usually buy things for use, as well.
Sewing is a really big part of my life as well, making clothes. If I’m going to wear clothes, I don’t feel connected to clothing in a shop, so sewing has always been important. I’m a big person, I’m a big bodied person, so I always had to make clothes to fit my body shape, and altering clothes from op-shops.
I live in a street that is exclusively ex-state houses. They’re all made from native timbers, all architecturally designed. I’ve been here 20 years this year, and I love it. It’s forever giving. It always gives me a new perspective. I don’t feel like I’ve lived in the same house for 20 years.