Rick Rudd is hoping the $12,000 award money will help change an emerging potter's life. Photo / Bevan Conley
Rick Rudd is hoping the $12,000 award money will help change an emerging potter's life. Photo / Bevan Conley
An award of $12,000 is up for grabs for emerging artists making studio ceramics of all types.
After a three-year break, the Rick Rudd Foundation is accepting entries for its Emerging Practitioner in Clay Award, which promotes "excellence by those emerging makers of studio ceramics in all forms, from tableware to sculpture and from traditional to the avant-garde".
The first award, won by Oliver Morse and his work House of Dee in 2018, was worth $10,000, but this year's prize money is set at $12,000.
Renowned Whanganui-based artist Rick Rudd won the Fletcher Brownbuilt Pottery Award in 1978 and said it had changed his life.
"I got national promotion through it, and people thought 'oh, his work must be okay'," Rudd said.
"I thought that now was the time to pass that same kind of thing on and change another emerging potter's life."
The judges - Rudd, Andrea du Chatenier and John Parker - will select about 30 finalists from the entries submitted. The finalists will be invited to send one work for exhibition.
Artist Oliver Morse, now based in Whanganui, won the 2018 award with his piece House of Dee. Photo / Bevan Conley
Rudd said unlike the 2018 award, entrants must have no more than five years' experience in ceramics.
"When Oliver won he'd been working with clay for approximately two years, and I just thought that was the time to say 'you've got potential, here's some money, go for it'.
"Previously there wasn't a time limit on it, but I decided this time that you can't have worked with clay for more than five years. By that time, if you're going to make an impact you've probably started to.
"Hopefully that $12,000 will change someone's life, even if it's just a round the world trip. If they spend it on a party, well, it's gone, that's it. There are no strings attached, you do what you want with it once you've got it."
Aside from the maximum of five years' experience in clay, Rudd said the other requirement for entry was the need to be either a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident.
"There were 65 entrants in 2018, and from those we selected around 35 works for exhibition. This time there'll be around 30 works selected.
"You don't know what you're going to get until after the closing date, obviously. With the resurgence of interest in ceramics, I would expect to get quite a good lot of entries, especially with the raising of the award money.
"It's worth giving it a go, I would have thought."
Entries close at 4pm on Wednesday, June 30.
For more information and entry requirements, call Rick Rudd's Quartz Museum on 06 348 5555 or email quartz.award@gmail.com.
