Martin Tagseth, Canada
Martin Tagseth received his first formal art education in Alberta, earning a Fine Art Diploma from Red Deer College in 1989. He then traveled to Halifax, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1991. Tagseth’s studies next took him to Norway’s Insstitutt Keramisk Kunndsthandervk, and finally to Ohio State University, where he received his Master of Fine Arts in 1994. Since then, Tagseth has been teaching and leading workshops at various institutions in Canada and the United States, including the University of Alaska, the University of Manitoba, the Emily Carr College of Art and Design, the Hartford School of Art (Connecticut), West Virginia University, Jindezhen (China) and Montana State University in Bozeman. Tagseth is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Regina, a position he began in 2008. Tagseth’s pottery is influenced by his western Canadian agrarian upbringing and the ceramic traditions of 17th Century Korea and China. Making use of wood-firing, salt-firing, and applied glaze chemistry, Martin’s works are conceptual, though they involve traditional vessel forms. By altering the scale, proportion, surface considerations and the spaces the works inhabit, the resulting ceramic pieces are seen in constructed or fabricated context, and provide the viewer with a new reading on the object’s tradition.
