Last week we were thrilled to welcome Millie to Driving Creek as she begins her production pottery apprenticeship. Her arrival has been eagerly anticipated, with the production team excited to share their knowledge and have her join the whānau. 

To mark this special beginning, we caught up with Millie to learn more about her background, her journey so far, and what has drawn her here to Driving Creek.

Returning to My Roots

I grew up in the beautiful Te Moana-a-Toitehuatahi, the Bay of Plenty, and spent many holidays in the Coromandel, including a well-remembered visit to Driving Creek when I was about eight. My family were particularly connected to the little beach at Whiritoa, spending long weeks each summer exploring the coves and swimming in the ever-changing lagoon there. The wairua of this peninsula is woven through me and I feel grateful to be making the Coromandel my home as I take on the apprenticeship at Driving Creek, after several years of living in the UK.

Family History and Connection to Land

I come from a pākehā family whose ancestors came to Aotearoa in the mid 1800’s and early 1900’s from England. In understanding my family history on this whenua, and what being tangata tiriti means, I wanted to get closer to the soil and enrich this understanding through connection with the land. I had settled in Ōtautahi and was working for a health charity, following completing a Masters in English Literature at Te Herenga Waka / Victoria University of Wellington; however, I was beginning to deepen my connection with the surrounding environment through designing my first garden and volunteering at the local community garden. In 2023 I decided to travel to the UK to explore my familial lands and spend time living on farms and small communities to learn permacultural ways of growing, earth care and animal husbandry.

A Shift Toward Clay

Working with the soil and growing healthy food for our bellies and planet alike is where my heart has been for the past few years, and in some ways the apprenticeship at Driving Creek is a move in a new direction, having had little experience with making ceramics prior to now. But I love how interconnected the craft is with the earth, how elemental it is, and how studio pottery skirts the mass production of pots to meet the need for utilitarian wares whilst maintaining reverence for beauty, material, and tradition. Values that have matured in me through my work as a grower—care for the earth, connection to te taiao, slowness and attention, respect for traditional craftsmanship, and a surrendering to elemental spontenaeity—all arise in me when I hold a beautifully made pot, and I am excited to be joining the long line of artist-craftspeople who have been taught and inspired by Barry Brickell and his vision of Driving Creek as a place of creativity and conservation. 

Throughout my life I have always been a maker, drawn to tactile and embodied art practices, and to natural materials, having tried my hand at everything from spinning wool to mending, basketry, weaving, and felting. It is so valuable to be given the educational and financial support through this apprenticeship to now be able to devote my attention to a specific craft, and I couldn’t be happier to be working with clay.

Inspiration and Creative Vision

Amongst all of this to look forward to, I am also excited by the opportunity at Driving Creek to be surrounded by the wealth of a kaupapa started by Barry and continued on by many wonderful ceramicists, artists and creatives from across Aotearoa and the world. When reading the job description for the apprenticeship, I was struck by the vision of a pottery range combining the formal and technical traditions of the Leach studio with what was described as Barry’s “creative freedom and vernacular charm”; this feels like such fertile ground to emerge from, particularly as I return searching for the sweet spot amongst a productive tension created between the two lands of my whakapapa, Aotearoa and the UK. I look forward to developing and honing my skills as an apprentice through the rigor and technique of the studio pottery tradition, whilst exploring my own ideas through a personal practice. 

I embark on this new journey full of anticipation and wonder, under the guidance of Callum, Matilda, and with the spirit, I hope, of Barry and Driving Creek as good earth to find roots in.