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Broken things are usually thrown away, but self-taught ceramic artist Glen Martin Taylor gives them a new life with a new meaning. He creates real recycled art.

If you want to get to know the artist better, take a closer look at his work. Glen is like his ceramic artwork – a man with shards of the past, but reassembling himself and sublimating his pain through art. The images he creates are frank and profound in their meaning.

Everyone will find something of themselves in his work. After all, each of us is, in a sense, recycled by our own life experiences.

Every artist has their own unique path that has led them to art. Tell us your story.

Childhood was a difficult journey, but when I found art at age 13, discovered that I was meant to be an artist, my path was clear. It has always been my therapy, my way through the darkness.

Your work is distinctive and stunning. How did you come to develop this art form?

Work. Just work. I took up pottery about ten years ago, it wasn’t enough, I was living in some personal darkness, and the breaking of pottery and the antique dishes allowed the light in.

Can you walk us through your creative process when you are creating a new piece?

I play, I cry. I make some things and let them sit around, staring back at me. And somewhere sometime, the answers arrive and I work some more.

 

You destroy things in order to recreate them in a new way, to give them a new meaning. How do you feel about the idea that through creativity we get closer to God?

Define God. My work has something to do with my spiritual journey. I don’t know anything about god.

An artist sublimates into his art what he cannot keep silent about. What themes are most often reflected in your work?

Death and sex and darkness and questions and pain and forgiveness.

I believe that in your work it is important to have a talent not only for creating but also for destroying. Tell me, what do you prefer most in your work to: destroying or creating? And what are we humans better at?

I don’t do any destroying, except maybe my demons and fears. It’s all creating. If humans destroy a building, they have created a pile of rubble. Matter and love and soul and magic can not be destroyed.

Who or what has been the biggest influence on your way of thinking?

The pain in my heart.

And the last question. Best advice you’d give your teenage self?

Work, just work.