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Joe Taylor is a ceramic sculptor from rural Northern Nevada. He received his Bachelors of Fine Arts from Sierra Nevada College in 2004 with an emphasis in new genres, and drawing. After earning this degree he was hired to build and implement K-12 art programming for a small school in Truckee, California where he taught for 10 years.

While working as a teacher, Joe maintained a dedicated ceramics practice making functional pots and sculptures which were exhibited in regional and international shows around Northern California. During this time he spent three years as the lead volunteer in a community ceramics studio inside a local maker space called the Truckee Roundhouse.

In 2022 he quit his job to return to school to pursue an MFA from the University of Montana. During his first and second years of school, Joe fostered his keen interest in service at UMT by teaching classes, directing the UC Student Gallery, Working for the Montana Museum of Art and Culture, Co-founding the Love Child Gallery, holding the positions of President and Vice president for the UM Clay Guild, and working as an assistant to Julia Galloway and Casey Zablockki.

Joe was also the recipient of various scholarly awards at the University of Montana including the Bertha Morton Award, The J. Stache Award, The Odyssey Award, and the JEDI Award for Leadership and Service.

Joe's ceramic work references his time working with children and the adventures he had growing up in rural Nevada. He draws parallels between these experiences because of the way they activate his sense of wonder about the world and allow for discovery through play.

His work utilizes large colorful abstract forms that simultaneously reference the human body and elements from nature. His forms are birthed in his sketchbook through loose Jazz like drawings of organic forms which are then selected to be made as maquettes. The maquettes act as the first refining step of his “practice” during which he can alter the form and color easily to resolve construction problems before moving on.  Lastly, a few striking or mysterious maquettes are chosen to be constructed at a scale around or beyond the scale of his own body. 

Joe’s large sculptures at scale become entities that create ambiguous and playful spaces encompassing both critter and land. The spaces encourage the viewer's sense of wonder about the objects and how they are relating to each other and ourselves. Joe hopes that the narratives we create about his work reflect back to us the ways in which we perceive our world.