I am based in Brantôme-en-Perigord in Dordogne, France. I left Paris and moved here just a year ago. I needed to find a calm place a a bigger space for my studio - I am planning to create my e-shop, working on developing new shapes like vases and starting to think about the preparation of a solo show and pottery exhibition for next year.
I started ceramics after having a professional retraining and I began by teaching sculpture to children. The interest stemmed from a need to work with my hands and because I enjoy building objects.
Of course, working every day with clay and reproducing the same gesture and process makes you progress and evolve. When I started, I didn’t want any color, only the white clay, nude. Little by little I introduced the color, a little too much at the beginning. And then things slowly became clearer.
I am now trying to reduce my palette and this is also true for the shapes. That's the most difficult thing, to keep only the essential, that's what I aim for to work with shapes and surfaces that are right. But curiosity and the desire to try new things is always very tempting. The profession of ceramist is so vast!
Seeing great artists at work inspires me but also architecture, design and traditional craft also, sometimes nature too. The music can be a driver too.
I place my work between craft and sculpture. My ceramics are small architectures/constructions. My work is questionning the frontier between art and craft, the functional and the non-functional. Some say that there is humour in my work as my ceramics can remind of creatures.
I don’t have one favorite artiste, it’s impossible ! But let’s say that my artist of the moment is Claudine Monchaussé. Her work is timeless, contemporary and primitive at the same time, humble and powerful.
My favourite piece is a recent one (below). I like it because all the things I am looking for and appreciating are in this piece : raw aspect, architectural construction, primitive influence. It’s singular and indefinable. It looks functional but you don’t know what to do with it. I like the idea that people are destabilized in front of my objects, because they always try to give a function to the objects and with me it is not clear, obvious. I like the color and aspect of the surface, the glaze, it's quite subtle. (See picture attached).
