I first discovered clay in 2012, in southern Aveyron, during a training-course at the Pottery of Lucante, with Marcel Muller.
I was looking for a new breath after a decade drawing shoes and bags without much conviction. Something was missing.
My visit to Lucante and the discovery of clay made me realize I had a terrible need to use my hands and work in volume. During the next 4 years, I discovered little by little the world of ceramics and the infinite possibilities of expression offered by clay.
I perfected my skills with Thierry Fouquet at the Atelier Chemins de Terres then with Augusto Tozzola and started teaching sculpture and pottery wheel. Finding a workshop in Paris turned out to be a complicated task, so I practiced on my different workplaces during two years working on my sculptures, searching for my visual identity. I finally found a workshop where I could happily unpack my tools, my potter’s wheel and my blocks of clay at the end of 2016.
My work is a story of construction, assembly, emptiness and fullness, shadow and light. I work instinctively by confronting the forms. I move them from on place to another, start again with others and, gradually, the balance is reached.
The tube is an omnipresent element in my sculptures as well as in my objects. The shape and the space are two determining factors in my work that I always consider at 360 °.
I find an echo in the constructivist and brutalist architecture having spent my childhood in the Soviet Union, but also in the primitive pottery, with a sensitivity for simple and well constructed objects.
I work on unique pieces or in small series and I use different shaping techniques depending on the direction and the rendering I want to give to my work. Potter’s wheel, coil-built, slab-built, stamping. The choice of clay that I will use is also determinant.
I work with several stonewares : red, white, brown, black. All are grog clay. The grog gives structure to the clay and makes it more refractory. I chose to work with this type of clay for its crude and primitive look. I use an electric kiln and fire at 1280 C°.
A year ago I started working around the bottle. A common, everyday object I choose to divert from its primary function to turn it into a sculpture or a vase. These bottles turned into tripod creatures, sometimes high-pitched or evoking a headless chicken. The interpretation is free.
I do not enclose any of my objects in a specific function. The "accidents" inherent in the work of clay and which are sometimes "happy" also have their place in my work, recalling the necessary humility that enables to understand what a potter faces with clay, water and fire.
