about me

I primarily work using sand rich stoneware produced by local ceramist Giovanni Crippa where I also fire my sculptures mostly in oxidation at 1220 °C and sometimes in reduction at 1280 °C. 

All my sculptures are hand made using the slab technique with coiling and some modelling.  I often combine stoneware with wood which I source myself in the woods surrounding Egro, and then polish and refine to adjust to the ultimate shape I have in mind.

My sculptures are primarily body-forms which proudly stand in the world as a manifesto of their own sensuality and erotism.  They are the manifest evidence of my creative force in the sense that I create the world I like around me, populating it with body- forms which fully express their feminine power. Through my sculpting i reflect upon femininity which manifests itself through the curvaceous sinuosity of the forms prevailing upon angles and flat surfaces. 

More recently i have been using the vase/vessel form to build through slabs around a void.  These body-vases represent a dialogue between the inside and the outside.  Through these body-vases i explore the dialogue between the form, its concavities and convexities, and the world surrounding it.

The body-vase allows me to focus on both the form/shape and the external surface.  The surface is the boundary, the point of contact between the container and the outside world, contains and separates at the same time, it allows for interferences by that outside world via its cracks, it bends under the pressure from the outside world, or reacts and punches back with its own edges.  This is the dialogue between the outside and the inside i refer to, and in this dialogue the surface of the body – vase is its language.   I am intrigued by the exploration of this surface, following its continuous sinuosity and counteracting edges and angles which alter the sequence of round concavities and convexities; as well as altering the surface texture by means of graffito and engravings.

The body-vases do not bear any functional meaning as the vase/vessel is only a “vessel” or means to give shape to a form.  I am not at all interested in its functional dimension; I would rather say that I have a total disinterest towards functionality in favor of the pleasure derived from the beauty of a form/shape. I am not a designer, and I am not interested in creating or pursuing functional aesthetics.  On the contrary, some of my body-vases are called “disfunctional” as their sinuous, curvaceous, folded or manipulated walls often interfere and sometimes impede the functionality of a vase. 

One additional theme i am intrigued by is the architectural one whereby i explore more of a conceptual dimension where the architectural form entails a metaphysical connotation.  I build fantasy houses, with roof top woods, or flights of stairs running nowhere, zigurrat and imaginary locations.

In all the sculptural forms I build, the aesthetics does not call for any interfering colors: I want the eye not to be distracted from the form itself.  Henceforth, I privilege earth like or skin like stoneware and glaze accordingly, to maintain balanced color nuances which do not interfere with the visual perception of the form.