There are few ties between pottery and landscape as personal as the Witchneeds project, from the artist Ana Tenorio. Each of its pieces is a one-way ticket through the elegance of its forms. Today we have the honour of know more about the collection Outside. If you want to know more about her origins, how she learned to work the clay or where to find her works, pay attention to the following lines.
Interview to Ana Tenorio – Witchneeds
1. How did you discover your passion for ceramics?
Ceramics have always been there since my childhood, along with painting and drawing, among others. I see my trajectory and formation as a whole, a path to the expression merged with my life, without discerning the technique that works at every moment, because from the posy of everything learned arise ideas, as in the case of my collection of ceramics, I think it would be impossible that I had reached her, or she to me, at any other time in my life.
I would say that everything begins in Mexico, where I lived as a child for two years, an experience that transformed my way of seeing and feeling. There my curiosity was born and I began to do.
2.- Where did you learn to create ceramic pieces?
I was fortunate to learn the basics at school, but I did not cook the pieces, so I trained myself, I even collected clay in the river to create my own pasta. Of that time I only keep an uncooked piece that I’m afraid to put in the oven because I had no technical knowledge and probably break in the cooking.
In the Faculty of Fine Arts there wasn’t specific ceramics training, I only worked with clay in sculpture as a means to get the final pieces in other materials through molds. So my training focused on other disciplines and I specialized in painting.
In 2011 I began to work in the workshop of Emilia Guimeráns, where I continue experimenting and forming, because the pottery opens paths that you could be exploring all life.
3.- What inspires you to do your pieces?
In the case of the collection Outside (the first of the brand Witchneeds), I spent months looking for and emerged from a series of drawings and paintings where I worked about the landscape.
I was looking for something I did not find until, through the Japanese technique of sumi-e painting I began to work the landscape from an inner vision. They were months discarding ideas, all about landscapes lived or imagined that I have internalized throughout the years. I decided to take that work to pottery in the autumn of last year and to be the support of original pictorial work.
Although the name of the collection Outside clearly refers to the motive that inspires me, it also represents the moment of creation in which images flow from inside out, a unique moment in each piece that is worked individually throughout the process, there isn’t two pieces equal in form or motive, and that is something that brings greater value to the collection. Also that is what motivates me to continue working on it and developing new parts, it is something that I can hardly bore, is inexplorable, infinite and has me totally hooked.
The landscape is something outside that is outside of us, surrounds us and invades causing our senses, but in my case they are interior landscapes that I do not know and that perhaps I wish to feel, to explore through painting. The mountain in particular I feel inside without needing to see it, it is there, and I feel the obligation to go towards it. As John Muir say: “The mountains are calling and I must go.”
4.- What was your first creation?
I don’t know what would be the first, because as I say, I started as a child. I remember one, that broke, but I was very proud. But there is another that was a before and after, because it was the first time I took a piece to a ceramic oven, which due to my inexperience it broke into pieces. I was a teenager but I only have the memory and the experience maybe bitter but with which it was clear to me that I had to train myself.
5.- Where can we find or buy your creations?
Normally I sell directly, at fairs or through e-mail, I also receive orders for specific pieces but always linked to this collection. I am also preparing the Witchneeds website, which will be hosted at www.witchneeds.com, with catalogue of the pieces that I am doing. I promise to let you know when I am ready through my instagram and facebook profiles.
They can also be purchased at Arts & Crafts 3.0 .
6.- What is your goal or purpose for this year?
Continue advancing in the project, enjoying it in a fluid way and open it more abroad so that you can meet more people. Whether through events, fairs and presence in stores, collaborations with other artists and artisans, or developing tools for its dissemination.
7.- How do you see the handmade market at the present time?
In these moments, where we have been returning to something more natural, I’m so happy because for once I feel really integrated in a society that increasingly appreciates the work done by hand and where so much talent arises that it was hidden. The crisis and the social networks have made this possible and this has only just begun, although it is also true that the result of this new trend are really handcrafted, artistic works of very good quality with very apparent others that lack of originality and that confuse the consumer.
Many disguise their work with this look of handmade and in the background there is nothing more than falsehood, where we can find in many points of sale or markets that exist in our country, is a screen that obscures the true interest, making money with something that is fashionable, and that makes other real projects be misrepresented. From my point of view the keys to making a difference are originality and authenticity.
8.- A tip for young entrepreneurs/artisans:
That they believe in their project, that they look for inside that they can contribute and move away from the fashions that do so much damage, and also believe that there is always a demanding buyer and prepared to value a quality job, even if you have to go out and look for it. Constancy, faith, ability to work, overcome and seek that touch of luck. Betting very hard for yourself and for what really matters.
Leave a Reply