Casa Julfa residency
October 2023
Casa Julfa - Supported Ceramic Residency - Montmorillon, France
In October 2023, I spent one wonderful week on a ceramic residency at Casa Julfa in Montmorillon, France. It was an opportunity for me to slow down, focus on making, wander around the town and its weekly food market, learn about foraging for wild clay, wood firing, throwing larger, and ancestral hand-building.
I stayed in a beautiful house with periwinkle shutters, limestone walls, and Armenian clay goddesses guarding it - with a quaint studio around the corner. The studio was, of course, where I spent the majority of my time. I had the upper floor all to myself, with a tabletop wheel facing out the window - so I could watch the world go by, talk poorly in French with locals, and throw pots. The building had character and a soul - which reminded me of a family friend’s old washing house studio from my childhood. It was a place that felt perfect for me to create.
Corinne Aivasian, the founder of the residency and the host while I was there, was lovely in sharing much wisdom about ancestral processes from Armenia, Mexico, and elsewhere - that grounded her to the land around her - and taking me around in her little old characterful car. I appreciated her holistic and thoughtful approach to the residency, clay, and seemingly her life. This approach drew me to the residency when it stumbled into my path - like I found a kindred spirit.
This week was deeply inspirational for me, as it allowed me to focus and unwind, but also learn how to make ceramics with natural, ancestral, and slow rituals - which I felt added more meaning to the finished works. Digging in the surrounding landscape, meditatively separating it into small pieces, drying out in the warm October sun, re-hydrating, partially drying again, and wedging several kilograms of clay to be used to hand-build organic forms, which we then wood-fired. I loved the slowness and hands-on nature of it all, but what I loved most of all was how grounded I felt.
The Place
Montmorillon and the Casa Julfa Studio
The Work
The Wood Firing
The crackle of the fire
The smoke
The small kiln goddess watching over the process
The candle used to start the fire
Poetic yet practical
The pine that lived other lifetimes
Now fuelling the fire
The warmth
The heat.
The slow wait
For temperatures to rise
While we ate olives and dark chocolate
Watching the fire,
The smoke to change to translucent
Spotting a heron in the distance,
Sharing stories amongst ourselves
Then it all rapidly quickened
As we carefully carried the pots away from the fire
With long black iron tongs
And quickly submerge in a wheat fermentation or long grass from the site
Or splatter with sugar
It all felt magic
Electrifying
Alive.
I now understand why some people worship the fire
Seeing it change a form into something solid
Feeling its warmth
Both literally and metaphorically
Bringing people together
Forever shifting form
The glue of community.
Feeding the fire
Felt like a metaphor
For our lives
Feeding yourself
With the energies around you
With the moments you share
With the lone reflective moments
With nourishment
With creativity
Allowing you to continuing burning and growing.
Perhaps a metaphor
For my time at Casa Julfa.
Merci le feu.
Staff Outing III.
The physical outcome of the Casa Julfa residency, was a small collection of wood-fired ceramics. Most were small thrown works with a pair of large vessels which I named ’La Terre et Le Feu’. These vessels were constructed using foraged wild clay, and formed using ancestral hand-building methodologies, rapid wood-firing, and then submerged in hay or obvara (a wheat fermentation).
‘La Terre et Le Feu’ translates from French to ‘Earth and Fire’ - representing the elementary significance of the process and beautiful language of the area.
I showed these two wild clay vessels at the Look Again Project Space in Aberdeen, Scotland - in the ‘Staff Outing III’ exhibition - at the end of October to the beginning of November.
‘Staff Outing III’ was an exhibition that celebrated the exceptional talents of the artists and designers of the staff at Gray’s School of Art. Over 40 staff members came together to create a diverse fusion of creativity, spanning various mediums from photography and painting, to ceramics, illustration, jewellery, digital art and more. It was a pleasure to help with the organising and be an exhibiting artist alongside people who helped me develop when I was student.
Photo credit to @nicolehallphoto for the last three photographs.
