Interview to the artist by Rachelle Gryn Brettler, from our Anniversary Book
When I grew up in Montreal with three sisters and a brother with no space to actually make anything, I found the staircase to be the place where I could sit, sculpt and create dust. I would then brush the dust down to the bottom of the stairs.
I think I can pinpoint my love of sculpture, design and form to certain early points in my life. One of the first was when I was ten or eleven, I visited the celebrated Canadian artist Jean-Jacques Chapdelaine, a friend of my parents. He had built his house from driftwood, a three-storey house from found wood from the bay in Grande-ValleĢe. I remember his sculptures clearly, that experience informed me of a possible path.
When I did my BA at Concordia University in Montreal, there was a tutor who taught me ceramics, specifically a slip-casting class. I fell in love with the process and I have not looked back — it was very informative and constructive to who I have become and what I enjoy.
It has all happened quite naturally, but I have been stuck in material. My father collected a lot of things, strange things, objects, not necessarily art related — fencing swords, shoemaker forms, all sorts of tools and machinery — an incredible array of weird and mostly useless items. Found material plays a role in my practice... I can spend twenty minutes in a junk shop picking up objects and tools, and then I have the inspiration to create another body of work. I am looking, historically and culturally, at the remnants and the fabric that have been left behind, reassessing objects and material. It is an important part of who I am.
I often reference Cartier clocks from the 1920s because there is nothing else that quite compares to this array of mixed materials working in synchronicity. To me their virtue conforms well to the truth to materials design principle; their materials remain pure yet changeable as they settle in coexistence with other distinguished materials.
In my series called Paste — an earthenware collection of work which is very sculptural, with very ornamental pieces — with little minute gemstone, glass rods and glass details — I realised how important the geometry and symmetry were to these architectural forms I was creating. In historical decorative pottery, certain techniques have been used in the past, and there are certain decorative principles that work well on ceramics. There always seems to be a reference to sweet jars or sweets in my work — I guess it is just the playfulness.
There are two materials that I tend to work with — stoneware clay and bone china. I was not aware that bone china was a notoriously difficult material to work with, so I was working with it as with any other clay and it took me quite a while to resolve things. I think you have to be quite stubborn and be really submersed into materials to be able to use it because you cannot throw it.There are certain processes to show its potential, and the main issue is that if you fire it high, it needs to be supported in the kiln, or you have to create shapes that are self-supported, for example, they have structure within them — like a sphere.
One of the reasons why I love living in London is the access to materials. I would not be able to find bone china in Montreal for example. My wife is Czech. I am very inspired by the ceramic and glass traditions in the Czech Republic. I have been working with Czech glass recently. The implementation of glass has become very associated with my practice — I have been deeply immersed in working with glass and trying to get it to configure to ceramic. My glazes come from the Czech Republic. Every time I come back from there, I bring glaze with me, as it is the reliability that I look for. Because I find myself working with certain variables, such as the glaze and the glass that I can control, I can propel myself further because I know that certain things will work. We all need those assurances because otherwise you would be taking risks every time on ever y element, on every layer of the piece.