I have had three shows with mixed success and every time I have the feeling that either the buyers are wrong for my work or my work is wrong for the kind of event.
What I mean is that if I am at a craft fair my work seems too posh and special and fragile and not for everyday use, if I am at a London gallery, it is not expensive enough or not “artistic” enough.
The discrepancy between urban and country culture is not working for me. I am in between the two and I think I do not fit in either particularly by being Italian. I aspire to make work that would sell in galleries, I am not even sure anymore if I need it to be functional and about hospitality, I want to express “Me” and to be well made.
I think this takes me right in the middle of the diatribe of what is art and what is craft, and I have to understand this meaning in order to decide where to position myself.
I am reading Vicky Perry’s book “Abstract Painting” and I think that often changing the words from painting to ceramics, can give me some clue to the problem. I think the craft of ceramics can be associated to representational painting, while ceramic art functional or not is like abstract painting.
I am now paraphrasing from page 14 and 15 changing painting for ceramics: “ Is it possible to make a piece of ceramics that does not in any way associate with everyday experience? When viewing art we decipher and measure what the work means to us. Meaning is something our minds build by connecting one experience with another. Is it ever possible for a ceramic work to have meaning other than function? … A deeply moving artwork transcends the simple triggering of associations. Its visual strength will overpower the references and we will carry the memory of that object”. When I walk through a ceramic fair I look t the other objects, some seem to me to be simply beautifully crafted useful objects, others seem to have something more, a spark and a beauty that puts them on a different level. Is this something that everybody could see or it is subjective? Do the famous potters that show at Collect and in the biggest galleries, put something special in their work that makes that Art, or they just appeal to those curators and they have made them famous?
