I’m a ceramicist and agroecologist who works with wild materials, both local and collected on my travels. Working with wild materials means coming across clay on hikes, while swimming, and on farmland; collecting small amounts, testing it numerous times, adding rocks and minerals to create a landscape on each of my sculptures. It is an indulgence into the unknown since I never know what the clays, minerals or rocks I am collecting will look like once cooked. My pieces are often left unglazed to show the essence of the earth, its cracks and valleys, indentations and craters. My vessels are unique and impossible to duplicate, since they are handbuilt, without a wheel, but also due to the nature of the limited quantities of clay that can be collected in each location. I fire my pieces at high temperatures from 1150-1250 C to push materials to their limits, allowing them to travel through a geological process of change and dehydration in just a few hours.
Ceramics is an artform that has been relegated to the everyday, the commonplace, an object that is both necessary and functional, created by women for millennia without calling it art. When I work I thinks of the hands of these women, who over time have shaped, rolled, cut and designed the ceramics that surround us. Each of my pieces bears the name of a woman in history, forgotten in time.
Exhibitions
Paratissima. Turin, Italy. October - November 2024.
Wild clays: Places, roots and memories. The Gallery of Elena Salamon. Turin, Italy. September - October 2024.
1000 Vases. Paris Design Week. September 2024.
Contact
Email: jesseburattipottery@gmail.com
Instagram: @jesseburattipottery