As part of the Ubud Open Studio 2024, we are proud to present our 1,5 years long project.
In our ceramic studio, we have decided to focus on glazes and in order to do so we followed an online class with @ceramicmaterialsworkshop.
This has been a life changing investment of money and time. After a 3 months class, a lot of theory and many many tests, we have started to test on our own, making glazes recipes and weekly firing of these test a habit.
The couple teaching that class have a podcast, for ceramic geeks like us, called "For fluxe sake". We often listen to it to get information and Katie (Matt's wife) always says as an answer: "You have to test, test, test..."
There is no other way than testing.
This gets applied to clay, slip, glaze and firings.
We are always with a new idea, a project using a new material found at the beach, on a hike, in the mountain, on a construction site; sand, terracotta, soil from the garden, wild clay, ashes, mix of them all or individually.
Opening the kiln is always like Christmas (or better), we have a lot of expectations without really knowing what will come out. Sometimes it doesn't work, but there are these days, when we open the kiln and we find one or two jewels on which we will focus and keep exploring.
We hope you can appreciate this installation as a team effort, an investment of passionated people, a lifetime project and more than anything a projects that makes us want to wake up and run to the studio every day. It's our Ikigai *
* Ikigai - a motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living" - source Wikipedia