We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Florapa. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Florapa below.

Alright, Florapa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I learnt the craft through the years, almost 11 years ago I fell in love with pottery. I don’t believe in speeding up or saving time, I think there is no time when in learning crafts. Every single day is a learning experience and there is nothing different I would have done in order to do it faster; the slower the better for me. The most essential skills is to learn how pottery was being made many years ago, I mean learning history books or talking to people that studies ancient crafts. History is repeating itself every time, so whatever was already discovered I shall rediscover as well. Specially for my craft, where I do the ancient ways, clay related and direct fire wood fired ceramics. The obstacles that stood in the way were money related essentially but also the trust within myself so as to be confident that I can do this and will be successful.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I´m an artist and I work with clay. Normally it is associated pottery to everyday useful ceramics, but what I do relates better with sculpture. I work in an unusual big scale of ceramics, therefore I need huge amounts of clay and I do fire wood firing my sculptures. The most attractive thing about this kind of labour is the physical demanding around the works, I mean it is quite physical demanding to do big and heavy pottery. I learnt it through the years and began to realize this is no hobby for me, this is a kind of life. I really can’t imagine myself working in something else. I encourage myself to work hard and be creative as well. I really love to read and create a mystery around my works, the sculptures belong to some time and a world that may not be the one we know. Rituals, fire, earth and ancient archeology around ceramics discovered under ground. I try to continue my land making pottery, in the way finger inscriptions around the material that is being worked on. I think my main characteristic is the non perfect, non hegemony, non symmetrical ceramics, full of fissures kind of. I find really attractive when the material breaks apart or refigures.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I began to fire wood firing my clay sculptures a few years ago. It hasn’t been an easy path to be on. The most amazing thing about fire is HOW to maintain it through four hours, specially with patience and lots of wood. I try to work being as much as conscious as I can be regarding where I live, I mean I live in Buenos Aires and it is a city that has a lot of garbage disposals and I can make use of that residuals for my wood firing. The wood I fire is recollected only by myself in the streets, in the garbage and in the neighbourhood where I work in (Almagro). It would be much easier if I lived nearby a forest where there is tons of wood I could use of; however now this is my situation and I shall make the most of it. So it is quite demanding physically to be wandering gathering wood from the streets, walking near construction sites and carrying it all by myself. It would be much easier to having an assistant haha. The force I need to work is grater than I had in mind when I started fire wood firing. And now, the satisfaction of firing in this way is grater than any other way I could be doing it. Later when I finish firing I have to deal with physical pains but it is worth because the clay has been transformed into ceramics by all this labour that I am responsable for.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

This question is really difficult to answer because there is no accurate response. The best society can do to support artists is to give them visibility I think and try to make a content ecosystem by making scholarships, access to materials, information, protect ownership and encourage commerce among them.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: www.instagram.com/florapa/

Image Credits
by florapa