Met my first ceramic artist: 2 Febbraio 2012

Met a ceramica artist on the first day.
By Joey

Trying to find an Internet cafe on our first morning we passed by scores of ceramic shops. One of them caught my eye because it was very different than the traditional work of the area. Most of the ceramic shops are occupied by artists who purchase bisque (unglazed ware) from somewhere (which I never found last time). They produce beautiful works by painting with glazes on the ware and then firing in the kilns in their shops. They are wonderfully talented painters but not what I would know as a ceramic artist. Well, we walk by this shop and the work was so different than what we were seeing. We went in and saw a body of work that was mostly hand built with coils and functional yet sculptural (lots of heads which was really cool). We met the artist, Eugenio Sclafani, and he invited me to go in the back of the shop to his laboratorio (studio). There were many works in progress on banding wheels (like a lazy susan - used for making pots with stacks of coils of clay), 3 small kilns, an extruder, and small containers along with buckets of glaze. We had a pretty good conversation given that he had no English. He works every day and has great passion for his work. He also described his work as contemporary, different than others locally (I could see that). I gave him my Funkware Pottery web address and told him a little about my work and that we were here for a month. We left saying "a dopo" which means "see you later". And he said yes with a big smile. I believe I've made my first pottery friend.