Meeting + interview with Cica Gomez
Brutal. went to meet the ceramist Cica Gomez in her studio in Lyon. Let's discover his universe through an interview.
What is your background and your training to get to ceramics?
For answer, an anecdote: a year or so ago, I was at the workshop, I looked at this space where every day, I go, turn, give lessons, transmit a know-how and a taste for doing... Everything that makes my life as a ceramist today. And with this look, this thought: “If someone had told me 10 years ago that I would be a ceramist!? I wouldn't have believed it... I wouldn't have known. “I studied law, I worked in associations and the Social and Solidarity Economy, the idea had not crossed my mind for a moment at the time. I conclude that life is sometimes a marvel of surprises.
Are you self-taught or did you learn from someone else?
In fact, the path that led me to earth is distant: it was not obvious, it was discovered.
I started with modeling when I was a child (5, 6 years old). And then the earth never left me. It was however an intermediate material, allowing me to do other projects.
It was in 2012, when I took my first filming lessons, that this practice gradually became a desire for a job. In 2013, I then returned to training at the Maison de la Céramique du Pays de Dieulefit (in the Drôme Provençale).
Do you remember your first play?
Well actually, my first ceramic is 39 years old. I was 2 years old. At the time, kindergartens and primary schools had great ways to open spaces of creativity to toddlers. And the school I was in had an oven. I thus have the trace of my hand, in a plate made of red earthenware, and enamelled. And otherwise, by digging, and in my memory, and in my business, at 12 years old a carafe of water whose elaboration still amazes me. Mounted to the plate. With 12 facets. I was already ambitious in terms of creation! Between, and after, all sorts of objects. Child: dogs, cat, pitchers! Teenager, adult: it was the sculpture that came. And then there was, much later, the filming. And there it is not the memory of a play, it is the memory of a feeling...
How would you define your job?
A design that seeks for strength and beauty, simplicity.
Landscape colours. Terrestrial landscapes, celestial landscapes. A chromatic and poetic capture.
What is your creative and manufacturing process?
I know many techniques concerning the work of the earth, however, my love goes to filming.
I turn my pieces, and let myself be inhabited by a waltz of gestures, a gesture.
What is your favorite technique? Your favorite moment in the process?
Even today, it remains the motte shooting. It involves centering a large mass of earth, isolating a very small amount of it at its top, and rotating small objects. There is in this moment a fluidity of the gesture that one does not have elsewhere. We center, we turn, we listen, we slip, we remove the piece and we start again. Circular dance.
What is your favorite material? What do you like about him?
I love all lands, even though I mainly turn porcelain. This choice is doubly originated: the reason is technical. Some enamels require a white earth, without iron; as the painter needs a white background for the emergence of bright and intense colors. It is also sensitive: it is a land that requires very special attention, it challenges you or rather, it requires us to listen very attentively… I like this intimate dialogue.
What inspires you outside of ceramics?
As I have already said, the inspiration is diffuse. An aggregation of the forms and lines to which I am sensitive and which we find as much in urban space, in nature, or in the curves of a human body. I also like working with light. And with this contradiction – in appearance, between transparency and intensity, which come to be expressed in color. Lastly, I like the balance of a curve for the feeling of tranquility it provides. When the line is beautiful, it entrusts us with all the time taken, the care. It says about us, the accuracy, that we have sought to give to the object, and to offer to the one who looks at it, makes use of it.
Can you tell us about one or more books on ceramics or something else?
There is this incredible book by William Morris, founder of the Arts and Crafts movement: “The Arts and Crafts”, 1889. It gives meaning to what we do every day. We make objects, with an aesthetic that has political reflections and echoes. What meaning is given to our objects, our life choices, our profession, if not to contribute to the construction of a world full of meaning? , in balance and accuracy ?
What are your last significant trips or your travel desires?
The last and first big trip dates back a year and a half now. A living room in China. In Jingdezhen. An experience that leads to the meeting of immensity and otherness. And if tomorrow we can still travel, I will go to the Land of the Rising Sun. I will go to Japan.
