Vanessa Anastasopoulou

When painting meets ceramics

• Vanessa's ceramics combine functional with the ritual and sculptural
• For her, ceramics is a byword for becoming more resourceful
• Her work combines her double heritage: Greek and Swiss

Having studied painting at the Royal College of Art, Vanessa Anastasopoulou started practising ceramics 15 years after her graduation. Her first ceramic objects were a series of colourful plates for her household, decorated with birds and a transparent glaze. Drawing and painting are intrinsic to her ceramic process. The works are thrown on the wheel followed by hand-building and the use of stains, engobes, underglazes, pastels, porcelain slip, and various glazes. Her ceramics have been created with attention to detail and their formations can be mirrored to those of the natural world such as branches, flowers and leaves. For the past eight years, she has been sharing a studio with other artists in Exarchia, a vibrant neighbourhood in the centre of Athens.

Interview

©All rights reserved

©All rights reserved

When did you start working in ceramics?

My first encounter with ceramics was in the middle of the economic crisis in Greece, when I started using my drawing skills to paint functional objects in an attempt to make some money. The seed was planted and it has been growing ever since.

Do you remember when ceramics stole your heart?

Working with clay has been an organic long-term process of creative bewilderment. I have grown out of moments of doubt, trial-and-error, where my engagement with ceramics changed from being a vocation to becoming a conscious and at times obsessive commitment.

What do you love most about your profession?

Against the all-embracing vulgarity, we become magicians. Hoping to approach reality from a different angle, we find refuge in alchemies, we create unreal worlds by changing and transforming the known. We surprise even ourselves. I could never get bored.

Is there a particular moment in your professional life that you remember?

The evening that I finally ordered my first kiln – after over two years of using friends’ and colleagues’ ones – meant that I no longer had to work in other workshops or find pieces destroyed during transport. The same day that I ordered my kiln, the amazing gallerist Eleni Martinos got me a commission that covered the entire cost.

Vanessa Anastasopoulou is a master artisan: she began her career in 2012 and she started teaching in 2018

Works

©vdokakis

©vdokakis

©All rights reserved

©Vanessa Anastasopoulou

©Vanessa Anastasopoulou

Where