Ceramicist Audrey Schaditzki
Ceramicist Audrey Schaditzki
The Wren is proud to represent the natural beauty of Paris-based Audrey Schaditzki’s ceramic artwork in the U.S. Audrey’s approach is an ode to the raw authenticity of materials. She seeks to preserve the soul of the clay, allowing its natural hues and textures to remain untouched by enamel. The result is a radical honesty in form that evokes geological landscapes, mineral concretions, and the timeless forces of nature.
How did you get into ceramics?
I used to do a lot of modeling when I was a child and spent many hours at it. I loved contact with clay and working with my hands. Until I was 16, I wanted to become a vulcanologist or a geologist. I was fascinated by volcanoes and collected stones. When I was 17, I moved to a pottery region and discovered ceramics. I remember telling myself that one day I would be a ceramist but as a second profession. First, I studied at a business school and worked in big companies for 15 years, but I was always taking sculpture classes on the side in La Villa d’Alesia in Paris at the former studio of Henri Matisse. I just loved it—the clay, the place, and its story. Then one day, I decided it was time to become a full-time ceramist. I quit my job, trained at a professional school in Paris, and opened my own studio.
What is different about your creative/production processes compared to others in the industry?
My aim is to bring out the beauty of raw clay using no glazes or paints. There are so many natural colors in clays, which are made of sands and minerals. I want to sublimate them while keeping them raw and not hidden behind a glaze. Clay comes from a natural landscape; it's pebbles collected in a natural place. Clay is a soil; it’s a piece of mountain that gives a personality, a color, and a soul to a place. In my work, I seek to preserve the soul of the natural landscape, which is visual poetry that creates emotion and tells a story that is both personal and universal.
Who or what influences your work?
I'm very much influenced by social issues, especially our relationship with nature, the earth, landscapes and ecology. Behind the aesthetic side of my creations, there is above all a story about the state of our landscapes. I want to communicate an emotion that can be a little harsh: the erasure, destruction, erosion and silence that settles in some landscapes. But I want to tell the story using poetry.
I'm also very inspired by Japanese prints from artists Hokusai and Hiroshige, which capture so well the poetry of the ephemeral and emotions in the face of nature.
Where do you draw inspiration on a daily basis?
Music plays a big part in my daily life: James Blake, Lana Del Rey, Björk, Agnès Obel, and Robert Glasper. I particularly appreciate these artists who reinvent new musical emotions, who experiment while remaining in a very poetic, intimate universe, with great depth of soul. For me, musical notes are a color, and rhythms a visual movement. I like to transcribe the emotion of music into a visual sculptural work.
What are you working on right now?
I'm preparing an exhibition for the Biennale des Arts et du Design in Paris Pantin. I'm also working on a sequel to my Dépaysement collection. It’s a continuation; the story continues.
What do you do in your free time?
I love to draw. I have a little gratitude notebook where I draw a joy from my day every day. It can be a flower, a meeting, a cup of tea in the sun, or an event in the spirit of the work of the painter and poet Laoshu, of whom I'm a fan. I occasionally do watercolors in situ in nature. I also love traveling, hiking, baking and gardening. I have two teenage daughters with whom I sing, go to the cinema, the theater and so on.
What is one thing most people don’t know about you?
My grandfather was a famous pâtissier, chocolatier and ice-cream maker in my region, and when I was a child, I loved to eat as many scoops as possible of his ice cream. In my thirties, I earned a professional pâtissier diploma just for the fun of it. And now I know all about the best patisseries and chocolateries in Paris!
