In permanent exhibition and for sale Helen Fioretti's pottery
Raku and Kintsugi artworks
Helen Fioretti, psychologist and psychotherapist, is an art ceramist and art therapist. In 2018 she has opened a lab – show room where she teaches art ceramic. She exhibited her works in several places and she has organized multidisciplinary exhibitions that involved numerous artists.
Raku
The invention of raku technique is attributed to a Korean artisan, who in the Sixteenth Century, using this technique, manufactured tea ceremony bowls. The irregularity of the edge of the cup gives a pleasant sensation to the lips, making unique every single sip of the drink.
Later on the raku was acquired from Japan and became one of the symbols of Zen culture.
Still today, in Japan raku ceramics are highly valued and many of these creations are real works of art. The irregularity of the raku object is one of its fundamental characteristics as well as the particularity of the iridescent color and unique reflections.
To acquire these characteristics, the incandescent object is extracted, temperature is about 1000°, undergoing a thermal shock, and immediately immersed in wood shavings and dry leaves or paper. The contact with these materials causes the ignition of flames, these give iridescent colors and metallic reflections. This process is called reduction. A total reduction gives a black color and, depending on the amount of residual oxygen, color varies on a gray or brown scale. The peculiarity of this process is that each and every single object remains unrepeatable, its shape and its color are often anarchic and unexpected.
Kintsugi
Kintsugi literally means to fill with gold, and it is a Japanese technique, consisting in using liquid gold or silver powder to repair ceramic objects and bound the fragments together.
The practice is born from the idea that the imperfection of a wound creates an even greater form of aesthetic perfection.
In fact, random fragments of uniqueness form intertwining of beautiful furrows and make the object unique in its kind.
The intentional breaking of the object creates an interesting new vision about the representation of life, in its succession of rupture and renewed integrity.
The object, like a man broken by existence, is restructured into a new dimension, thanks to the tension of venous lines that give strength and resilience to the renewed form.
