Coordination:
Prof. Oriana Impei
Workshop led by the artists:
Azadeh Shirmast and Michele Flammia
The workshop aims to provide the students of the Academy of Fine Arts with a theoretical and practical introduction to the technique of raku ceramics and intends to experiment with the ancient Raku technique in sculpture, a ceramic process used by Japanese potters since the 16th century to produce bowls for the tea ceremony. Raku means “the joy of living in harmony with people and nature”. Renewed and reinvented in the West, this technique arrived in Italy in the 1960s. A special feature of Raku ceramics is the unpredictability of the effects on the objects when the glazes are fused, as they are taken out of the kiln while still incandescent and immersed in water, or subjected to reduction in containers filled with combustible material such as sawdust, grass, leaves and more. In this way, the “reducing” environment causes particular lustres and reflections. As a result, each object will always be a unique and unrepeatable piece in its colouring, simplicity and naturalness of form. In the West, Raku has become a new way of making ceramics, a way of expressing oneself and engaging with the elements of nature.
The specific objectives of the workshop are as follows:
1) To acquire fundamental knowledge of the raku technique, from the preparation of the clay to the final firing;
2) To learn about the chemical components of Raku glazes and learn how to prepare them, starting from the raw materials to experimentation, to the unpredictability of the results, through the glazes and the temperature.
3) To develop the students’ decorative and creative skills through the creation of artistic objects in raku ceramic;
4) To encourage the students’ experimentation and personal expression.
Description:
The participants will each create a work in refractory raku clay previously fired in the first firing and made in the Sculpture classroom in Campo Boario.
The pieces must be cylindrical in shape, with a maximum size of 10×15 cm in height and a maximum thickness of 1 cm. This will provide an object suitable for experimenting with the essence of raku, its pictorial-decorative effects, and its reduction and smoking. The workshop will be held in Italian.
Programme:
Historical introduction from its Eastern origins to its Western developments. Theoretical and practical lessons on mixtures, coatings, firing, reduction, and use of the kiln. Preparation of glazes and carrying out tests. Decoration with oxides, metal salts and coloured glazes. Second raku firing and smoking and reduction techniques.
Azadeh Shirmast
An Iranian artist who moved to Italy, she studied traditional art and sculpture in Iran and continued her studies at the Faculty of Architecture of La Sapienza University in Rome.
In the second year of the traditional art course at the University of Tehran, she chose ceramics as the subject and technique to study in depth, while at the same time working for several years at the prestigious and oldest majolica factory in Tehran, the Khak Negar Moghadam.
She has also collaborated with architects in the design of interior designs and their subsequent creation on ceramic and glass.
She also has some experience in contemporary theatre, both in Iran and in Italy, as a set designer and maker of marionettes, masks and puppets.
For several years, she has been dedicated to her own personal artistic research using various techniques, especially on ceramics. In 2020, she opened her current atelier-workshop in Anticoli Corrado, a well-known art town in the province of Rome, choosing to devote herself mainly to ceramics, but not exclusively, following her original tradition but also opening up to the techniques of the Italian tradition by attending workshops with various masters, such as in Deruta, or in Faenza with Master Mirko De Nicolò, or in Veneto in a workshop on raw earth with Master Isabella Breda.
During this period, she also returned to Iran to attend intensive courses with Maestro Rasoul Jalili, a leading expert in Raku ceramic techniques, and with Maestro Omid Qajarian, an equally important expert in the composition and preparation of glazes.
Michele Flammia was born in Rome and learned the rudiments of the art of ceramics at a young age. At the same time, he was interested in all forms of art – painting, sculpture, music and poetry – which led him to conceive of art as cross-fertilisation: this would become the strength of his creations.
In the initial phase, his experiments are oil and ink paintings with a clear abstract inspiration and references to Picasso and Kandinsky. Later, once he came into contact with Klee’s work and in particular with his “Teoria della Forma e della Figurazione”, he managed to find inspiration independent of the greats of the 20th century.
In the late 1970s, he was in Sicily, where he managed to perfect his wheel-throwing technique and, through the experience he gained, began his personal and highly original artistic journey.
In the early 1980s, he began exhibiting in the province of Rome until, in the early 1990s, he reached one of the centres of attraction for Italian ceramics in Emilia-Romagna.
In the meantime, he collaborated with artists and researchers in the field of materials science in Italy and around the world. He came into contact with important Japanese gallery owners to whom he entrusted his works and received important international awards. He then refined his research in the study of the physical and optical properties of the most diverse materials; he carried out experiments with metals for the production of artistic ceramics, discovering the infinite possibilities of creating art through the combination of these materials.
Communications Office of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome
Coordination: Prof. Guglielmo Gigliotti g.gigliotti@abaroma.it
Collaboration: Chiara Picco, Marianna Pontillo comunicazione@abaroma.it