The material of meditation
- Gunilla finds clay helps her get in touch with her emotions
- She was shortlisted for the Loewe Craft Prize Award in 2018
- It can take her weeks to finish one single object
Gunilla Maria Åkesson is pretty sure that clay chose her, not vice versa. She liked clay, and somehow she felt she needed that material. “I started quite young; I knew early on that I wanted to express myself through art, although not necessarily ceramics,” she says. “Weaving was the main craft in my home when I grew up.” At 18 she had a practice period with ceramics at school, and that triggered off her passion. She graduated from the National College of Art and Design in Bergen, Norway, and worked as an assistant for Ulla Viotti, a well known Swedish ceramist. Since then her works have been exhibited internationally, and she is represented by different art museums and collections in Norway and Sweden.
INTERVIEW
The work in the studio and the creative process between me and the clay. I can spend as much time as I need to get what I want out of my work, and I can spend my day with my own thoughts, which I follow to the end without interruptions.
Time is a very important element in my work. When I build one of my vessels it takes me at least two to three weeks before it is finished and after that I have to fire and glaze it several times. I believe that working for a very long time on each piece is in itself a skill.
Exploring the emotion inside myself. The time it takes to build each piece by doing the same thing every day enables me to enter into a meditative state, and then I get in contact with the emotions I need to explore and express.
I make simple, beautiful and emotional vessels that touch people. The cylinder shape is an archetypal form, which everyone knows and recognises. I use a very traditional method in building my work by coiling and modelling, and then I use glazes in a more experimental way.
