While hiking through the Scharmützelsee region, searching for materials for the project, along the water and through the forest, I notice that I feel transported back to my childhood in the countryside. Where does this feeling come from? I have had no previous connection to the Oder-Spree district, having grown up in the Eastern Alps myself—so how is it that a sense of belonging arises within me?
When I was five years old, our kindergarten often took us on walks through forests and fields between spring and autumn to explore the surroundings, build dams in the creek, and, armed with pencil and paper, draw flowers and trees. Now, I am essentially doing almost the same thing: discovering bark, roots, and stones that I find interesting as starting points for ceramic structures. I make sketches and take photos. The fascination from back then returns immediately.
The semester project “I paint a tree in porcelain” describes the experience of a foreign landscape and its connection to childhood. My own subjectivity becomes part of the process, just as much as newly learned and modern techniques for working with clay and porcelain. Instead of bringing the motifs to paper with colored pencils, I now use the tools provided by an art academy equipped with all technical possibilities. Macro photographs of found stones, twigs, bark, and flowers are recreated, abstracted, and transformed using 2D and 3D software. The ceramic 3D printer produces forms reminiscent of bark and nets. Experiments with glazes and different application techniques expand the possibilities for surface and color design.
In the end, the result was a highly personal and abstracted mapping of the plant world of the LOS region.
