Episode 54: Alejandra Almuelle - Revealing the Presence

Scott David Gordon — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 07:00:00 -0600

"Seriously it's like being in love, staying in the studio."

Alejandra Almuelle is a full time ceramic artist who creates sculptures and pottery that often merge traditional and contemporary styles and often feature the human figure. Her most recent and largest exhibition of work to date titled The Journey, interpreted the hero’s journey and was inspired by events in her own life. By making pottery, which she sells online and at art fairs, she is able to create her sculptural work and explore it under less pressure to make a living. The creation of each piece is a dance of control, her unconscious, the limits of her abilities, years of experience, and the same doubts we all have bringing something new into the world. She persists until the presence inherent in the clay reveals itself to become its own entity. Being of service to something beyond herself she daily finds joy and love through her work. What a great interview. Have a listen and enjoy!

Bio below courtesy of Alejandra's website

Alejandra Almuelle was born in Arequipa, Peru. She spent few years in Pizac in the Sacred Valley of Cuzco, a center for ceramic making. Peru is a country in which the abundance of clay has made this medium a language of artistic expression. Clay is its own idiom, and being there, she began to speak it. After she moved to Austin, she started working with clay. Addressing the functionality of the medium as well as its sculptural expression has been equally important for her. She has participated in art fairs, galleries and museums with both pottery and sculpture.

The exploration of an idea in a piece is central to Almuelle. She works in a series until the idea is exhausted within the form. She has completed several series in which the common thread is the human shape. She usually finds herself in between the pull that lures her to work to see “it “in front of her and the challenge to translate into form what has an intangible shape in a corner of her mindʼs eye. “While working on a piece, the piece is also working on me, working as a way of revealing, making visible, bringing into light”. As a base medium, she feels that clay is appropriate for expressing the human journey because it is the stuff we are made of.

Some of the subjects we discuss:

Intro
Ceramics & pots
Growing up/influences
The valley of Cuzco
Move to Austin
Realizing the work
Being in love
Saving your life
What is real
When it flows
Conscious narrative
The Journey work
Hero’s journey stages
The departure/threshold
The state of things
The hungry ghosts
What falls away
The epiphany
Reconfiguration
Memory of essence
The return
Power of the exhibition
Creating the work
Can’t take credit
Doubt and blocks
Working on now
Persistence
Levels of attention
Clay/we are it
Revealing
What drives you
Sacrificio
Joy

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Intro music generously provided by Stan Killian

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Links:

Austin Art Talk - Episodes Tagged with “Alejandra Almuelle”

Episode 54: Alejandra Almuelle - Revealing the Presence