Earth 2020

 The sculptures and vessels artwork from the cycle "Earth" are made of clay, which is found locally in various cities in Bulgaria. Inspiration is drawn-out from the folk psychology of different towns, just like the Bulgarian folk costumes, but above all from the primitive ceramics. Various deposits of the material have been found in Lom, around the Danube River and the Trojan Balkans, where traditional pottery is still used today.

The similarity between the materials is different. The works of the cycle are united by the natural earth colours. The process is mechanical, long and difficult, the first step being to find a deposit. The clay must be cleaned of river stones. It is crushed with two large stones and passed through a sieve, or it is mixed into water and filtered, both cases take a long time. When there are no stones in the clay, it is ready for work. The artwork must dry very slowly, because the material does not contain modern improvers or impurities and can crack due to rapid drying. When the clay is almost dry, it is polishing with a stone, which makes it smooth, thus impermeable to water. Before firing, the clay is placed in the sun to dry very well. The ceramics are fired through a hole in the ground, where are placed dried leaves, sticks and wood-chips. Baking should be very slow, and the process is performed all day. It is important that the clay has cooled completely when removed from the hole so that it does not crack due to thermal expansion.

By tapping with a finger, it is determined whether the work is well baked, this is done through the ringing sound wich ceramics makes.

 The experiment with the extraction of clay shows how difficult and uncontrollable was the procces used by the ancient peoples, thus reaching the final results, preserved to this day. Trojan pottery shows red clay, black clay is used by the Pueblo peoples of today's southwestern United States, where the collection of Native American pottery is very large.

Name:1/30x10x15cm/Name:2/20x10x7/name:3/14x13x13/Name:4/17x10x5/Material:Clay/year:2020