Carlota Biggs-Rubio

My recent work is ceramic — thrown, frequently altered, or sometimes entirely hand-built. I make functional objects ranging in scale from small quirky glazed pinch pots to tables and lamps constructed of massive extruded tubes. I draw inspiration from my surroundings, research and those inevitably brief excursions to distant places, where observations outside my everyday experience are important and revelatory. Regardless, whether an experience is firsthand or virtual, incorporation or projection into my creative practice is similarly influential.

While I have not visited St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, my knowing it through research is as compelling as the roofline of Antoni Gaudí’s Casa Milà in Barcelona, where I have spent time contemplating its eccentric chimneys firsthand. Fashion also moves me. The volume and patterns of Comme des Garçons dresses, and the color and forms of René Ramillon and André Vincent’s Moncler line are transformative in the same way I look to change the genetic makeup of a bed-side lamp or night table.

Much the way a human or animal inhabits an environment, it is the influence what I make will have on its surroundings, the impact it will have on the emotion and mood of the place in which it will exist that interests me most. When I think about making something, I think about its future effect. Existence is not static. It transforms the space around it and vice versa — creating move-meant, sequence and presence — a dynamic scene. It is my hope by making work, and the scenes created by its existence, I invigorate the world in a constructive and positive way which inspires others to do the same.